Avaya Wins Second Consecutive "Best in Test" Award in IP PBX Competition

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Miercom announced that Avaya's Internet protocol (IP) telephony solutions have topped its IP PBX competition for the second time in a row.  After securing first place in Miercom's annual IP telephony review, Avaya has now achieved top honors in a second Miercom review of mid-market solutions.

As in the January ranking, Avaya earned one of the highest scores in a comparative IP PBX testing by Miercom, a network consultancy and product test center.  Miercom recognized Avaya for its IP telephony architecture, endpoints and features, when compared to other competitors in the marketplace.  As a result, Avaya again achieved overall "Best in Test" honors from Business Communications Review magazine, which features details of Miercom's competitive review in its February 2005 issue.

Avaya's converged platform was described by Miercom as "a cut above the herd" and earned a clear win among competing solutions supporting 100 to 1,000 stations.  Miercom measured the performance of Avaya systems against those of Alcatel, Cisco, Mitel and Siemens. The tests were conducted on an Avaya S8700 Media Server and G650 Media Gateway running Avaya Communication Manager, the company's IP telephony software. 

"Avaya again emerged as the clear winner with one of the highest scores we've ever recorded in our six years of testing industry IP telephony solutions," said Ed Mier, founder of Miercom.  "They took top honors in architecture and endpoints and racked up a 100 percent call completion rate in grueling performance tests that flood each system with 25,000 calls an hour. Avaya is on a roll.  This second win extends Avaya's winning streak to now cover large and mid-size categories.  We congratulate them."

In the architecture category, Avaya beat the competition in Miercom tests that examined scalability, survivability, and other VoIP capabilities - ranging from bandwidth control to support for teleworkers and road warriors.  As in the January test of large-scale systems, Avaya had the fastest call-control failover time, which indicates the speed of recovery in the event of a system disruption.  Avaya's solution was also cited by Miercom for IP quality of service (QoS) settings that improve call quality by monitoring latency and packet loss, as well as for "rich new SIP support"—both for third-party SIP endpoints and for SIP trunking between systems via the Avaya Converged Communication Server.

Avaya took top honors in the endpoints category.  The company offers nearly a dozen IP phones across a variety of price points, including hard phones, PC-based softphones and wireless devices.  Miercom noted that the Avaya IP Softphone features "well thought-out configuration options" for teleworkers and road warriors, which includes video conferencing as well.  As a result, users can both hear and see callers when they use their PC or laptop computer to make calls.  Miercom also cited Avaya mobility features, including a new dual-mode wireless solution that delivers seamless communications as users travel between a private company local area network and the public cellular network.

Avaya tied for the lead in the features category with capabilities that included Avaya Extension-to-Cellular, a capability that maps an office extension to any cellular or home phone and provides a way to stay in touch with customers and colleagues when away from the office.  Miercom also cited Avaya's "impressive new conferencing package" called Meeting Exchange ™, a Web and audio conferencing application featuring SIP-based options.

In the security category, Avaya earned points for high levels of VoIP encryption on all Avaya-made phones and softphone applications, and for adding encryption of both authentication and user data to the latest release of Avaya Communication Manager IP telephony software.

In the performance category, Avaya was one of only two vendors to record a perfect call-completion rate under a load test of 25,000 calls per hour over a nine-hour window.  Miercom said the test not only puts a company's call control capabilities through its paces, but also "all other facets of the IP-telephony environment—including the VoIP-T1 gateways and the LAN/WAN infrastructure."