Mitel 5000 CP versus Avaya IP OfficeCompetitive Brief
July 2010
Competitive Intelligence
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Reference The information contained herein is accurate up until the date of publication.
The Avaya IP Office information contained herein was derived from the IP Office Release 6.0 Product Description and from Telecom Tactics.
The information derived from TelecomTactics is reprinted with their permission.
Telecom Tactics (www.telecomtactics.com) is a service of T3i Group LLC.
Other sources cited where necessary.
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Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Simply Communicating
The 5000 CP offers call handling and messaging, full networking support and feature transparency for multiple systems. Supports IP, analogue and digital technology. Linux® operating system.
. IP Office 500 is a converged system (TDM and IP) Release 6 supports 1400 series digital phones Requirements • A system control unit (IP500 or IP500V2), • Trunk connections to a service provider and • Expansion modules for TDM phones
Capacity
Supports 250 users and multiple sites.
• 240 digital phones • Up to 250 IP Phones • 3 expansion bays in main chassis
• Scales from 2 to 384 extensions per server • Capacity up to 1,000 users • 32 IP Office systems can be connected for multiple sites
Weaknesses
• Professional Edition Upgrade License is required to operate expansion modules on the IP Office 500.
• Partner Edition is not upgradeable and is not IP
Telephones
Mitel offers a wide set of phones that have a consistent look and feel across the platforms. Mitel’s cordless and DECT accessories provide internal mobility using the same handsets.
Comprehensive desktop
• Mitel 8528 / 8568 Telephones (digital phones) • Mitel 5300 Series IP Phones • Mitel 5310 IP Conference Unit • Mitel Line Interface Module • Mitel Wireless LAN Stand • Cordless Handsets
Release 6.0 adds support for 1400 Series Digital Phones: 1403, 1408, 1416
Weaknesses
• Lacks breadth of accessories to provide flexibility to users • For internal mobility, Avaya need to specify an additional DECT
system, which adds cost and additional equipment to manage
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Getting Connected
• Full networking support and feature transparency for
multiple systems
• 6 IP networking trunks included
• 2 or more systems can be connected to form a network
• Network 99 sites with full feature transparency across locations
• Everyone has access to the same communications features as if they were located in the same office
• Users can place calls across the network as if they were in the same building
• Each system can have its own time settings, call configurations, System Speed-Dial contacts, etc.
• IP Phones connect over a LAN to the IP Office • Built-in data capabilities enable IP routing, switching and Firewall
protection between the LAN and WAN • Small Community Networking (SCN) is used to connect multiple
locations, it offers: • Centralized/Primary voice messages and call recording • Messaging/config backup in case of network/hardware failure • Minimizes WAN traffic • Uses local voice ports
Weakness
While multiple IP Office systems can be networked to create an SCN using QSig, networked SCNs deliver only partial feature transparency.
TCO
Offers ease of programming and deployment which equates to savings in terms of installation resources and cost. No superfluous components to purchase; rather, the 5000 will work with the existing Ethernet infrastructure where possible. Customers of the Mitel 5000 HX have the option to order 50 free licenses of the Mitel Unified Communicator® (UC) Express. 6 IP networking trunks are included with the 5000 HX.
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Software Assurance
Mitel does not force software assurance on anyone. • The 5000 CP offers Software Assurance for a flat fee • Mitel Software Assurance Program provides an initial 13
months of free coverage, including software updates and upgrades
Weakness
• Avaya forces all customers to purchase Software Assurance • Small business customers are less likely to upgrade the software and are
generally happy to leave it alone • Software assurance is an extra cost forced on them every year
Licensing
The 5000 CP is sold as a “base kit” including hardware and licenses needed to get started – just add phones. Most base kits include a quantity of phone licenses. 5000 HX’s base kit comes with 48 digital phone licenses out of the box. Each phone requires a license, and there are several phone licenses to choose from: • Category D: Mitel 5304 / 5312 / 5324 / 5320 / 5330 / 5340 / 5360
IP Phones • Category E: Mitel 8528 / 8568 Telephones • Category F: Mitel 5601 DECT Phone, UC Express Softphone
IP500 V2 requires a system SD (Secure Digital) card to operate and acts as a Feature Key. IP500 and IP500 V2 systems use a mandatory Feature Key with every system.
Each IP Office control unit must have its own Feature Key and licenses.
• The Feature Key associated with 1 IP Office can’t be used to validate the licenses of another IP Office system
• Since licenses are based on the Feature Key serial number, they can’t be moved between systems with different Feature Keys
• If a Feature Key is lost the license will become invalid
• Specific features and applications are enabled by licensing
• Availability of some apps depends on the user license (R5.0 or higher). one-X Portal requires the Office Worker, Power User or Teleworker license (it is not available separately)
• Professional Edition Upgrade License required for expansion modules
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Customer Satisfaction
Mitel prides itself on providing superior customer support. Mitel consistently tracks in the high nineties for Customer Satisfaction. According to the quarterly 2009 survey results, the percentage of customers who rated themselves as satisfied or highly satisfied: Timeliness 94% Level of Completion 97% Professionalism 98% Furthermore, 79% of customers surveyed have volunteered to act as a reference account for Mitel, their partner or Mitel and their partner. Mitel surveys ALL customers so results are not biased.
Weaknesses
• Serious consideration must be given to how Avaya supports its customers. In 2009,
• 63% of customers were extremely happy • 9% had a serious issue • Remainder were in between
Source: Avaya, Kevin Kennedy, CEO, Partner Forum 2009
• Avaya has a reputation among resellers for being difficult to do business with
Source : Shamus McGillicuddy, July 20, 2009, In announcing Nortel enterprise deal, Avaya focuses on channel
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/networking-channel-var/tag//avaya/
Business Intelligence
Mitel Business Dashboard • Part of Mitel Applications Suite (MAS), a complementary apps
suite for the 5000 CP • Provides operations-wide call reporting on all workers, from
the front office to the back office • Delivers a complete view of all internal and external calls • Produce real-time and historical reports for call costing, trunk
usage, traffic patterns, extension-based workgroup reporting, traffic levels, peaks and frequencies of calls
IP Office SMDR
• Provides an interface to obtain SMDR events • A record is issued for each call, when the call is completed • Designed for call accounting and call billing applications
Weakness
• Avaya does not offer an off the shelf app like Business Dashboard • It appears to require a 3rd party application
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Teleworking
• Teleworkers don’t require additional licensing or servers
• Includes a dynamic jitter buffer to manage quality
• All supported IP Phones can be used for remote workers
• Inherently supports G.711 and G.729 encoding – typically without the need for additional hardware
Avaya’s telecommuter mode requires an embedded VPN to support remote capabilities into Avaya’s IP telephones. This adds both cost and complexity for both the user and the busy IT manager. A teleworker license must be purchased to gain teleworker functionality. VPN software must be loaded on 5610/5620/5621 or 4610/21 IP phones. 9600 IP phones don’t require a separate software load for VPN
Weakness
Requires an embedded VPN to support remote capabilities into Avaya's family of IP telephones.
Adds both cost and complexity for the user and the busy IT manager.
Customer Service
Mitel Customer Service Manager (CSM)
• Contact centre functionality without the cost or complexity of a formal contact centre
• To ensure incoming calls are answered quickly, calls can be routed to the longest idle agent
• email, SMS, and fax can be put in a queue like a call would be, ensuring equal treatment for all forms of contact
CSM supports:
• 100 active agents • 64 ACD Groups • 150 agents per group • 8 agents in multiple groups • Embedded ACD supports 1000 agents IDs and 75 ACD groups
Customer Call Reporter
• Windows Server with Web based client • Support for 150 agents • Real time monitoring for both Supervisors and CallCenter Agents. • Supervisors can program 3 real time views of their call center, and the
agent can log in, select a Supervisor, and view stats for themselves and queues that they are a member of
• Set-up 100 variations of queue and agent stats • Support for Safari browser
Weaknesses
• Cannot report call center stats across multiple IP Offices • No multimedia • Packaged with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express. Call centers with
high call usage will have to upgrade to full SQL Server edition • While customers will want to deploy it on the same servers as VoiceMail
Pro, it needs its own server if VoiceMail Pro has over 17 ports
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Messaging
The system includes • 4-port Basic Voice Mail • 16 ports with additional port licenses
Voice Mail storage of • 90 hours (512 MB Flash card) • 210 hours using 1GB Flash)
Voice mail features include: auto attendant, call screening, cascading message notification, directory services, call record • Basic Voice Mail has day / night greeting capability • Embedded messaging includes STAR (Scheduled Time-Based
Application Router) scheduling to schedule greetings • Every port of Basic vmail can be used for auto attendant • Easily customize Mitel Speech Auto-Attendant using Call
Routing App
Embedded voicemail and auto-attendant are provided on a pre-loaded 64M PCMCIA Memory card. The SD card also acts as storage media for voicemail. Embedded voicemail supports 15 hours of storage and supports hunt group messages.
Voicemail and unified messaging functionality depends on the Edition purchased.
Unified Messaging
For advanced messaging requirements, NuPoint Unified Messaging™ (UM) is available as part of MAS, which complements the 5000 CP.
NuPoint UM Relay, store, and retrieve voice, email, text, and fax messages from a phone or a PC with a single synchronized message box.
Speech Auto-Attendant Callers can be connected simply by saying a person’s name, a department name, or a telephone number.
For advanced voicemail and unified messaging, IP Office supports 20, 30, or 40-port VoiceMail Pro license included with IP Office Preferred or Advanced Editions.
The customer or business partner provides the server for VoiceMail Pro.
Weaknesses
• Voicemail Pro requires a separate server and licenses to be purchased at
extra cost • Licenses costs between $2500 and $7500… and presumably the PC
Server costs $2625. (Source: Avaya. Beat the Competition - Mitel 3300 ICP compared to IP Office, Karen Kevin, April 2009)
• Voicemail Pro is an expensive way to achieve “ Wait time in queue and queue position”
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Mobile Twinning
Dynamic Extension Express
• Twin your phone extension with your mobile phone • Incoming calls ring both devices simultaneously • Ring 5 phones simultaneously • Twin your desk phone with your home, mobile, or softphone
or any other telephone number • Single voice mail box • Single number
Cascading • Desk phone rings first before twinning the call to the mobile • Avoids calls to the mobile when the user is at their desk • Cascading does not consume costly trunks • Hand off call from desk phone to mobile and vice versa • Handoff initiated from the desk phone
Mobile Twinning
• Simultaneous ringing of an external device (mobile/cell phone) and a desktop phone
Mobile Call Control • Uses star codes to hold, transfer, toggle or make conference calls
Weaknesses
• Appears to be limited to the primary and secondary device • Avaya one-X Mobile Client for mobile twinning requires the following
trunk types on IP Office 500: PRI or BRI or SIP • Preferred Edition or above is required for mobile twinning
Mobile Call Back
Mitel has a variety of mobility features including Dynamic Extension Express.
Mobility Callback enables a user to dial into the PBX using a dedicated number and the system calls the user back, presenting them with dial tone in order to make a call
Weakness
Mobility callback is a simple extension of third-party call control.
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
PBX Extension to a
Mobile Phone
Mitel plans to offer the Mitel Unified Communicator (UC) Mobile Client for the 5000 CP in a forthcoming release. The mobile device becomes an extension of the 5000 CP, enabling the mobile phone user to: • Dial 4- or 5-digit extension numbers • Access in-call PBX features through the client on a mobile • All outbound calls from the mobile can display the enterprise
CLID or CLID of the user’s desk phone Mitel will also be offering OfficeLink on the 5000 CP in a forthcoming release. OfficeLink: • Enables a remote worker to place calls via the PBX • Is embedded in the UC Mobile Client • Is accessible via the web GUI When accessing this feature through the web GUI, the user specifies the number of the party they wish to reach and the number of their mobile; UC Mobile places a call to their mobile phone and once answered, places the outbound call; it then links the two calls together.
Avaya one-X Mobile Client
• A software client on mobile phones • Clients available for RIM BlackBerry, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile,
Java and iPhone platforms. • Full integration with visual voicemail, corporate directory, call logs • Call control on the mobile phone • 1-number service for incoming and outgoing calls • 3rd party Text to Speech (TTS) for listening to emails remotely
Requirements
• IP Office systems supporting one-X Mobile require a dedicated DID/DDI
number for each feature required (e.g. hold, transfer). • Avaya one-X Mobile Client software for mobile twinning requires the
following trunk types on IP Office 500: PRI or BRI or SIP. • Each user requires at least 1 Power User or Mobile Worker license. • Preferred Edition and above is required for this capability
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Softphone
UC Express Softphone
• Server-less SIP softphone • A PC based phone app to control a Mitel IP Phone from the
Microsoft Windows taskbar ® ®
• It provides: • Click to dial • Incoming caller ID pop-up • PC-based missed calls • Personal and corporate directory integration • Single-click conference / transfer • Deploy it as a desk phone companion, or as a softphone
UC Express works with IP and digital phones on the 5000 CP. Works with either Mitel 8528 or 8568 Telephones. Customers of the 5000 HX are eligible to order 50 free licenses of UC Express. Mitel Unified Communicator (UC) Advanced A desktop client that integrates call control capabilities with • Presence and availability • Secure instant messaging • Audio conferencing • Web and video collaboration • Integrates with Microsoft Exchange / Outlook® and Office and
IBM® Lotus Notes® • Softphone
With UC Advanced softphone, users can make and receive calls on their desktop through a secure connection. Users can • Record calls on their computer • Add customized ring tones • Configure HID-compliant USB devices
IP Office Softphone • Softphone doesn’t require a phone license, unlike Avaya IP hard phones • A PC-based phone client designed to make and receive phone calls • Users need a headset or speakerphone • Supports Video between 2 softphone users • Use it as a standalone client (no additional server needed) or with one-X
Portal If used • with one-X Portal, the softphone has a centralized call log, synchronized with many IP Office phones, prsence status and IM one-X Portal can be used with the deskphone while in the office an• d users can switch to softphone when working remotely Integration with Microsoft® Office Communications Ser• ver, IBM® Lotus®
Sametime®, Citrix® Presentation Server and Microsoft® Vista Business and Ultimate Editions in a standalone configuration Call bar or generic phone view are the inte• rfaces for these apps
• R6.0 offers 3 user interfaces: • Call bar view • Picture of phone view • Generic phone view
• When not integrated with another application options are call bar or picture of phone view Native support for CM 4• .0 features: 9600 series phones, signal channel encryption, and 13-digit dialing support IP Softphone client can be configured fo• r • VoIP (Roadwarrior) mode • Dual Connect (Telecommuter) mode • Shared Control mode
VoIP (Roadwarrior) Mode • Users with a single broadband connection at home or remote location • Audio and call control run across IP network for a pure voip config • Calls made via a headset connected to the PC
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Softphone
ual Connect (Telecommuter) mode Users working from a remote office with a phone line Call control delivered across IP network, but voice delivered across a
ensure voice q ality phone
one
hone
• IM cl nd phone and ther users
D• •
phone line to PSTN or digital line to u• Can be extended to any touch-tone phone or cellular
Shared Control mode Control Avaya IP or Avaya digital telephones •
• Avaya IP phone config provides control of phones from Softph• Speak and listen through the phone • Make and handle calls from both the Softphone and the IP phone • Integrate with Microsoft Outlook, with the IP Telephone • IP phone config supported on 4600 or 9600 series IP phones • Digital phone config enables control of digital phone from Softp
o supported on Avaya 2400 and 6400 series phones
Instant Messaging Support • Integrates with a SIP/SIMPLE-based Instant Messaging client.
ient uses a contact list of other IP Softphone users aIM presence is visible to o
• Toggle between softphone and IM applications • IM and presence require Avaya SIP Enablement Service (SES) platform,
purchased separately
Weaknesses
• IM and presence require registration with Avaya SIP Enablement Service
(SES) platform, wh y ich must be purchased separatel• In telecommuter mode, voice need to be delivered across a phone line s
to PSTN or digital line to ensure voice quality
Decision Making Criteria for Deciding between a Mitel 5000 Communications Platform and Avaya IP Office
Decision-Making Criteria
Mitel® 5000 Communications Platform (CP)
Avaya IP Office
Audio Conferencing
Includes embedded adhoc conferencing, supporting a maximum of 4 parties per conference and 20 parties in conferences. Mitel also offers Mitel Audio & Web Conferencing (AWC) as part of MAS, which complements the 5000 CP.
WC supports 200 audio and web conferencing ports.
• 1-time calls
sharing
sing
agement
• 2 x 64-party conference bridges • Built-in 3-party conferencing
Meet-Me conferencing included with no special equipment needed View, add, drop and mute attendees Record conference calls Requires an Upgrade License to IP Office Preferred Edition for secure
A With AWC, you can set up:
• Recurring calls • Reservation-less calls
ncludes tools for I
• Desktop and application Polling •
• Side-bar chat • Internet co-brow• Record and playback • File transfer • Document man
• • • •
conferencing via PIN
Limitations
• Analog Trunk Restriction
For conferences with external analog phones, IP Office supports a maximum of 2 analog lines per conference.
• Conference Resources Used Up by Features
Call intrusion, call recording and silent monitoring use up conference resources, reducing slots available for conference parties. A conference call between 3 parties and being recorded will use 4 conference slots.
If IP Office Conferencing Center is installed, 5 resources are reserved for system use, reducing the number of callers on a conference call by 5