Nortel and Microsoft

[GMgerry]

Last week Mircosoft stated that Nortel will be the "Phone side of thier Unified Communications package. How do you think this will effect the PBX market for Nortel?

 

[johnpoole]

it will increase there share of the market, maybe my stock will get back to the pre90 levels.. (wishfull thinking).. it should add a lot to the sip side of the table, i don't see gates doing any magic on the tdm side

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[jadexing]

We are verrrry excited, and plan on using the Microsoft tie in-s to exchange and to the Office Communicator Server and using Microsoft for voicemail (means we dump Call Pilot). I am hoping that Nortel will use the badly needed marketing engine that Micosoft can provide.

Cheers-
jadexing

 

[johnpoole]

i haven't seen moicrosoft's voice mail offering, but we have a major investment in 64 channels of cp.. i don't have a problem with it, 2000 users, 40 apps.. plus ivr, 3 years one glitch that came up on a reboot... i would still not try to keep one of mr gates boxes up for years at a time.. a hospital moves at a slow pace with state of the art... we are using ciaco voip and are going to rls 5+ late winter plus adding itg trunks to the 81

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[jgunkel]

The sad thing is that CallPilot _is_ one of mr. Gates' boxes.

Now if only MS would start sending their stuff out in a hardened configuration by default, things could be better.

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

I never realized Call Pilot was a Microsoft product, thats a new one on me!!!

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[jgunkel]

John,

Try to hook up a keyboard, mouse and monitor to the box (or card) and press AltCtrlDel to get a Windows login prompt. Behind the scenes, CP is just another app running on windows.

Mind you, it _is_ a fairly well behaved app.

Cheers!
John

 

[MagnaRGP]

So the OS is MS.

Notice how stable it is when it stays out of the regular purview of normal IT types?

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

Well, some call pilots might run on a Microsoft box, but Call Pilot isn't a microsoft product as far I know. I deal with the Call Pilots with norstars, never seen anything microsoft there, I deal with them on BCM's, thats running on a windows box but pretty stable(and again like Magna states, we stay away from the microsoft side), and of course the larger systems CP runs on a Windows server but like Magna stated, it's stable as well as long as you stay our of the microsoft side.

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[jgunkel]

Tell me about it.

Shortly after I inherited this PBX, I had to get our vendor to come out and un-stuff our Contact Centre box because our windows admin (used loosely) decided it would be a good idea to install WSUS and patch it right up to date.

Since then, I have our CLAN off on it's own firewalled network segment.

By the way, I didn't mean to imply that CP belongs to MS, just that alot of these announcements are moot, simply because Nortel's application servers are already bound to the windows platform. Weather or not they should be, is another topic altogether.

Looking at the past misadventures Nortel and Microsoft have been on though, I don't expect this to benefit Nortel quite as much as is implied in the announcement.

John

 

[geirendre]

And what about those who will be resposible for integrating
these to technologies together?
Most of the PBX-techies knows their PBX well,
and maby a little about MS-servers and applications,
while the Server guys knows Windows well,
and nada about telephony.

The LCS is (to say the least) a complex system involving
a lot of units and services. Alot to go wrong...
And all that just to get a "MSN-on-steroids" running.

The good old days of running a stand-alone PBX-system
are truly comming to an end.

 

[jadexing]

We have 4 different CP boxes sitting on an 81C blade. They are mostly stable, but will lock up from time to time and you can know that they are failing because you won't be able to access the admin web page first, then about 15 minutes later, voicemail won't pickup. "Normal IT" types? What does that mean? It Pukes whether or not my vendor works on it, an no one can tell me why.

It's a Nortel Application that runs on Windows; doesn't TM run on Windows 2k...

But, microsoft is going to release their own voicemail (I know, so much for aliances). So my company could debate on whether or not we really want to buy the MS one, because that means we have to buy a lot more storage, and we do already have that with the CP. Yes- they are stable for the most part, but what I like about the proposed MS solution is that everything will be streamlined and converged more. Outlook will have a directly tied-in UM and voice rather than having it as a plug in. I will also have some great training and learning collateral because it's through MS. I will have more options for support and help that seem to be lacking with Nortel Products.