Is Mitel planning to phase out Embedded VM? 1

[Cabarrus]

Our phone rep said Mitel is planning to phase out Embedded VM and push people to the NuPoint platform, which im assuming will continue to be a seperate server / licenses etc..

Has anyone heard this? We are looking at migrating users off our NuPoint since its an old server and move people onto the embedded voicemail on our 3300's.

thanks

 

[kwbMitel]

The plan as I have heard it is that he Nupoint will be the embedded platform. Not on a separate server. This "Plan" has been ongoing for quite a while and everytime they add functionality to the Nupoint App to stay competitive, they have to push the roll-out. I'm not holding my breath for EMEM going anywhere anytime soon.

*******************************************************
Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[IrwinMFletcher]

It's probably safe to say that EMEM isn't going away, it's too good at what it does. However I wouldn't expect much innovation on it in the future.

I also doubt that Nupoint would ever truly be embedded, think about it, it's a monster application that runs on it's own server and people think/expect that it can run on a PowerPC chip?

Cabarrus, Why would you not just buy a new server? What's the reasoning for moving or wanting to move to EMEM?

 

[MitelMate]

I was told by a Mitel CSM that they are looking to make the embedded vmail more like the nupoint app. I don't think they're thinking of abandoning the embedded solution.

 

[Cabarrus]

We are running an older IBM 206 (?) box with NuPoint 9 ( I assume this was purchased 4-5 years ago ) It appears the box cannot support NuPoint 12, so we would be looking at a new NuPoint server, software costs etc..

When our company invested in Mitel years ago, there was some negotiation that also gave us Embedded voicemail licenses, so we have enough licenses for NuPoint and embedded to cover our agency. We even have advanced vm license enabled on the embedded.

The feature set of the embedded seems to cover all of our business needs and we have had some annoying issues with the NuPoint.

With that being said, instead of spending money upgrading the NuPoint, we feel its basically free to move people to the embedded.

We also plan to buy some new 3300's to replace our older units.

It just threw a major curve ball at us when our rep mentioned Mitel was moving away from embedded.. It would be silly for us to migrate to embedded then a year or two later migrade to NuPoint again..

Any additional feedback is much appreciated.

thanks

 

[IrwinMFletcher]

Ah, that makes more sense, I was wondering what the cost trade-off would be between a new server and mailbox licenses on the 3300. If you already have the licenses then it makes it more of an option.

One thing to note is capacity. NuPoint has a far greater capacity than EMEM, so you'll have to look at the number of users and ports etc to find out if EMEM can handle the workload. Also, you mention that you'll have a few 3300's, so keep in mind that EMEM is embedded so it only applies to the phones on that particular 3300 (there is such a thing as Networked Voicemail where you can share mailboxes across 3300's, but that's a separate license option I believe, and you have to have unique mailboxes across your system, a bit more planning).

I think you'll need to look at the layout of your business and see if the EMEM model fits. If you think though that changing to EMEM will reduce your pain then it may not be the right choice. Not that there is anything wrong with EMEM, it's just that you will be trading the issues you had with NuPoint for complaints from the users like "We used to just have to do this before.", because you'll have already upset them by telling them that they'll have to start all over again (lose all messages, record new greeting, etc).

 

[kwbMitel]

To echo IrwinFletcher's comments, any issues you currently have with the Nupoint are unlikely to be solved by EMEM. The sole exception being Server Issues vs App Issues. The Nupoint Application is far more flexible and feature rich than the EMEM. You might be giving up things that you take for granted on the Nupoint.

One point Irwin makes that is not really an issue is the distributed voicemail. The EMEM can still run as a centralized VM in a multi-controller environment in much the same way your Nupoint does today. It max'es out at 700 mailboxes however.

*******************************************************
Occam's Razor - All things being equal, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[IrwinMFletcher]

kwbMitel, agreed. What I was hinting at was the capacity, if you max out the capacity on one controller, then it becomes a problem. The 700 mailbox value also only applies to the MXe, if they are CX boxes, it is a lot less since it only has 4 or 16 ports versus 30, I'm not sure what the official number is.

 

[TheMitelGuy]

The road map still shows EMEM being replaced with NuPoint. NuPoint could actually operate on the MXe or CX/i platforms, there is actually enough horse power there and hard drive space. It would be limited to 30 ports, however it remains on the product road map. There is a number of things that NuPoint has to have done (also on the road map) that need to be completed first. To be honest, I can't give exact dates, but look to the end of this year for huge advancements on the 3300 ICP, including vmWARE (ops, did I say that?).

 

[IrwinMFletcher]

Given the current system requirements for NuPoint and the available resources on a MXe\CX, even at a reduced port capacity, plus the complexity of porting it to VxWorks, I'd be hard pressed to be made believe it would be in the time scale that would affect Cabarrus's decision.

There would be gains should they consolidate on one voicemail system, but the price to do that may still be too high. Until then, it's most likely best to stick to the type of system that you know. Since you already have the licenses however, there's nothing stopping you from putting a group of users on a trial using EMEM.

 

[MitelInMyBlood]

Lest we forget last year's announcement that Mitel & Sun were getting together to port the MXe Server to a Sun platform in the not too distant future. Looking at the way our 1600+ users use voice mail, I have complete confidence that 99.9% of what they use voice mail for today could be accomplished w/Advanced EMEM and any that couldn't, could very easily be provided by the smallest, least costly iteration of NuPoint available.

If a software-throttled flavor of NuPoint were to become available as an embedded option w/multi-branch menu trees and conditional transfer (time of day/day of week) mailboxes supported, then yee-haw!

There are factions within my organization with Microsoft blood in their veins who were chomping at the bit to squander untold bagfuls of money on Client Access Licenses to do VM and UC with Exchange Server and OCS, plus of course add the requisite team of at least 4 MS-Certified support personnel to hold its hand. Far worse than any threat we ever faced from Cisco, these idiots are serious. The only thing holding them at-bay right now is the economy.

 

[slapin]

We selected de-centralized voicemail model with EMEM on each site. This application does pretty much everything people expect from the phone system. 99.9% of users just listen messages and nothing more. 0.1% forward stuff to email...

 

[IrwinMFletcher]

The problem however isn't that EMEM isn't good enough in terms of features (sure it could do some more fancy stuff but for the majority of the users, you're right, it's plenty). The problem is it's scaling, it can only handle 30 ports.

Btw, MXe Server on Sun is available I believe.

 

[Mitelmatt]

yep mxe server on sun is available,

Even better, get the Mitel communications suite on a sun server and you can have call control and nupoint on same server... today!