David RichardsCost-effective to as low as three users, Nortel’s new BCM 50 has a starting price of around US$1200 for the base unit. But fully loaded with everything enabled, the price could go as high as US$15,000, explained Mick Regan, Chief Convergence Architect of Nortel Asia Pacific.
Regan told SmartOffice Reseller that Nortel, through distribution partner Anixter, sees a huge opportunity here for cabling companies, which will be required to pass Nortel’s own business profiling requirements and two-day training and certification. However, Regan says the BCM 50’s Web-based management interface is very easy to learn and resellers with some experience in networking and applications will find installation and maintenance easy.
The device offers backward-compatibility with existing digital telephone handsets, seamless migration to IP telephony, voicemail and unified messaging, and anytime/anywhere access using SIP-enabled software and hardware. It is suitable for companies with as few as three employees, or as many as 40, says Regan.
The device is already attracting a great deal of interest. The Metropolitan Ambulance Service, a Commander Australia customer, is one of several organisations already evaluating the product. Commander has recently been elevated to Gold partner status with Nortel. Though already a big player in the SME phone systems market, Commander has its sights set on bigger fish and the company’s new status enables it to offer Nortel’s high end solutions. The Nortel/Commander partnership actually dates back more than ten years and even includes some re-badging of Nortel gear (the Commander NT systems are manufactured by Nortel).
The Gold nPower agreement paves the way for Commander to provide a variety of Nortel solutions to enterprises, including Nortel Contact Centre solutions, the Communication Server portfolio, and other next generation applications such as Nortel’s Multimedia Communication Server (MCS). MCS is an application delivery solution that seamlessly integrates voice, data, and video services.
The appointment is a boon for Nortel. Commander has a huge workforce of something like 300 mobile service technicians and nearly 200 staff in customer support call centres. Though the company started out as a phone systems provider for small business, over the years since it parted ways with Telstra, a variety of acquisitions and organic growth has positioned it as a complete communications solution spanning voice, data, Internet, mobile and network products and services. All in all positioning it well to take on big client’s with big demands.
Image: Nortel’s BCM 50 VoIP solution.