Any updates for the U.S.?

Jan 1, 2011

As Porky Pig would say "Ththththat's All Folks!"
Mitel will no longer manufacture "NEW" parts for the Axxess which has reached version 11 with no future releases expected. All remaining new stock will be depleated and replacement stock of parts shall be done with refurbished or "C" stock.
If you have an Axxess, do not bail out yet. You may contact your dealer and replace it with a Mitel 5000 system and keep your existing phones. 512 and ATM sized system however will have more to deal with. You would need to network the 5000 to another 5000 to achive the same size. This does work fine. I have installed a few in the Fort Myers area with great results!

Back when they doubled the price of most central components I think they made it clear that they didn't want to support Axxess accounts any longer. Of course that was completely contrary to their original statements that supporting the Axxess was going to be a priority.

The 5000 with now defunct digital keysets is not the greatest solution in my opinion for various reasons. Most people that have an Axxess would be better off with a forklift upgrade to a different manufacturer. Again, opinion only. Some of us are not hot on rewarding a manufacturer that has been less then supportive with new equipment sales.

We will always miss Inter-Tel. We installed the very first Hitec 824. They were way overpriced back in 1999-2000, but they had networking/IP phones in a small configuration that no one else could beat so we sold lots and lots of systems. When the CPC came out, the licensing got way out of hand and nearly unmanageable from a service standpoint. There are many, better choices out there these days.

Inter-Tel was a great company to do business with.
To bad there gone.

I cut my teeth on the Axxess, sad to see it gone. There are still a lot of them out there though.

Maybe if Inter-Tel developed the 5000 instead of the CPC then they would have bought Mitel.

What do you mean?

In my opionion the CPC was developed to shut down the secondary market and lock-in end users to the dealers. If Inter-Tel would have spent resources developing the 5000 instead of the CPC they would have been in a much stonger position then they were in mid 2007. The 5000 was introduced in 2005 and it was very limited. It took years to get the 5000 up to speed. They were very late to the market. Looking back at our economic boom this product would have been successful as the Axxess was in its day.

They were always pricey but they could do a lot, The Hitec, the Spooks and the rest of the three pair, data noise generators were ahead of their time. Even the 20 year old AXXESS ver3.1 could store CID in voicemail something 5 year old half million dollar AVAYA will not do.
They didn't shut anything down except themselves

I miss Inter-tel badly. I started working with their stuff circa Axxess 4.0; great product. I actually really like the 5000 and if any of you every got to see the 7000, it was pretty slick. Inter-Tel was great company with great dealer support, then the Mitel thing happened. My current employer tried to sail through the buyout but dealer support was so bad they kicked them to the curb. This dealer was a top 5 for almost 10 years with Inter-Tel. Now I have to work with NEC systems. Luckily I am more into network engineering now. If I had to install NEC systems everyday I would kill myself. You are right, Inter-tel had cool features and their applications were far superior to anything out there in the space they competed in. They had VoIP way before anyone else and were talking about SIP 10 years ago. There are things that Axxess 7.0 did in terms of VoIP/NAT that some systems cannot do today.

Amen!

Well put Chris. The frustration level is rising on a daily basis.

I started with the GMX and GLS systems. They were very good systems. We still maintain a few.
Miss Inter-tel.

Dittos CC! We had a dealer meeting about a year ago and question about a Mitel response to Shoretel came up. The Mitel guy says (I quote) "We don't compete with Shoretel. We are in a different market space." Incredible. At least it explains alot, I didn't have the heart to set him straight.

Yeah the old Inter-Tel was great but their gone now and things change. I used to walk around here grumbling about the Mitel buyout but they are actively pushing the 5000 and with the new 5000 HX its a very attractive system and we have been selling quite a few of them. I'm not sure what the comment about it having outdated phones was all about? I'm not sure why that Mitel guy said they don't compete with Shoretel??? We just had a dealer rep fly in to give a demo and one of the competitors was Shoretel and we did smoke them
The 5000 is a great product in my opinion and the networking is second to none. Were going to ride this one out!

The Mitel 5000 HX is a great product. Adding the PRI license, IP enbabler, 4 c.o., 4 s/l, 6 voip networking, UCX, DEE while eliminating the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th DEI license is a huge competitive advantage. Kind of sad to see the 8000 series go. The 8528/68s are ok but nothing special- no full duplex...plain stupid.

Yeah half duplex is a big fail. I was a big fan of 8560 keysets.