Voicemail strategy

[avayaguy23]

I wanted to get a feel for how organizations are handling the topic of voicemail. Avaya is putting an end of sale on Aura Messaging in the next six months. In addition, they do not plan on adding support for 365. Your only option is to migrate to OfficeLinx. If you look at the cost of upgrading and adding on upgrade advantage which Avaya now forces you to have, it doesn't make sense to stay with Avaya for voicemail. I have looked at using Exchange UM for voicemail but Microsoft doesn't include it with Exchange 2019. You can see where that is heading. I have looked at Mutare and the cost is not justifiable. What other options are out there?

 

[wpetilli]

We use AVST.. very good.

 

[avayaguy23]

I would need upwards of 20k mailboxes. Not sure how their licensing model works but in your experience do you think the cost of licensing plus maintenance would be less than $1 million over a 3 year period?

 

[wpetilli]

I don't deal with the maintenance portion, but we have 3000 licenses along with some other entitlements and ours cost approx 60K annually. Not sure if the pricing model changed.

 

[kyle555]

Talk to a partner. I can't speak to rumours of EOS or anything - I haven't heard anything.

Officelinx is the go forward platform eventually - that much is true.

Talk to a partner about your licenses and map out a few scenarios.

If you're Aura Core or on Suite Licensing, then that license for a user includes various entitlements - presence, chat, and voicemail.
Even if they were going to replace AAM with Officelinx tomorrow, there'd be a path to get there.

Even if you're right about AAM being EOS in 6 months - which I personally don't think is the case - it'll be supported for years to come. If there's any truth to that rumour, I might expect a roadmap announcement in 6 months to say it would go EOS in a year or 3's time with full EOL at a much later date.

Even then, AAM doesn't support O365 for full integration like "read in my outlook = lamp off, unread in my outlook = lamp on" but it does support just fire and forget to O365, so it can work just fine even if not the most elegant. Personally, I figure either you're a phone-only user to check voicemail or a email box only user anyway and don't really care about or need both to be totally integrated.

I don't see AAM going away anytime soon Not at least until Officelinx gets rid of the Windows dependency and it gets a spin to be deployed in AAM mode that just lets you seamlessly upgrade to it like AAM6-->AAM7.

 

[wpetilli]

AVST also is certified with O365 and Skype

 

[avayaguy23]

I went to the avaya conference and talked to the product manager. Aam is dead and will be in fact eos in 6 months. Now that avaya is forcing you to get upgrade advantage on a product they barely upgrade on a 3 year cycle is ridiculous. I can upgrade all aura messaging 6 licenses to 7 for less than it would cost for ua on a yearly basis. In fact avaya is trying to mark it up 10 times. Avaya needs to get more competitive. Voicemail in general is dead so why does it cost so much.

 

[wpetilli]

I agree that VM is becoming a bit obsolete, but at my company these folks communicate via voicemail like they do email. alot of record/send/reply all.. with nothing being backended by exchange and journaled.

 

[kyle555]

Actually, you just kind of explained how Modular Messaging came to exist. My understanding was that when Avaya bought Octel and their Unified Messaging platform, it could tie back to any MS Mail/Exchange. Then Enron happened and SOX compliance showed up and everyone freaked out in 2001 that they'd need to keep every voicemail for 10 years if it touched Exchange, so they put Intuity AUDIX underneath and called it a MSS

 

[wpetilli]

Exactly.. that ability or lack thereof were show stoppers for some products we looked at.

 

[kyle555]

https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101056907

I wonder if that means OP can take his AAM6 without UA and get bumped to Officelinx for 80% off...

AAM Migration Path to IX Messaging (Officelinx)
• Suite Licensing
o Avaya Aura R8 now provides entitlement to Officelinx Licenses
o Existing Aura / AAM customers with UA migrate licenses to Officelinx free of charge
• A-la-Carte Licensing
o Existing AAM customers with UA migrate licenses to Officelinx free of charge
• ASIPP Pricing
o Existing AAM customers without UA within or outside Aura Suites are offered 80%
discount pricing to protect their existing investments.