There's Life after Your Nortel PBX - Lots of Life
If you’re currently using a Nortel PBX, this article is for you. All good things must come to an end, and sadly, that came for Nortel some time ago. Whether you’re ready to move on now or just starting to think about it, that time come for you, probably sooner than later.
The good news is that you’re coming from terra firma, as Nortel had long been the gold standard in business telephony. Even though the company, as you remember it is no more, their phone systems are still in widespread use. Before things imploded around 2009, they were one of the most blue chip names in technology. Nortel was on par with Cisco and Avaya, and back then,Microsoft was a software company, Google was in the online search business, and Apple was a computer company.
What happened?
A lot has changed, and Nortel isn’t the only giant to disappear in the wake of unprecedented disruption, brought on mainly by the Internet.
Nortel made a solid transition from PBX to IP PBX – as did all the other telephony vendors, but that was really just the first step for the transformation needed to keep up with the times.
As you may know, Nortel was divvied up and sold off in pieces by line of business. The carrier business went to Genband, wireless went to Ericsson, metro Ethernet went to Ciena, and enterprise telephony went to their natural rival, Avaya. These various paths are worth noting, since the PBX may not be the only vestige of Nortel being used in your business.
Coming back to the PBX, however, it’s likely that you’re being supported directly by Avaya or one of their channel partners. This actually creates another layer of potential concern given Avaya’s financial health. In some regards, they are following in Nortel’s footsteps and there is widespread concern about their long term viability.
That aside, your concern is the phone system and what’s best for your business. As Nortel’s telephony portfolio became integrated into Avaya’s product line, the Nortel brand has largely passed on, and Avaya will only continue supporting these systems for so long.
Whatever the state of your Nortel phone system, its days are numbered, unless you’re prepared to keep things going patchwork-style by scavenging the aftermarket for parts.
Where to go from here?
You can only keep that going for so long, and no matter how attached you are to Nortel, rest assured there are plenty of worthy successors – and probably for a lot less money. Before even considering that, you should know that your Nortel phone system will likely be easy to dispose of. There will always be some players in the channel ecosystem who want these for parts, while others will have buyers for retrofitted Nortel systems.
More importantly, the telephony space has evolved since Nortel went down in 2009, and if you think nothing better has come along it’s time to rethink things. In terms of hardware, that may well be true, but today, telephony is predominantly software, and is increasingly becoming cloud-based. This means that the value of business telephony is no longer built around the phone system.
Had Nortel survived, they would have gone down this path as well. Some of their competitors moved more quickly, and are still in the game. Just the same, this technology changes constantly, meaning that new vendors have emerged to fill Nortel’s shoes that could not have done so if telephony was still hardware-based.
In short, there’s more than one way to do enterprise-grade telephony, and today’s options are less costly than a Nortel system, as well as being comparable in quality. As such, even if you still feel your Nortel is the best phone system ever, there are definitely choices available today whereby you’d be giving up little if anything.
Those choices need to be explored, so if you’re ready to start considering life after Nortel, stay with me as this series continues in my next article.
About the Author
Jon Arnold is Principal of J Arnold & Associates, an independent telecom analyst and strategy consultancy based in Toronto, Ontario. The consultancy’s primary focus is providing thought leadership and go-to-market counsel regarding IP communications and disruptive technologies. You can follow Jon's everyday insights on his influential Analyst 2.0 blog and on Twitter.(share more at voip.com.vn)
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