I have a customer with an existing IP Office running R9.
They are wanting to upgrade to the latest version and add softclients. Ideally (so they've told me), they would replace all of the desk phones (currently 9608's) with the softphones. I have never dealt with One-X and IP Office. How reliable is the softphone? Does it offer most of the features of the deskphones? How about remote workers? If the user has VPN connectivity to the office, will they be able to use their One-X client?

My initial quote to them included replacing the 9608's with J179 phones. They thought the price was too high. Talking about 20 phones. They are also looking at going to Teams calling, so I'm sure that's where the idea of going to softphones is coming from.

There was an odd time in my life when I sold cars, and objections about price were common. Frequently they're not about price at all since no matter what the ultimate solution is, it will simply become a capital expense. It sounds to me like there's something about Teams that appeals to them which obviously has nothing to do with the price since Teams uses a subscription model (they'll NEVER finish paying for it as long as they use the service).

Someone read something, was given an elevator pitch or had a d**k-measuring contest on the golf course. What your guy heard about was whiteboarding, live captions and dozens of things that his company will probably never use BUT it sounded very exciting. The J-series phones can't compete with that kind of excitement. I think they look very nice, take up only a small amount of real estate on the desk and are very practical. But they're not "sexy". As we used to say in the car business, "You have to sell the sizzle and not the steak".

You may consider pitching ACO as a competitive option to Teams.

On current releases, you migrate form 1Xp to User Portal. Not as nice as 1Xp, but still has the web rtc option. For remote workers, you can use an SBC, but you mUST secure the system none the less. This means certificates, TLS etc. If you arent familiar with certs this gets pretty tough if you have never done it.
IPO CAN work with teams, wether just a dialer or direct routing integration. ACO deos as well but easier setup and no infrstructure.

ACO makes all the remote stuff easier.

Either way Avaya does have DaaS which is Device as a Service. This gives you Opex pricing for the phones and can roll that into a monthly cost with ACO, so no upfront which helps with the devices.

My vendor just told me to look at Avaya User portal as well, and not 1X. I believe that they have a quote for MS Teams calling as well, and they are balking at the price of that as well. I have never used Avaya Cloud Office, but assume they wouldn't be happy with that pricing model either. Have either of you had much experience with User Portal? I have never used it or 1X on an IP Office deployment before.

Teams calling, if not using an SBC, requires the same licensing on an IPoffice as using User portal. There is an Avaya dialer plugin for TEAMS that is free, allows click to call within teams. If they want to do the direct routing option, which uses the Teams client for Call Control/audio, and relegates the IP office to a dial tone provider, they then need E3+ Phone or E5 (this is what shows the dialpad in the Teams client)

I have had multiple customers start out with ACO or IPO, and use Teams Direct Routing for a bit, but they have all come back to ACO/IPO as the clients have the UI for what a user likes. Teams UI/Call Control sucks.

For User Portal, see if you can access the link. User guide for it:
https://ipofficekb.avaya.com/busine...%20IP%20Office%20User%20Portal_en-us.pdf

Thanks for the Avaya document. That helps me.

I have another customer that is on a hosted platform that we also offer. I'm not a huge fan of hosted yet, but the product seems to be working for them. This particular customer is a bank and they are wanting to migrate to Teams. Just from looking at it, it doesn't seem to be nearly as polished, usable, or friendly as what they're on now.

Tim -

Your description is spot on! See it all too often.

With ACO, Ring Central will handle everything for you.

I have been involved in IP office since R1.1, hence no hair. I bleed IPO. I have it in my house, connected to an AWS system, again, i am a nerd. When ACO came out, i did fight a bit on it. I though no none would pay monthly, that kind of money forever. I am surprised when they usually dont bat an eye at the cost.

Dont get me wrong, i get (more than my leadership) that cloud isnt for everyone. I get that certain partners or areas, cannot sell it as they are in smaller municipalities where the FCC says that they dont have to port the numbers away. Tons of reasons.
But, if we have a customer that wants to go Teams Direct Routing, with an IP office i cringe. I have partners that are absolutely capable to setting the necessary SBC's, certificates and infrastructure to talk to MS Teams. BUT, there are a lot of points of failure. SBC, IPO hardware, network issues etc...

For Direct Routing for Teams, ACO is an easier option. They get the 5 nines resiliency (like 5 min down time/year) and the sync between ACO/Ring and MS Teams is super easy...the hard part is the config of the teams stuff on the MS side. I was able to figure it all out, and know ZERO about MS/O365/TEAMS. And in the end, this is what the cloud is supposed to be, and easy way to consume the widgets you need.