R10 12

[IPOfficeGuru]

Reading through the Offer Definition for R10.
A few items that are disturbing.
1. PLDS Licensing process is going to be a pain in the A$$.
2. Avaya is moving to a per user model for the IP Office. A 'Basic User' license required for every user you create on the system. Without it Digital sets won't even work. (No wait - they can still dial 911)
3. The marvelous Avaya "IPOSS" is mandatory for every system. The R10 Offer Definiton tries to run you through some glorious justification of how wonderful the IPOSS will be for the customer. Thats after you attempt about 50 times to register the damn thing and then register 'your' customer "SOLD To:'which takes about 20 minutes - so Avaya can later take over tha account.
Remember - all of this so Avaya can streamline the installation process !!
What a joke - I haven't even touched on the "Avaya IP Office Cloud Offer" only $39.95 per seat - but you have to act now - says the guy from 'slap chop' infomercial.


"Never fear billing a client for services rendered, or they will think your time is worthless"

 

[trinetintl]

Damn and we just got our company shirts embroidered with the Avaya logo, now we are going to need a patch for Mitel or Granstream.

RE

http://www.trinet-intl.com

APSS, AIPS

 

[PhoneGuy61]

Get the shirts with Velcro and then you can change patches monthly.... PBX of the month club.....

 

[trinetintl]

I will definetly do that on the next batch of shirts, by the way, what do you guys think about Grandstrean and Yealink and all those funny named Chinese based phones? We purchased a demo Grandstream to test but we have not had a chance to dive in on the configuration, we kind of glanced at it but it seems to do everything the IPO does and then some all bundle up in a very nice small package, granted when a customer saw the 9508 sitting next to the most expensive Grandstrem model (less then half price of the 9508) on his beautiful solid granite conference room, customer thought the Grandstream was a toy and paid the extra $3K for the IP Office system but price wise it is a very big, big difference.

RE

http://www.trinet-intl.com

APSS, AIPS

 

[Westi]

our company just ordered new shirts too, with NEC on it not Avaya. Wise choice but I am only working on the Avaya side not the NEC side of things. Maybe I have to go and train a bit on the NEC systems.
They have a solid key system SL1100 but I hated to program any thing on it because it is not straight forward.
I will try and convince the bosses to look into Mitel now that Avaya goes the road of "squeeze the people for money even more"

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME)


"This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[dwone555]

I also recall reading no support for 54XX/56XX models. Just think of all the systems out there that would be forced to upgrade all of their phones just to go to R10.

 

[amriddle01]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2138...ize-maintenance-jury-says-in-60m-verdict.html

That is an interesting read, perhaps some others may sue them over this

 

[Westi]

they may sue them but by the time it is going to court Release 20 is out and every lawyer involved has a brand new BMW and a new house.

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME)


"This is the end of the world, make sure to buy your T-shirt before it is too late"
Original expression of my daughter

 

[dzajroo]

On Another Call -> no way, they finally implemented this feature.

paying for basic user ? -> demented

Mandatory IPOSS -> now this is total BS..seriously, we hold our own IPO stock and are able to swap the faulty HW on the same day (within 4 hours),don't need Avaya's "next day part replacement". Also we are able to fix any issues internally without the need to contact Avaya for support (unless custom coding/specific build patch required, which is really rare).I can't imagine buying IPOSS for every single IPO we deployed in the field, sorry Avaya not going to happen.

Also Interesting reading:
Avaya downgraded by Moody's

 

[pmcook]

Interesting read. Avaya clearly thinks they can just raise the price and their cash issues go away. I guess not printing text labels on the phones didn't quite fix their cash picture. BIG mistake ditching the SMB market. BIG.

 

[hibroth]

If IPOSS is mandatory we won't be allowed to raise any issue, even if due to software bugs. I wonder that this is legal, what about the warranty terms?

 

[janni78]

It's not like Software Support is something new.
Computer Software companies have been doing it for years, the same way Service Companies have a support contracts with their customers.

Although, saying IPOSS is mandatory is a bad sales pitch, it should be included for at least a year in the price, even if the price would be higher =)

"Trying is the first step to failure..." - Homer

 

[intrigrant]

There are a few thoughts I have on mandatory IPOSS and licensed users:

IPOSS (from AVAYA perspective):
The mandatory IPOSS is a good thing as only authorised AVAYA partners can buy IPOSS, no more fools here asking silly questions.
The mandatory IPOSS is a good tool to control the market and enables AVAYA to swap customers around between resellers if there is a conflict with one.
The mandatory IPOSS is good as the customers now can get support from a high quality service department.

IPOSS (from partners view)
The mandatory IPOSS is a evil instrument of AVAYA to control the market and get rid of tiresome partners
The mandatory IPOSS is a evil thing as it increase the costs of selling IP Office in a very competetive market
The mandatory IPOSS is a hoax concernaing support, Avaya won't lift their but for a customer without a Server Edition with at least 100 users
The mandatory IPOSS is a hoax concernaing support as support from AVAYA is very, very expensive and not always of the high standard as they suggest (please upgrade first and try again)

IPOSS (from customers view)
The mandatory IPOSS is a good thing, we will get support when needed
The mandatory IPOSS is a good thing as we will always get free upgrades to the latest (buggy?) version
After two years using IP Office
The mandatory IPOSS is a laugh, we never had any problem in the last two years but still we are forced to buy a service contract, why?

Mandatory license per user (from Avaya point of view)
Good, it increases revenuse
Good, now we can actually see how many users are using Avaya IP Office
Good, only AVAYA partners are allowed to buy licenses so no more grey market hardware

Mandatory license per user (from the Partner point of view)
OK, the price per license is minor but the need to order licenses before install slows us down and is a grief of many customers ( We need it NOW!)
A lot more paper work which gives us a lot more overhead and makes it harder to beat competetor offers
Many new installs need more users as foreseen by the customer so completing a new install will take longer and more visits at customer location decreasing OUR revenues on new installs.

Mandatory license per user (from customer perspective)
Our installer is not as flexible as we were used to and now we have to pay for every user added to our phone system?

Overall from the competition point of view

Hehehehehe, great. Keep on rocking Avaya, you've found the right path to selfdestruction and we are glad to help you with it.

 

[janni78]

Per User licensing didn't come as a surprise considering most sales here is a IP500 with SIP trunks, CTI license and free mobile users.
A few customers have a couple of phones, mainly for conference rooms or reception.

"Trying is the first step to failure..." - Homer

 

[trinetintl]

Just curios, my guess is that Avaya will lover the cost of the DS boards and external modules, right? Same way they did with the VMS boards? To me it makes more sense to simply order the number of users for the number of ports, that way you avoid all the paperwork if you need to add one more port/user once you start the deployment, by the way, is it port or users what Avaya is licensing?

Any way, just to be prepared, can somebody point me in the right direction on where to go or who to call to get singed up with Mitel? We are located in South Texas.

RE

http://www.trinet-intl.com

APSS, AIPS

 

[joe2938]

Ya right, Avaya never lowers the price on anything, they are nothing but greedy and wait until they see the mass Exodus from customers coming soon

 

[trinetintl]

Didn't Avaya substantially lowered the price for the VCM modules? I mean you can correctly argue that they made the VoIP solution more expensive because of the new end point license but hey they still lowered the price of the hardware.

RE

http://www.trinet-intl.com

APSS, AIPS

 

[voxvar]

I have a question... I drank the Avaya Kool-Aid many years ago and I don't have a good knowledge of what else is viable. Most of our customer are under 50 users, SIP Trunks (some POTS and PRI ), IP and Digital Phones, Multiple locations with VM Pro.
Mitel, Digium, Zulty, Panasonic or even Hosted. What is being sold and supported be a strong dealer network.
I would appreciate your input. If Avaya is pricing themselves out of the SMB market that's cause for concern.

 

[intrigrant]

Well, to be honest, Avaya is becoming more expensive but we still sell them very well. Recently we doubled our Avaya team and did not replace a Panasonic engineer who did not want to switch towards Avaya so he left the company.
So,are we concerned about the commercial future of Avaya? Yes, are we afraid Avaya will be too expensive against competetors in the future? No.
To my believe Avaya will do what is necessery to remain competetive, maybe a bit more expensive but they can defend that if they deliver a rock solid product.
About that last I hear a lot of complaints but we recently did a audit on our helpdesk and Avaya gives only 25% of all helpdesk calls and the install base of Avaya vs Panasonic is 50/50.

 

[critchey]

I wonder if Avaya will stop supporting back 3 major releases once R10 drops to push harder for people to upgrade to R10. Otherwise I can't imagine too many customer's wanting to upgrade to R10 as the added feature list is just not there for this price hike. That or say once your locked into R10 on a control unit you can't downgrade...

 

[rdoubrava]

I have been told R10 has been delayed till July. They are getting a lot of feedback from their dealers. I'm assuming the feedback is not good.