End of Sale for licensing for BCM400/200 2

[dibthree]

I am just curious what all those BCM 400 users are going to do between now and March 2012 (9 months)?

Is there a mad rush to upgrade to the BCM450 so you can get a few more years out of the system? Or are you moving on to something else?

I upgraded our systems a couple weeks ago to R6.

Having a system we could not buy licensing for was not really an option for us. The upgrade bought us some time to plan out how we are going to move on from the BCM.

 

[QueBall780]

For now, I bought a refurbished BCM400 which came with more licenses than we need. Going to set it up to be available as a cold spare. Already have a spare BCM50 ready to go for branch offices. Our existing box has a bit of headroom on licensing, not anticipating a need to add any more. They say that any lingering keycodes can still be activated after that date and krs will remain active for existing licenses but I would expect the supply of unused keycodes to dry up quickly for popular upgrades like voicemail on secondary markets. Likely solution for many people would be to find a cheap refurbished base unit with the keycodes they need and just restore their data, move the modules over and limp along like that. There seems to be plenty of BCM400 units out there with healthy sized licenses to be had. May even be cheaper to buy a refurb than the actual license you want if you are needing a good sized license bump with the advantage of all the spare parts you end up with.

We stopped paying all maintenance agreements and are banking that budget for a future upgrade. Likely going to completely exit the proprietary rat race and go with something fully based on open standards. (asterisk or similar)

 

[dibthree]

We tried the Asterisk thing. After six months we yanked it ad had to admit what a big mistake we had made. In hind site we should have yanked it after the first week. But jobs were on the line.

The list of problems with Asterisk were endless for us. Telephony was figured out a long time ago. It shouldn't be that hard.

The idea of a "free" phone system is what got us. I now realize there is no such thing. You pay for it somewhere. Some of our team paid for it with their jobs.

It may be right for some environments where the phones just aren't that important. But in our case the phones must be working all the time.

A typical day with Asterisk - "Schedule a reboot of the Asterisk server and see if that resolves it."

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

I second the Asterisk comments.

At home, in my lab, I have a BCM50 6.0 running SIP trunks.

I also have 2 Nortel 11xx sets running directly on SIP from my SIP trunking provider via username and password....I do think the 11xx phones operate a little more functional in the SIP environments with better CLID functions and ring tones.

THEN, in regards to the post above, I have a Cisco 7970 and Avaya 9630 running directly on an Asterisk style 3CX platform on my desktop computer. I have to reset the system at least twice a month, but I would assume in a larger office these problems get larger with more telephones.

 

[curlycord]

Asterisk is an open source software and is meant to be modified.

Free Asterisk is bare bones, you need to pay for a system that has Asterisk on it and not just run off a free system.

Programmers take the bare bones and make it in to something great.

We have our systems built in a special box for data racks or wall mounts as well the Asterisk modified and features added by the programmers/modifiers.

We rarely have any issues.
Note that you also need the right hardware and not the cheap stuff.

As for phones we always sell the Polycom phones with the box.




=----(((((((((()----=
curlycord

http://www.curlycord.com

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

Curly,

Have you tried the 11xx series phones one Asterisk? What do you think?

 

[hawks]

We have a few 400's working perfectly out in the field and the users are happy. so we’ll just purchase some codes we think we'll need and stock them because you can still activate them later for the system we want to add personnel to. If something breaks and we need to upgrade then we will. The way I see it there is no need to panic unless you have to.

 

[snd1234]

This is why I went ahead and bought my 400 to 450 migration kit now. I have been watching the Froogle listings for the two skus (RAID and non-RAID). A couple months ago there were about 14 non-RAID and 5 RAID. Now there is 1 RAID listing and 12 non-RAID and I'm not totally confidence they all have actual stock

I did't want to miss the boat and either have no outlet to buy the SKU or find it way marked up vs what it is currently going for ($2200 - $3000.)

 

[oldestgeek]

We're replacing most with IP Offices. Most of the sets will migrate which cuts the cost greatly.

 

[dibthree]

We have begun deploying IPO on new installs.

 

[ECartman]

We too have moved into IPOffice. Nice product and very flexible. We are moving into Cisco now too.

However, I really think Avaya should have made a little more of an effort with investment protection for BCM customers.

For example:
We have a customer with 120 digital extensions. To migrate them to IPO it is nearly $20,000 list price on hardware. I really think Avaya should have engineered an IPO card that would allow customers to keep their BCM expansion units and to re-use their MBMs. Sureley it wouldn't have been that difficult. In this case, we can put in a brand new Cisco IPT for not too much more.

Also, I think they should offer a free transfer of licences. If a customer has purchased 100 IP client licences for BCM, when moving to IPO they should not have to purchase another 100 licences. This is just milking the customer, in my view.

And for anyone who is interested, I just found out recently Asterisk has unistim drivers

 

[curlycord]

Have you tried the 11xx series phones one Asterisk? What do you think?"

No sorry.

=----(((((((((()----=
curlycord

http://www.curlycord.com

 

[ECartman]

Haven't tried them myself. It's on the to do list. But that's a long list

 

[oldestgeek]

ECartmen, I agree on the licenses. I was in an IPO class and when I mentioned a license transfer from BCM to IPO the Avaya instructor basically laughed in my face. It's no wonder they're losing market share. Dropping the BCM portfolio just gave Cisco a huge opening into former Nortel customers. Luckily for me my company is a vendor for both.

 

[ECartman]

We have Cisco, on our heels at the moment trying to get us to partner with them. Strongly considering it to be honest. I am heading to our local Cisco office for product demo over the next few weeks.

Do you do much on the Cisco voice side ? What's your feelings on it ?

 

[allworxguy]

I suggest everyone take a good look at Allworx for new deployments.

Marv

http://www.telemarv.ca

 

[dibthree]

We did a few allworx for some of our small locations. We only installed the basic call server, never any of the advanced applications.

I am by no means an expert on Allworx but it seems to be a a good system for a small business. One of the best Norstar techs I have ever met sings their praises.

We ended up moving away from Allworx because we liked the handsets better on other systems.

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

Allworx is a great functioning system, but in my opinion, the handsets could use some design work....the ringtones are just God awful....a long low pitched warbling tone....that doesn't even come close to a Nortel ring tone....also we've had problems with the phones actual printing on the keypads rubbing off with constant use. The only time this happened with a Nortel set, was when you'd clean a refurbed set with a cheap secondard market keypad. But again, the Allworx system is failsafe and works well, my dentist swears by it.

 

[DemurePandora05]

Heres a tough one:

We have over aprox 80 BCM's (3.6, 3.7, 4.0 and 450's)using H323 trunking to a CS1k NRS and using Call Pilot on the CS1K as our centralized voice mail.
If we upgrade all BCM's to current 6.0 and go SIP does anyone know if the IP Office will communicate with SIP to the existing BCM's?
We have a huge investment in Nortel phones so a rip and replace may be a costly option.

I call it "Where do we go from here"??

Cant believe they are forcing customers to do this with the possibility of losing business....

Any ideas or options would be a great help

 

[dibthree]

yes. You can network a IPO to your R6 BCM via SIP.