| Expanets and Avaya
Interestingly enough we worked with the Minneapolis office to get rid of the Avaya and consolidate the network and IP Tel onto Cisco. There was a pretty big fight internally if I rememer.........and then the whole company fell apart (unrelated issues I believe)
We haven't seen Nortel in a competetive bid in the Enterprise in two years, unless the site is already running Nortel. The bids have all been legacy presence, Avaya, Cisco, and then Mitel/Shortel.
Honestly the main focus I see for each:
Nortel - promotes Carrier class reliability
Avaya - Mostly promotes management but also takes every opportunityt to hammer Mitel/Shortel and Cisco on any feature they can find (this changes with every new release of competitors software service releases)
Mitel - cost cost cost (read: cheap cheap cheap)
Cisco - Security, network consolidation, XML applications, Video
Shortel - cost, true IP (but you have to add a whole other infrastructure to support the phones)
Alcatel - in the US for enterprise? Haven't seen them
Seimans - they took forever to realize that no one wanted to upgrade the 9006 to be "IP Enabled" by adding an expensive card and modules to the bottom of the existing phones. but still run two seperate drops to the desk.
I would say Avaya and Cisco are tied for first in every way. Numbers get fudged for every quarter to show one or the other leading in sales. In the end if a place is lead by Telecom management then they go Avaya but if the telecom is placed under IT they go with Cisco
'Course if you are talking SMB market then the Samsungs, Toshiba's InterTel, Mitel and Linksys of the world are probably better priced. __________________
Deus ex machina |