Anyone remember their first experience with 2000 IPS or IPX?

[solidpro]

Back in the mid 2000s NEC were randomly starting to push their larger systems in the UK, which had traditionally been only able to sell the small kit (via a weird in-bred subset of NEC, who were scared of anything that didn't just have 8 extensions on a box on a wall). I was thrown in at the deep end after a 2 week course on the IPS, doing everything from MOC and, over the course of a few years learning all the little sneaky things you could do with firmware, scripts, tweaks etc. It was really scary from the start as the MOC command line was really unforgiving, but it did teach me something (not quite sure what) about persistence and becoming a master of a little green CLI.

I had to adapt to also installing and managing a 2400 IPX with CCIS, ISDN, TDM and IP, etc and eventually sold my own SV8500/SV9500 sites and travelled around the world making them work (particularly with Zeacom and IP-DECT products).

I have to say I enjoyed it but it never felt like an inclusive atmosphere with NEC or their dealers. People were shady, sneaky... it always felt like you went to NEC with a proposition and they responded in a combative way 'why should we let you buy this?' - I hated that. All I wanted to do was sell something that I knew it was capable of and everyone make money.

I've only got one SV9500 left to manage now, but as I've been conditioned over 20 years to be self sufficient, their exit from Europe isn't quite the bombshell it could have been. Whats your experiences with selling or maintaining their bigger systems?

 

[belevedere]

Many years age I worked for NEC America. ALL of the systems beginning with the 1A2 Patrician. I later worked for an NEC distributor where I became a 2000 master tech.

 

[CoralTech]

When NEC bought Nitsuko and removed all the people that made Aspire/UX/SV what it was. Nitsuko had WAY better web programmers and second to none tech support at no cost. For YEARS the UX was a far better product than the SV line and in some ways the terminals were WAY better on the layout.

 

[simonellen2000]

Almost identical route for me but on the 2000 series and now the SV9300. Have to say, I quite like the SV9300 and the migration from 2000 to 9300 was pretty smooth. The scripting is great and once you navigate through the Jinglish, its ok. But yeah, could definitely be much more user friendly. But hardware wise, the NECs are so solid and forgiving. I never had a card or system fail on me even when bought 2nd hand back in the day.

 

[DoubleDriveLine]

I started with a communication company in 2000. Perilously I had been a Lawn and Garden Mechanic for over 10 years. In the first 3 months of working for the company I got certified in the Infoset 408, Electra Elite 48/192 and the 2000 IPS. The first 2000 I installed was a big system in Pica Ohio. Those were fun days. Lots happening all the time.

 

[solidpro]

One of the best things was the satisfaction of solving a problem that was either buried so deep in manuals that it was almost hiroglytics and you eventually working out how to get something working, then optimise it. The flip side of this is that there was stuff you were expected to install and there was no way you could know how to get it done or get it done practically fast. We used to manipulate the half-finished or half-good windows software tools to mix up reading out data, running it back in as scripts or importing/exporting to CSV, but I am not a cliquey guy at all and (I guess this is the same in a lot of spaces) I found it very 'mate of a mate' stuff sometimes where you had to know someone who got shown 'how to do it' by some American or Japanese guy and then you got hold of a 'working' script and worked back from there. I remember our first remote site solution where you had the CP-31 Processor which would piggy back it's data and operations from the main CP-24 CPU at the HQ and the setup was all properly documented EXCEPT you had to use really specific LENs (ports) for setting up all the channels and stuff and if you didn't know which ones to use, it just wouldn't work. One day a guy gave one of my collegues a scripts and with the manuals we were able to figure it out and it was a real HIGH FIVE situation - but for days we just couldn't get it working without that insider knowledge.

In the UK, the NEC was rock solid but outside of hotels not many features were useful so it was almost always combined with a Zeacom server which really added some decent Windows apps, call centre, operator console, 3rd party CTI etc which our customers LOVED. I was quite an expert in that for a few years and was making inroads with ZCC in the UK when they sold it all off to Enghouse who just wanted the base.