callpilot upgrade from mm 1

[doseme]

I work in the automotive industry and maintain an opt11c. We currently use hardly any features of the meridian mail (it's just an overpriced answering machine) and we are now faced with upgrading to call pilot. I'm of the opinion that we should wait until 2007 when it is no longer supported to upgrade. Does anyone have any advice, possible motive to upgrade or not to upgrade before 2007?

 

[acewarlock]

Why are you upgrading now??? is there something you need???

 

[doseme]

meridian mail will be discontinued in 2006 and no longer supported in 2007. I'm just wondering if there may be a valid reason to upgrade other than the discontinuation. the 20 grand is a large expense and i'm not sure if I should plan for the expense this year or next. I'm fine with what I have, but the question in my mind is- will the company suffer from not making the move to call pilot. I'm just looking for someone's opinion who can say call pilot sucks or it's the greatest thing since ice.
Thank you

 

[acewarlock]

Are you using a Nortel Vendor or a 3rd party vendor? 3rd party vendor's will be able to provide service to you.

 

[mluckie1]

The only thing is if you are going to upgrade to Callpilot I would call your Vendor today and place the order. The promotion that Nortel currently offers will end on Monday for most vendors. At that point the cost will almost triple for Callpilot. There are some nice features that CP offers, Desktop messaging being one of them. CP does not offer forms or support PMS, but you really don't use those features. The other thing is Nortel is taking back all of the MM hardware when you upgrade so some of the parts may be difficult to find in the future. As far as CP being better or worse than MM I think they both have good points. CP now supports more then 1 MWI DN, like release 13 of MM. The menus are a little easier to build and you don't have to jump back and forth between menu service, thru dial, and TOD, but recording the prompts takes a few times to get used to. The mailboxes are built and some maint can be done thru a GUI interface that you can put on your LAN so if you can get into the network, or any PC on the network, you launch IE then you can build and maintain Mailboxes, this was done via the modem with MM and the A/B switch. You can also RAS into the server and launch IE to make any changes. The best part is the desktop messaging and this is something that MM doesn't offer.