Keeping your CS1000 and Upgrading? Survey says..... 1

[GordonKapesMZ4]

So is there anyone here that plans on keeping your CS1000 indefinitely? I'd be curious to hear from you and why you are keeping it? Do you bleed Nortel blue? Does anyone here appreciate the way the Nortel phones function, and consider the features, ring tones, button labeling are far superior to Cisco, Shoretel, etc?

"Keep the Peace, Use RLS"

http://www.joetheucxguy.com

 

[Trason806]

We plan on keeping our CS1000 and adding Avaya Session Manager for all off site future needs (VoIP). The main reason is reliability. Followed by cost. We are a hospital. I do like the way the phones work compared to some of the newer IP only guys. Things like line appearances for secretaries. I cant say how durable other phones are but the 2616 in particular can take a beating. We are just starting to put out 3904's. I was pretty skeptical of the large screens, time will tell.

 

[TAnselm]

There are a few other reason for maintaining TDM phones. One being that modems if needed do not work so well under IP. Add to that (especially in a hospital), Redundancy. Right now if the network goes down, you have phones. If the phone system goes down you have network. If you switch out to Cisco phones and your network goes down, you have NOTHING!

Knowledge: Your number one stupidity condom...

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

Thanks for the interesting feedback!

"Keep the Peace, Use RLS"

http://www.joetheucxguy.com

 

[KCFLHRC]

I'm not an end user, but a tech for a large Telco. I have seen customers go both ways. Some are loyal no matter how bad Avaya has screwed them over. Mostly because of the large investment they have in that product. Others are done with Avaya, cant say that I blame them. I realize there are alternatives to keeping the Nortel, E-MetroTel for one, but not a direction my company will go I'm sure. We will keep maintaining Nortel until Avaya says no more. Then we will go to the Red side completely along with Shoretel and our hosted platform. With that being said, I have worked on Nortel PBX's for 23 years, over the past 5 years I have seen this product take a drastic down turn in reliability and manufacture support. So if my company said tomorrow we are no longer supporting the Nortel product line, I wouldn't blame them. I have had support tickets open with Avaya for months before a resolution was found. Countless hours of overtime spent on issues they couldn't fix. It's not up to me what we sell or don't sell, but after the last 5 years I wouldn't miss the Nortel product. Never thought I would say that because I have always thought this was the best product on the market, but lately, I think there are better alternatives. VOIP is here to stay, that's a fact. There are measures you can take to make it redundant just like you can with a TDM switch. So from a tech prospective, there ya go.

 

[steph02]

Appreciate the feedback.

Reliability, redundancy, functionality, support... all key ingredients that can make a good product even better. Something Nortel did well. Thanks.

 

[KCFLHRC]

Yep, Nortel did it right for many, many years. It was a fine product, if not the best on the market. Since their bankruptcy and Avaya buying them it has been a down hill spiral. It's obvious Avaya bought them for the customer base, they never planned on keeping that product line in the market place. If you cant beat the competition then buy them is the motto I believe. Sad to see it go, but change is inevitable.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

I've had many years with Nortel and like KCFLHRC, I have gained much knowledge with the product. It was good for it's time and for some customers it still is. Yes, since Avaya came on the scene and ruined the Nortel name with it's poor support and delivering shoddy products to it's customers and delaying the launch of 7.6 for such a long time that many customers had enough of it and went away from CS1K.

BCM was a good product. It had it's quirks, but did a good job for the smaller market. I knew things were bad when we started getting many bad CPPM cards from release 6.0 onwards.

I still enjoy playing with the good old SSC card. Considering the amount of time that they have been around, they are still a good and solid CPU card. I guess it's because they used a kind of SSD technology, hence no moving parts!.

Even on the Norstar forum, you see recent comments on how good the system was and we are going back to a time when computers were seen to be a toy for "important" people!.

I could go on and on, but it's time for a cuppa!.



All the best

Firebird Scrambler
Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer in the UK

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbromley

If it's working, then leave it alone!.

 

[KCFLHRC]

My brothers company is looking for a new phone system with voice mail. Met with them last night. Guess what I'm putting in? Yep, a brand new MICS 0x32 with Call Pilot and T7316E phones. They can still be bought new on the internet. The IP Office is cheaper but I'm going to install the bullet proof MICS for them. I feel comfortable with that product and know it will work for many years to come.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

My point exactly!. Good old Norstar. No moving parts!.

All the best

Firebird Scrambler
Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer in the UK

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbromley

If it's working, then leave it alone!.

 

[Trason806]

At our hospital we have over 1500 analog lines. Many are patient phones. But the shear number of fax lines is staggering. Hundreds of them. Most of the pure IP systems are very limited on the analog side. (at least the ones i have looked into)

 

[KCFLHRC]

The hospitals with all the analog's are the one's I'm seeing keeping the Nortel. Some are going Cisco for admin and keeping Nortel for the analog room phones and putting PRI's between the two systems. I have not seen a good analog solution for a VOIP system.

 

[chinloong]

I'm a Nortel / Avaya costumer, perosnaly I'm responsibel of all telecomunication question corporate wide. I was it the lucky situation that i was able to have a direct contract with Nortel on a global level. Avaya took over this contract. Right now i have a global AOS contract with Avaya running. Installed base is 1 CSk in each region (AM, EMEA and APAC)including up to 20 SIPMGC connecting back to the core systems in each of the regions. As a top layer we use the AURA platform for the whole routing etc.

Currently we are on 7.5 and planning the move to 7.65.
Unfortunately I have to aggree with KCFLHRC and his point he made regarding manufacturing support and reliability. The main reason why we move down this road with Avaya is protect the large investment we did over the years.
On the other hand we currently work on developing a roadmap for our global voice systems. Basicly there are two options we will work on.
How can we migrat from blue to red and what is the cost behind
What would be an alternative system and what is the cost behind

 

[nessman]

We're a long time Nortel shop, and with the Avaya takeover, have had some decent success with selling the IP Office product which has so far proven to be reliable. We've also jumped back into the Cisco market as well - along with a successful Microsoft Lync practice.

We all know sooner or later the Nortel Meridian 1, Norstar, BCM and CS1000 platforms will disappear - but we have a strong customer base on these platforms and a healthy parts supply in our warehouse.

Problem with the Norstars is they were engineered so well that they are just too reliable, but no one wants to part ways with them and upgrade to something new and shiny. I can't blame them. We've tried throwing other products aimed at the SMB sector to these customers and they won't let go of their Norstar systems.

I'm surprised at the number of BCM 200/400 systems we still have out there approaching the 10 year mark. So long as the hard drives and power supplies don't crap out - it's done well for a Windows NT based system.

Cisco is a nice product, and it will certainly supplant the lost Nortel business as time goes by - but it has it's issues to, especially when it comes to analog fax/data endpoints, LAN/WAN issues, etc. If a customer's IT department and network is not ready for it - they will feel the pain for a long time... and bill by the hour vendors such as myself will reap the benefits.

It does bug me to see customers jump quickly on the latest and greatest product because they dismiss their Nortel platform as "old technology". But I have 20 year old PBX's (especially the 61c/81c stuff) that run for years at 100% uptime so long as house/backup power to the systems is reliable... and a good number of customers with critical needs are reluctant to part ways with them so long as parts and knowledgeable techs are still around to keep them up and running.

As others have said - in recent years, the CS1000's, as nice as they are - just aren't as reliable as the Meridian product. Patching / updating software on co-res Linux based systems takes hours... meaning long downtime for customers. I mean really?

And don't get me started with the buggy phone system software Nortel has put out - but those are more for the customer's, not techs (Telephony Manager - just awful).

For me, I'm in a Nortel to Cisco transition period. This change is inevitable as there's no future in 20 year old technology. There's some job security by obscurity as the older Nortel trained guys retire and I pick up their workload... but that's just a short-term strategy until our Cisco customer base outnumbers the Nortel base.

 

[jason1969lee]

Having experienced the CS1K from 5.5 upto 7.0 I will say the support from Nortel and finally Avaya has not been the best. We bought into the Nortel name in a big way - CS1K and CC6 - over 1000 positioned in a big bang. Most of our problems stemmed from the CC6 element but the CS1K had it quirks. Upgrading from 5.5 took numerous site visits and aborted attempts due to insufficient install information.

We got there in the end and yes it is a great system and causes very minimal fuss but the support from Avaya and the responses relating to CC6 stopped the upgrade beyond Release 7. Investment is going elsewhere and unfortunately I will not longer get to work on the CS1000

It looks like I will just have to keep following the Nortel forum for memories

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

Yeah, but you could always move over to the UCx from E-MetroTel!

"Keep the Peace, Use RLS"

http://www.joetheucxguy.com

 

[GordonKapesMZ4]

You get to keep all of your phones and hardware.

"Keep the Peace, Use RLS"

http://www.joetheucxguy.com

 

[mjwald]

We were throwing around the idea of just expanding the IP side of our CS1K, but that is not going to happen
We are looking to forklift the whole thing + 6 option 11's + 25 Toshiba switches + 1 Definity, for Shoretel or Cisco. What one is still up in the air.

I do however find myself bench marking systems to our Nortel. Best switch I ever worked on. Sad to see it go.

 

[avick01]

i understand a lot of hospitals use their pbx for other functionality besides voice and voice mail. I'm curious if someone can elaborate on other services, such as oxygen sensors (if applicable) are managed through the pbx.

 

[belevedere]

With so many systems at so many locations, you might look into a hosted solution, or a Cisco competitor like the NEC UC3. It is 1/3 the price and standard SIP. Save even more money using Polycom phones.