Microsoft has announced the end of support for Windows 7 and as such will no longer provide security updates either rendering any machine running Windows 7 increasingly insecure.
This will obviously affect your production PC’s but consider the effect on the maintainability of your phone system and other equipment that require a specific administration application. Sometimes these administration applications depend on other technologies such as Java so updates to Java for security or other reasons may render the application inoperable.
Using the Nortel/Avaya Business Communications manager as an example, older versions require Microsoft Internet Explorer and a very old version of Java. Later versions have their own administration application called Element Manager. This also depends on Java and will not run past a certain version that is old.
Element Manager will not run on Windows 10 at all – the PC it is on has to be Windows 7 or older and Java cannot be updated past a certain version. We run the required software in virtual machine on our laptops. For those of you who like to make your own programming changes, how will you implement Element Manager after the change to Windows 10?
This s one of the reasons why the BCM range is now getting beyond maintainability. The other is replacement parts – specifically hard drives. SATA hard drives that work with the controller in the BCM50 and BCM 450 are only available refurbished. Even harder to find are the IDE hard drives used by the older BCM200 and BCM400. A few of the older SSD’s worked but when they were updated they were rendered incompatible so it was back to spinning hard drives again. These hard drives need to be imaged in the correct format to be usable and certain images for older versions are just not available – nor are the licenses to upgrade them.
Coupled with the lack of spare parts, none of the applications in the BCM’s such as voicemail to email will work now as their client software is no longer compatible with Microsoft Office or Java.
The best solution here is to upgrade to an Avaya IP Office 500v2 because you can run all your existing phones resulting in a significant cost saving over complete replacement. The digital phones are most compatible and they are the most common.
There are a lot of changes in the telecommunications world at the moment; NBN, ISDN shutdown, equipment obsolescence caused by external factors, etc. Contact us help you navigate through the minefield for a successful outcome that should result in lower ongoing costs.
