sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Nortel Telephones & Systems end of nortel equipment...

The Nortel partner that we order all of our equipment thru informed our office today that the Norstar CICS and MICS will be discontinued as of October of this year and that support will end in 2013. Anyone else hearing similar?

That is correct. Oct 4,2010 to be precise.

I started with ATT...which became Lucent..which bacame Avaya. The really started out making a good product and running a solid company. I have watched them decline steadily over that last few years... now they a dumping Nortel so they can try to get a larger corner on the market. The issue that is going to make Nortel a harder sell on the used market than Avaya was are the key codes. Once we can't get them, the equipment starts to become a lot more obsolete.

One would hope they would think they'd maintain the key code web operation for the Norstar beyond 2013 and just end tech support. The key code web portal will still be running for BCM and is a licence to print money for Avaya. They would be silly to shut that down the Norstar portion.

Making customers buy new phone systems because you can't buy a licence for a voice mail box is stupid, it opens the door to competitors.

Were there not people who broke the license coding and sold Call Pilots?

I would guess that those people would be back and probably legally as if Avaya would not sell licenses, you could say that you still have a right to obtain a license.

I don't doubt a company as big as Avaya would see the situation they would put themselves in if they refused to sell licenses for equipment that was built into the system.

There are so many people out there who know Nortel so well that they would set up tech support when Avaya shuts down tech support.

Seems pretty silly to do that, you get more customers with honey than you do with vinegar.

Probably including those who were laid off from Nortel who did just that when they worked for Nortel. Makes sense to me.

Justin

Would it be stupid for Avaya to disconinue selling key codes? Yes & No.

While what's been said is all true, keep in mind that most likely Avaya will want to get THEIR brand out there as much as possible, as soon as possible.

In the short term that makes sense. However, changing out a phone system that works perfectly fine and just needs a simple upgrade by adding a key code just doesn't make sense and may very well backfire with the clients going elsewhere as stated by Marv.

Combine that possibility with the fact the many end users HATE changes of any kind so when they have to consider different methods of dealing with calls they will balk at the idea of changing, and simply live with what they have & know. End result = no sale.

Agree with Dave, end users reallllllly hate changes; try changing their 5 lines appearance on a 7208 for a trunk group and call park buttons...

Everything can be blamed on changing to Call Park, from a customer's point of view.

Nobody touched on why they choose to discontinue this product line, earlier than originally planned. Because they sold there estimated product stock too fast.