jinx
There can be a multitude of circumstances that arise for you and your customers.
There is no "One Answer" to the many possibilities.
Being in business is what has taught you how to respond correctly to each varied situation and how to make the best of it.
Remember, Avaya is first and foremost a marketing company. With their name being their number 1 product. What makes sense to you, me, our customers and a lot of other technical people just doesn't always fit into another company's marketing plan.
When they were phasing out Merlin and bringing in Spirit the two systems were completely incompatible. All you could re-use was the wiring.
Then the Spirit is replaced by the Partner series and again they are completely incompatible.
So now the IP Office Partner replaces the ACS Partner and you get to re-use your phones. Ok maybe not all of them but at least some of them. This looks like an improvement to me.
"I still think it is a shame to castrate the IP Office down to a Partner version and so far I have avoided it and installed the IPO as an IPO."
I hear this quite often and it has a certain degree of merit. Customers with say 10 phones or less don't want a complicated PBX with Park and Pickup buttons instead of CO Line appearances. That's too complicated and it does not work like our "Old System". So there really is a market for simple, easy to operate Key Systems with high level features. People here in the US have had multi line telephones since the late 1940's. They are trained and conditioned to respond to lights and a Hold button.
"They do not want, or need many of the things that the IP office has, but they do want to use the telephone sets they have in place...Many were purchased just 2 or 3 years ago."
That is just my point here. There are at least two Versions of the IP Office. The Partner Version (aka IP Quick Mode) and its big brother PBX Version. The IPO Partner is very similar to the ACS and does give you some extra features that you don't have to use if you don't want to. Plus you can re-use some of your 18d's.
I would encourage anyone that has been selling, installing or servicing the ACS to get on board with IPO Partner. Because when your "old time" customer has a complete system failure and you are on the phone looking for a 5 year old used processor module, there is a good chance that someone else will be in there with IPO Partner. If you don't think this happens then you have not been in business for any length of time. (Look out for the IT Man, he is your new competition with an "in" to your common customer)
Why don't you be the person with a newer better replacement system? If you don't know the product then how can you sell, install, program or service it?
Its not that hard to learn. Many techs think it is really complicated because it says "IP" in the name.
The really funny thing is that the IP Office system isn't even IP. It would be more accurate to call it "Its almost an IP Office". OK the IPO Partner has 3 free SIP Trunk Channel and Mobile Twinning licenses so it may qualify based on that but it doesn't have any IP Phone ability. The IPO PBX is 0% IP out of the box and isn't much more then a 1990's digital KSU.
So try it, you'll like it.......
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