It was in 2009 that Avaya acquired Nortel.  When Nortel went bankrupt, it left customers stranded and scared.  It has become increasingly difficult to find replacement parts and trained technicians for the Nortel Norstar phone system as many of the technicians are retired and parts are no longer being manufactured.  Recently, Avaya announced their bankruptcy and now thousands more are affected by their poor management strategy and investment in research and development to stay competitive.

Concerned about the future of your phone system vendor?

Here’s the reality: Your old Norstar Meridian phone system is hanging on by a thread and could fail at the most inconvenient time.  In the event of one power failure, all of your extension and call routing programming could be lost. Also, the Nortel systems rely heavily on hardware like cards and modules.  If the card that connects to your telephone lines dies, there are no inbound or outbound calls.  This results in customers who hear ringing but never get answered.  Unfortunately, there is no way to predict when these electronic components with finite lifespans fail.

With the shaky future looming over some phone system manufacturers, now is the perfect time to begin considering other options.

Your phone system is the gateway between your company and customers, and the potential for having a communications system with no future support is not an option. Now is the best time to consider Digium’s award-winning VoIP phone system, Switchvox.

Digium’s Switchvox is an award-winning VoIP phone system solution that has been built on top of Asterisk, the world’s most popular open source communications platform. Open source means that its shielded from the poor management strategies of a publicly traded company. Switchvox delivers enterprise-level Unified Communications (UC) tools, mobility applications, and robust calling features at a fraction of the cost of proprietary VoIP systems because of its stability using that open source foundation then building a supported software and hardware solution from a privately held company of 1,000 employees in Huntsville, Alabama.

And unlike other UC solutions on the market today, there are no costly add-ons with Switchvox. All features are included for one low price, making your transition to a reliable, future-proof phone system as easy as possible.

Need more proof Switchvox is the best solution for your business? Our system continues to win industry awards for its innovative approach to improving business communications. Industry analysts recognized Switchvox as the best value in UC for SMBs, and it has received the Unified Communications Excellence Award, the INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award, the TMC Innovation Award, and many other prestigious acclamations.

The reason Toshiba closed its Telecom division was likely the pressure from new technology and providers. Businesses can now choose from IP based premise systems or cloud based systems. They can both offer all the standard telephone features as well as advanced capabilities like unified communications – bringing text, chat, video, conferencing together.

A vendor that can offer both premise and cloud based systems will offer unbiased advice. A vendor that can offer solutions from more than one manufacturer is equally going to offer you more choice, walk you down the decision path to determine how best to meet your business needs.

Want to know more? Contact us today and one of our experts will help you get started with the research — before it’s a major outage and you’re caught unprepared.