| Agenda |  (100K) |
| User Group Notes | (65K) |
| User Group closed session | |
| Aastra 4 Months on | (407K) |
| Aastra Enterprise Roadmap | (340K) |
| Terminal Update | (422K) |
| Software Assurance | (92K) |
| DNA/CMG | (43K) |
| Solidus update | (5.6M) |
| MX-ONE on a blade server | (140K) |
Notes taken at the meeting provide more details on closed user session and are available to download.
Feedback has been sent out and results will be added within two weeks.
This meeting was the first formal 'Aastra day' and we had the CTO Hugh Scholeart presenting as well as other Aastra representatives. For this event the partners could sit back and relax and listen / participate together with end users.
Many saw this as a important first taste of the 'Aastra way', it was after all some 4 months on from the takeover of the old Ericsson
Aastra also recognized that the old way seemed to be rigid and decision driven, by central office not taking into account the customer situation. They stated that it was not Aastra's policy to force clients along an upgrade path. The first tangible sign of their increased flexibility is demonstrated in the decision taken to not phase out DNA in fact it will be developed forward and be offered along side CMG (all existing users who like DNA can breath a sigh of relief).
What does that mean to the end user?
Software Assurance was presented at the event by Aastra's central representative. This was an opportunity to openly discuss and challenge this offering in terms of its value and how it is delivered. The message from the audience was quite clear ... this needs significant rework. To be fair to the Aastra team locally they used the presentation to stimulate the debate and capture feedback in order to create pressure to look again at the offering to the market. That was, we think, successfully achieved. We are gathering up feedback formally to send to
Software Assurance reaches the end user through the service provider ultimately, the end user pays of course, the question is, what for?
Attendees were asked to provide their feedback to the software assurance offering as currently promoted.
Product highlights ... (see roadmap slides for more detail)
Miscellaneous
End user training is unaffected as it normally is delivered via the partners. Anyone with difficulties can contact the user group and we will assist.
For full details see notes.
Highlights were,
Licensing was behind most of the main issues raised. Whilst the end of life cancellation of DNA did help matters the issues surrounding the actual effective lifecycle of the active license was of continuing concern. Main culprit reported was Solidus where at least two clients having implemented Solidus 4.1 less than 12 months ago find that they cannot add licenses, why, because version 6 is now available. These two clients have no need to update for functionality they simply want to extend the number of active agent licenses.
The usage issue is about having a reasonable lifecycle from the installation of the license (not when it was ordered). This was raised with the vendor as their policies are at the root of this problem. Given that Aastra have indicated they are much more flexible it seems that there is some give available however you must ask for it. This might be good enough for the isolated case but an extended license policy needs to be implemented to give end users reasonable value from their investments.
Action - to request a formal position from Aastra to ensure users are fully informed and not forced into upgrade just to stand still.
Licensing is a remains a difficult subject with some clients opting to remain on pre-BC10 to avoid it. Licensing seen by some as being inflexible and slow, but this was responded to by the vendor indicating they are always improving the licence issue process and service partners should be able to respond very quickly to a clients needs.
There was a concern raised over the link between the licence and the hardware it was installed on. Aastra clarified that there is a link but that is a process controlled by the service partner. It should not prevent the re-installation of existing licenses onto a new hardware platform in the case of a server failure.
Two incidents of the 4423 terminals failing were reported, this was not a general pattern and the service partners and vendors have not seen any unusual failure rates since their earlier well documented problems with a production batch back in 2006/07.
Isolated incidents of OAS requiring restarting on Solidus but no obvious reason (could be own client network) noted for further monitoring.
Aastra were asked about the availability of key hardware resources i.e. PSU's and REU's on old hardware builds for those clients retaining their old system infrastructure as part of a upgrade solution. Aastra indicated they had a swap repair service facility for a number of older boards.
Action - to request this service is made more visible to end customers via their service partners. We would advise end users to ensure their service partners have in place adequate capability to maintain all installed hardware types.
A request to provide feature capabilities on IP devices both H323 and SIP (including trunks) was also made to Aastra. Aastra admitted that to release IP feature sets that had significantly less functionality than the DTS ranges was somewhat difficult to understand. This would be addressed over time.