Avaya IP Office 500v2 r8.1 vs Asterisk open source 2

All I can say is SUPPORT!

who will be supporting their home brew kit? Their IT guy?

There is no real proof of cheaper TCO between an Asterisk box vs the IPOffice.

best thing is to do a really polished DEMO of the IP Office to the customer and explain there are hundreds of vendors who can support this kit for them...

Asterisk isn't really proven in the business world, and if it was so great then Avaya would be out of business.

Dont get me wrong like like Asterisk, but I wouldnt put it into a company relying on the system to perform.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

They will have to hire somebody or use a contractor as I know they do not have an IT guy.

Have you heard of any of the problems I have read about?

the comments about Asterisk needing to be behind a firewall are true with IP Office as well.

Anything 3rd party, you can have trouble with--with any system.

AA is not stored on an extension.


I have Asterisk systems out there, I even use one in my house. I push IP Office, not Asterisk to the customers.

Cool, I appreciate it!

And remember - like HSM has inferred - reinforce the positive points of Avaya instead of the negative points of Asterisk - the customer will appreciate that you have kept them out of a p***ing contest. Nobody wants that.

TO make Asterisk work you have to know not only VoIP but you need to be well vered in Linux. 90% of managing Asterisk is CLI. You will need to be an expert Linux admin to pull it of. If not be prepared to pay consultant prices. I as quoted 3,000.00 for an evaluation of an Asterisk site. That was before even 1 minute of real work. Asterisk support contracts are typically $18,000.00 per year and up.

Asterisk is the most expensive free phone system you will ever find.

Asterisk is nice but not for companies period.
There is no support and every freewheeler tries it.
You always rely on 3rd party endpoint and solutions.
It can be good but i have replaced a couple where the customer almost threw it out of the window.
But i guess this applies to any brand


BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

IP Phone System Quality & Reliability Index
1. Avaya
2. Shoretel
3. Cisco
.....
87. AT&T Synapse
88. Fortivoice / Talkswitch
89. Asterisk

(Source: just me!)

The fears posted here about Asterisk are completely unfounded. True, if you try to implement it without knowing what you are doing there will be issues - likely a lot of them. But the same goes for IPO or Cisco, etc. IMHO the best Asterisk implementations are done with FreePBX because all of the dialplan gets written automatically and bugs are virtually eliminated - no customer should be a testing environment. FreePBX offers a 1 week training program to become a certified deal, just like Avaya's IPO.

To answer a couple items specifically:

The only experience I have with Asterisk using SIP Trunks is one of our vendors uses this system and I constantly have to enter the extension number 4 or 5 times before the system actually re-directs me to the desired extension. This is very aggravating and I've actually given up calling a few times, because I just get sick of it.

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This was a poor implementation of DTMF settings or a low-quality SIP provider. The SIP trunk should probably have have been set to DTMF inband.

I've also read that they have problems with 3rd party devices that require a key press i.e. door phone
Also I've read they cannot be used for multi-site solutions.

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Doorphones are no problem (see above) and Asterisk is absolutely great for multi-site especially considering the IAX trunks it natively supports.

The most concerning thing I've read so far is that the system has trouble using features when its behind a firewall, and if its not protected by a firewall then hackers can get in and route international calls through your SIP Trunks.

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No phone system should be put outside a firewall and Asterisk is no different. It's less vulnerable than many other brands simply because you cannot typically outdial from a mailbox.

And as if all of that isn't concerning enough I have read that the Auto-Attendant is essentially stored on an extension, that if anyone accidentally calls you will loose all programming.

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Absolutely false. Although you can often change the AA recording by dialing a feature code such as *292 that's no different than IPO with *8201 etc.

TO make Asterisk work you have to know not only VoIP but you need to be well vered in Linux. 90% of managing Asterisk is CLI. You will need to be an expert Linux admin to pull it of. If not be prepared to pay consultant prices. I as quoted 3,000.00 for an evaluation of an Asterisk site. That was before even 1 minute of real work. Asterisk support contracts are typically $18,000.00 per year and up.
Asterisk is the most expensive free phone system you will ever find.

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While it's true you need to be versed in VoIP and Linux to properly implement an Asterisk system it's ABSOLUTELY untrue that it's more expensive option. Our service contracts for IPO are exactly the same price as Asterisk/FreePBX.

Asterisk isn't really proven in the business world, and if it was so great then Avaya would be out of business.

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GARBAGE! Asterisk is more widespread in the business world than IPO. DO SOME RESEARCH HAIRLESS MONKEY

Asterisk is nice but not for companies period.
There is no support and every freewheeler tries it.
You always rely on 3rd party endpoint and solutions.
It can be good but i have replaced a couple where the customer almost threw it out of the window.

Click to expand...

While I normally respect TLPETER's opinion he's way off base here. The only reason a customer would want to throw it out the window is because of the poor knowledge/support of their vendor. We aquired a customer who wanted to turf their IPO for Asterisk for the very same reasons but once we sorted a few things out on the Avaya system all is well.



-----------------------------------

Calgary Telephone Systems, Avaya LG Asterisk (FreePBX) VOIP & TDM

As far as I can see this really boils down to the same old question:

Is the customer going to be (1)installing & maintaining this themselves to save cost. or (2) Are they going to have it professionally installed by a competent* maintainer.

Regardless of system type IP Office, Asterisk or any other PBX the answer is always the same, If option 1 they are going to get burned.

companies should not be looking at the cost of maintenance but at the cost of downtime to their business. If you can afford to have no phones for days (or weeks) while you try to work out what is wrong & fix your on system then a DIY solution may be an option. For a company that wishes to stay in business I would say it is not.

*Not all Maintainers are a competent as should be expected.


A Maintenance contract is essential, not a Luxury.
Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear

I would say there are less than 1% Asterisk installations in the UK here used for business in the SME and Mid Sized markets. I suspect Asterisk based vendors hardly get a look in with Panasonic, Cisco, Mitel and Avaya being so aggressive in their marketing.

Of those few out there we have replaced some of them with an IPO due to reliability, quality and support issues.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

I have to come to the help of the Asterisk systems because there are some flavours of it out there that actually have support and good support too. Some are better than Avaya's slow moving "get me logs and configs and let me see if I can make sense out of it and get back to you" support.
Asterisk is just the basic idea behind the phone system and the convenience of administration and maintenance is up to the company that provides it.
I have been on training for a Asterisk system and it is a great and reliable little server running the system and you can use a whole array of SIP phones that you can buy on the open market. Some phones are better than others and some are cheaper and some are more expensive than Avaya phones but like IPGuru said it comes down to the installer / maintainer of the system and also to the phone sets they run with it. If you cheap out on phones then the best system will not make you happy that is the same with Avaya. I you run the IPO with a whole whack of cheap SIP phones you might not get the same voice quality that you would get with an Avaya only system, but if you put the most expensive solution into a network that sucks then you have already lost the battle before it starts.
So many things to take into the equation but of course if you ask for opinions about another system here in the IPO forum you get mostly the answers that they suck.
We come into installations that are getting replaced by Avaya IPO because the customers are not happy with what they have and some of them are Asterisk systems so naturally we get to see the bad ones and associates they are all crappy.

Joe W.

FHandw, ACSS (SME), ACIS (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

Westi, that is what i said
Even an IPO can be bad as you know
Asterisk can be good must what we see is what failed big time.
That is because of bad implementation.
The more i work with Linux, the more i like it.


BAZINGA!

I'm not insane, my mother had me tested!

I like Linux and Asterisk. The Alcatel OMNI is a linux based PBX, but Asterisk just hasn't been widely implemented here.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

Just a note on the cheap Avaya phones... I've used pretty well all the IP and digital phones at one point or another and they all sound identical in quality, so Westi your statement about cheap Avaya phones running SIP having poor quality with IPO couldn't be farther from the truth!! SIP quality on IPO is strictly dependent on bandwidth and quality of SIP trunk from the provider. We only use Allstream SIP trunks as the have QOS and can guarantee quality. I have not had even 1 bad quality call or missed syllable since we switched from PRI to SIP and we only have a T1 bonded with a DSL.