250 End of Life

[bvtech]

I just heard that the MiVoice 250 is being designated for End of Life in January of 2022.  Has anyone else heard this?  That's unfortunate.  Of the 8 phone systems I have been certified on, the 250 is probably my favorite.  I love how easy it is to program.  I will miss it very much.

[zstray]

I'm a 20 year computer tech and new to phone systems like these. Will this affect functionality of say the 5000 CP system?  I know you said the 250 but I do use MiVoice Office 250 System Administration software for programming.

[webman]

The 250 and 5000 are the same thing.  It was renamed to the 250 a few years ago.

[buckets]

the notice is out there. Search for mitel 250 end of life. It was released by a mitel partner. There was actually a post here earlier with copies but it was removed. My guess as to why the post was removed is the doc's were for internal Mitel and partner use only.

ooops, it still here at: http://mitelforums.com/forum/index.php?topic=13731.0

[JeffonJohnsIsland]

It's hard to understand why Mitel has EOL the 250. 


I think this post should be a sticky!

[acejavelin]

It's hard to understand why Mitel has EOL the 250. 


I think this post should be a sticky!

I think it's because the hardware is so archaic, and they would have to basically re-engineer the platform... This is the same reason we have to have an external server to use the 6900 series phones were the 3300 can handle it all natively.

I guess I thought it would be sunsetted a few years ago, kind of surprised it lasted this long, but I would actually prefer it of they refreshed it and got some decent digital and IP phones that don't need a separate server.

[JeffonJohnsIsland]

Ace, thanks for the info on the hardware.  I guess I should have seen it was archaic, due to the server for 6900.

Anyone have a guess on whether Mitel will allow the licenses and such will be moved to a new platform, hosted or Mitel Business (3300?)  Is Mitel Business going to be EOLed or will it continue on?

Soon after the 250 was installed, I wished the company had chosen the 3300 and wondered why they hadn't. 

Sigh.  As Eeyore said, oh bother!

[acejavelin]

The 250, which is really the Intertel 5000, is a fantastic platform and one of my favorite to work on since well before Mitel bought them... I would really prefer using and working on the 250 platform over the 3300 any day, it is much more flexible and feature reach. The 3300/MiVB is based on the old SX2000 system, and largely is the same as it was in the early 90's, just with shiny new sets. I have installed hundreds of both systems, and the SX200 and SX2000, and the 250 is still my favorite from both a user perspective and a technician's perspective.

As far as the licensing, when things like this happen Mitel usually has migration deals to move from one platform to another, talk to your vendor about it. I don't think one has been announced yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a migration bundle deal to move to the MiVB or even the Shortel platform (whatever they call it now) in the near future.

[JeffonJohnsIsland]

Ace,

The only issue which lead me to wish company had chosen the 3300, was redundancy and licenses "stuck" to a node. I may not know enough about the 3300 to fully understand if it would provide redundancy in this company.  Company built a new plant and office, and many people have moved to the new office.  New plant/office has it's own node, so fire and police can at least get to the correct building.  We have over 15 D licenses currently unused at the plant/office people moved from and have been buying licenses for the new plant/office.  It seems petty to me that licenses are assigned to a node and not one big pool.

I am glad to hear that Mitel has implemented migration deals in the past.  I hope Mitel allows a migration policy that doesn't penalize existing customers with software assurance. 

Perhaps I won't have to deal with Mitel MiVoice system migration, since I retire in three years.  I don't have a clue what path the company will take,given the MiVoice Office EOL.  In the next couple of months I will be migrating two Partner ACS systems (one with five extensions and one with twelve) to Mitel MiVoice...talk about archaic! We have another branch which is a retail type of operation, and they have fifteen extensions.   

Thanks,

Jeff

In 2012 the company retired a Nortel Vantage when they built the plant/office people are moving from now...that wasn't archaic, it was an antique!

[acejavelin]

Licensing on the 3300 works a bit different... You can setup an Enterprise Network using Enterprise Elements (a more expensive base license) with a DLM (Designated License Manager, another license), and "share" licenses... Basically meaning you assign them to the devices primary node, and then you can have a Primary and Secondary host for each device. If connection to node A is lost, the phone automatically homes to node B, and when the connection is restored the phones home back to node A. It is resiliency, NOT redundancy, but works well...

The phones are resilient, but not redundant. It does take a fair amount of back end work with trunking and other stuff to make it work, but it works well when implemented correctly. The cost for a resilient 3300 setup is significantly more than a MiVO 250... Let's say your MiVO 250 setup was $50k with MiVO Application Suite for 2 nodes for 100 users (just simple numbers to make it easy, not real)... I could really get into it with VMware/Vmotion and servers that are not co-located and other stuff, but it's not relevant, the reality is going to cost 20% to 100% more than a MiVO 250 setup depending on the setup and level of resiliency you want, and because you are shifting from a hybrid Key/PBX to a true PBX your feature sets change and some things become more difficult to do on a MiVB.

I have implemented these system in a scale of anywhere from 20 devices at a single golf course, to companies spanning the globe with offices and PBXs networked in dozens of cities and doing resiliency for other sites across the globe for not just phones but MiCollab and trunking services being resilient as well. The biggest thing I see with resiliency is it is poorly implemented... Yeah, if the phone go down in Minneapolis they will rehome to Los Angelos, but what about those trunk calls coming in a PRI? What about the voicemail/AA now that those 200 phones are failed over? What about the bandwidth considerations of a 200 phone call center now make and receiving calls from a site on the other side of the country with 8 SIP trunks and 50 users? The answer is it can all be done if it's setup properly, but it costs money and most of that investment is unused 99% of the time... Anyway, you see where this going.

Sorry... started rambling again...

[DND ON]

Ace, I have to agree. We’re halfway through a multi-year, multi-million dollar transition from 250 to 3300 for all of our offices. To say that I hate the 3300 would be a gross understatement.

Features that are native and seamless on the 250 require convoluted work-arounds or simply aren’t available on the 3300. But it is what it is, and I’ll just slug it out until retirement.

[acejavelin]

Agreed... I have 15 or so years to retirement... But I saw the death of premise based systems coming a while back and started moving into our hosted platform side of the business a few years ago and am now a network engineer, dabbling in helping with the few Mitel systems we have left. At one time in this company they had a pretty fair number of Mitel premise based system, but today I would say less than 25, with most of those moving to our hosted platform. Our ratio of installing hosted handsets to premise-based is probably around 100:1 now days.

[Dogbreath]

Shame.  I was late to the MiVO 250 party, having been mostly MiVB, and I can concur with the comments of others that MiVO 250 is light years ahead of MiVB for usability [by admins, rather than end-users].
Linux on ARM is just about the most mainstream platform imaginable so keeping it up to date really wouldn't be difficult, but given that Mitel now have so many different telephony platforms that they had to re-use the 5000 name, you can understand why they need to start EOLing some of them.

[Tech Electronics]

I have been working on this platform for 20+ years now and I know it can do more than what Mitel has limited it to.

It is a shame as others have stated, but after Mitel bought out Inter-Tel they told us that they had a 10-year roadmap to get rid of it then.

Fortunately it has lasted longer than the original estimate, but the time has come for them to put it aside instead of making it better.

They already got the customer base and the coding they wanted from it as well as the Inter-Tel 7000 removed from the shelves before it hurt their business more than it already had.

Personally I think they should move to the Shore-Tel product line and improve it more and get rid of the other product lines they have; even the 3300.

[BlackSunshine]

 Wry disappointing to us. We seen this coming last Feb 2020 in Dallas at the Mitel meeting.  They never mentioned the Mitel 250 one time.  I agree Mitel has too many product lines. Get rid of the Aastra based stuff. I wish they would put the voice processor of the Mitel 250 into the Mitel 3300 embedded. I’ve worked on the Shoretel and the 3300 but I still prefer the 3300 because it has gone completely to sip …YET