I want to preface this by point out that I work on the Support/Managed Services, NOT Sales, side of the house. Hope you'll endulge me while I ramble a bit. :-)
Kleo certainly make some valid points. IP phone sales don't mean much per se. And business should choose the solution that provides the best return, regardless of vendor. And clearly, Avaya's mobile apps fit your business well.
In the call center, there are other vendors that provide some additional phone features that Cisco doesn't yet do. Warning lights that alert you to queue times and depth would be a one example.
That said, phone features aren't the only reasons businesses consider Cisco. Remember, we geeks seldom write the checks. ;-)
ICM could be used to centralize Control, Scripting, and Reporting in your diverse call-center environment. That allows management a better look at call-center performance, better control of staffing, minimizes center managers' reporting games, etc., regardless of whether the PBX is a Nortel, Avaya, or Cisco. And when you add IP to the mix, then you can cut brick and mortar costs as well.
This is probably the single biggest reason Cisco/Geotel has done so well in the Call-center space. There's not too many multi-national companies that are not, or will not be leveraging ICM/IPCC for better visibility and cost control.
One thing, though, it's a mistake to dismiss XML/VXML. Let me give a few simple examples. If your business requires new phone display features, like queue depth alerting, you can build it on a web page and roll it out across an enterprise. You don't need to go buy a new phone for every agent. Or, say you want to implement a scalable self service IVR with ASR and TTS capabilities. With CVP, leveraging VXML technology, you can leverage you existing web infrastructure and XML expertise for content and development. I've seen .NET programmers churn out IVR flows like there's no tomorrow! You can provide them with geographic redundancy and often leverage existing data routers for voice gateways/VXML gateways.
The company I work for used to be TDM-centric, specializing in Nortel, Avaya, Aspect, and others. And we still support them since many customers are reluctant to fork-lift. But we've found there's a real story in IP centric environments, especially greenfield deployments. Selling Cisco IPCC/ICM/CVP, we've taken on and beaten Nortel and Avaya in call center, IVR, Self-service, etc, in some of the worlds most successful companies. And it's _purely_ because of business reasons.
Ironically, most of the pushback from a potential client, comes not from the business side, but from IT. More often than not, they like what they're used to working with.
