Flogging a Dead Horse
Posted by Campbell Williams | 18 Feb 2011
Category: Unified Communications
I had an interesting day yesterday at an Avaya SME product update session. I won't bore anybody with the minutiae of IP Office release 6.1 and 7.0 but there was a bit of news that got my moral compass twirling.
Avaya reckons that, of the SME base they inherited from Nortel, there are approximately 36,000 Norstars out there and roughly the same amount of BCMs. The Norstar was manufacturer-discontinued some time ago and the BCM end-of-sale has also been announced (it's later on this year). To all intents and purposes, one product is dead and the other one has only a few months to live.
The morally-dubious news is that Avaya is still shipping circa 100 BCMs per month. This proves what we've known for some time: that ex-Nortel channels are flogging a dead horse and continue to give erroneous advice to their customers. We know from speaking to legacy Nortel users that their incumbent supplier has told them that these products have life and that any investment in a BCM (or CS1000, for that matter) is a safe bet. It's simply not true and it's morally reprehensible.
Every week, 100 businesses are making a mistake that will cost them. I don't want to name any names, but the Avaya guys have told us who they believe to be the leading culprit. I'll give you a clue - it kinda rhymes with "Skittish Benidorm" - but they're not the only ones.
Why would anybody do this? Because they want to milk the cash cow (forgive the mixed animal metaphors) as in many cases they've no Avaya skills themselves. So they're stitching up their clients who will need to spend 50% of the money they've just spent on a BCM in replacing it with an IP Office sometime soon. Very soon if they want to take advantage of any new technologies or applications!
Here are the real facts. As a product, BCM is dying. As a call control platform, it's dead. No meaningful R&D has taken place on it for months (why would it?). All the focus at Avaya Labs is on migrating those users onto IP Office or Aura.
Here's the proof: BCM IP phones are already supported on the current 6.1 release of IP Office. Release 7.0 will see support for legacy digital (e.g. Norstar) phones. Avaya has also developed software called Data Migration Manager that's designed to move "Nortel" programming (e.g. extensions, voicemail, dial plans, ring groups, etc) onto the IP Office platform. Why do this if BCM is a live product? That sound you hear is the death rattle of the BCM.
The good news (though not if you're one of the 5,000+ businesses who have been duped (there's no other way to put it) since the product roadmap was announced 13 months ago) is that between 40% and 55% of your Norstar/BCM investments - e.g. digital/IP sets - can be protected when you move to IP Office.
If you're considering buying a BCM, please speak to somebody that will tell you the truth about the product roadmap (and don't buy it!). If you've already got a Norstar or BCM, please do likewise. Be careful whom you trust. It may be a dead horse but that doesn't mean some cowboy won't try to ride it.
