The license system. 5

[dwesnyc]

We are considering Avaya IP Office and Shoretel. I am concerned about the licensing system of Shoretel. Everything needs a license. The vice president wants to be a supervisor you have to get a license. Want to also include someone else as a supervisor, you have to buy another license. And there is also a license for a voice mailbox.

With Avaya they were saying how we could take any "did" and create any number of mailboxs for any type of thing we wanted. So a mailbox for each promotion we ran etc. That would all be in the standard voicemail software purchase.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

 

[jneiberger]

This has been a helpful discussion for me to watch. We are currently looking at Avaya IP office, ShoreTel, and Cisco for a few new locations. Each has its own pros and cons, but it appears that even though there are some things I don't like about ShoreTel, it does offer the most bang for the buck. It also appears to be the most reliable and easy to manage.

 

[ronromano]

GSmitherman, if the Shoretel is so superior, why do you (or your company) sell the IPO?

Can you say it has a superior feature set?
Can you say it can be serviced by a large number of regional vendors?
Can you say it has the same R&D and support that the IPO has?
Can you say that Shoretel is on the same financial footing as Avaya and will have the same longevity?
Can you say other companies will develop software to work with it the way AVAYA has?

Look I don't know the answer to these questions. I come to a forum like this to learn not to have disinformation spread.

I don't see much info being passed here and that tells me alot.

 

[GSmitherman]

Here are your answers:

1. I feel the sets are superior to Avaya. The speakerphone is unbelieveable. The phones are not as bulky as Avaya sets and take up less space on the desks. Customers who had Avaya sets and now use ShoreTel sets rave about them.

2. Quantity doesn't always mean quality. ShoreTel is very picky on who they allow to sell and service their product.

3. ShoreTel R&D and support blow Avaya away. I have only had to use ShoreTel support a couple of times. The support engineers will actually log on the system and troubleshoot with you. Avaya support is someone reading out of a book who has no or very little knowledge in the product. Avaya wants you to send a config, trace and whatever while the customer is still having issues. After calling ShoreTel support the issue was resolved. After calling Avaya support you have to wait for a callback.

4. Ask the Avaya personnel who lost a ton of money with their Avaya stock about Avayas financial footing.

5. I really don't know how much other companies work with ShoreTel. All I know is the software is outstanding.

The company I work for is an Avaya Business Partner. We also sell ShoreTel. Selling two products gives potential customers a choice. Some want Avaya. Others want ShoreTel. I have never said Avaya was junk. I only expressed my opinion that when all things are considered equally, ShoreTel is the way to go.

 

[JBlacksky]

Getting back to the original query. I can't speak for Avaya, but I do install Shoretel systems frequently:

Do your "campaigns" require the ability to record messages with distinct greetings, or play distinct greetings with some options to follow?

If YES: Then you need mailboxs.
If NO: Then you can use menus.
If SORTA BOTH: You can have Menus play options then transfer callers to certain mailboxes to reduce required mailboxes. Either way you could email the voicemails back to people/departments to be dealt with.

Either system will handle this, but in hindsight if you want to compare apples and oranges (in terms of how they each cost their products out), Shoretel Voicemail is approximately 250+ ports similtaneous access out of the box, so really a few licences are really not that big of a deal. Avaya gets you on the port activation fees, unless I'm wrong. If I am wrong about any of this stuff, someone correct me please!

Either way, you will get a good system, but if you are considering high inbound voicemail traffic, look more closely at what you want to accomplish and why. Function before Fashion I always say.

 

[aarenot]

http://marketingtools.avaya.com/knowledgebase/

This is the IPO knowledgebase, if you want take a look.

I previously worked for the largest shoretel dealer, and they were also one of the largest (top 20) Avaya BP's there was differing opinion about which was best by the technical staff.

First of all, I mostly care about what techs have to say because they are the ones who install, and program the systems. Everyone else, including all other shoretel, and Avaya partners employees, managers, owners, etc., are just users, so they do not know much. Users know what they like, but do not know the application of the technology which is possible.

Where I worked IPO techs were a dime a dozen, including all experienced enough to implement an IPO probably three dimes worth at least. Shoretel experienced implementors were much fewer, maybe 6, but no where near as experienced with the shoretel as the IPO guys were with the IPO.

This is simply because the IPO is implemented so incredibly more numbers wise than the shoretel that it was impossible to have as many experienced shoretel guys. Very few were experienced on both, and none at the time I left this year do I believe had more than 6 shoretel implements if they had ever installed an IPO at all. Almost no one who was highly experienced with the shoretel had even installed one IPO by 100% themselves yet. That means the IPO techs were the only ones really qualified to evaluate both, which leaves a little bias in the mix most probably.

That being said, the concensus was that the shoretel was as stable as the network. For multi-site that includes the P2P's. Servers fail too because they have moving parts, so that is the next weakest link. If having just mailboxes is sustained VM, then P2P, or VM server being down does not effect sustained VM service. The shoretel is hands down more expandable, but has less features than the IPO, which is irelavant if you don't need what shoretel does not have.
The IPO is only network dependant at the multi-site level, as it is a hybrid system not pure IP which from that standpoint removes local network issues from effecting the IPO. It has the same VM server failure issues, but loses mailboxes as well when it goes down, although in most multisite scenarios if the P2P goes down calls still reach all VM facilities as normal. The IPO has more features, but cannot compete on the enterprise level expandability scene anytime soon. Although, as an enterprise system level Avaya has other systems as options with greater feature sets, which shoretel does not.

I have not confirmed this, but from what I have been told so far in this calendar year alone Avaya has implemented more IPO's than shoretel has implemented its systems in its entire history. From what I am told on the numbers of systems installed, the number of members of the shoretel forum 302 members VS the IPO forum 9,681 shows that a higher percentage of shoretel techs come on here than of IPO techs.

Oh, IPO VM is a pay for ports, which means how many simultaneous people can be accessing VM at the same time, including checking VM via phone, leaving VM, interacting with an AA, or hearing a Q message other than MOH/IOH. The number of VM boxes, AA's, etc. the VMPRO server can handle is a matter of server resources for the most part, not constricted by licensing. I have done 485 total which I recall, maybe more.

I think from my own limited experience that they each have their niche, or they would not both be selling. It is really not fair to compare the two as most small networks cannot support VOIP, so a pure IP system cannot be implemented without a serious network investment which changes the total cost of ownership. Also, Avaya licenses as a rule are assigned based on first come first serve, so when one logs off another can use that license.

Most of my knowledge of the shoretel is from working on some shoretel projects with a shoretel tech, and a tech being trained, neither of which had the experience to do anything but programming. They did have some issues that required some hours of support from shoretel, and the tech doing the training had advanced training, and certs. They just didn't know the punch down color pattern on a cable, if you know what I mean.