Contact Information:

Headquarters: One Brunswick Square, Atrium, Suite 100, Saint John, NB E2L 4V1

Telephone: 905-863-0000

Homepage: www.nortelnetworks.com

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Architectural Overview:

The core platform for the Business Communications Manager Version 2.5 looks very much like an ordinary PC chassis. It contains slots for various Trunk and Station line support and LAN connectivity. According to Nortel: The sum of all the devices you connect to a BCM shouldn't exceed the following recommended guidelines -- 96 "non" IP devices and 58 IP devices for a total of 154 devices or 80 "non" IP devices and 90 IP devices for a total of 170 devices. Multiple BCM boxes, of course, can be networked together -- as the accompanying 40-page CT Labs report attests.

On the phone side, you get many options -- including wireless IP phones from Symbol (cool), analog cordless sets from Nortel and a series of rather excellent software based call-control GUIs.

And although we didn't review it this time (we actually didn't run quality tests on the IP phones), Nortel also offers a product -- indeed, they recommend it for IP telephony applications -- that promotes QoS for VoIP telephones. It's called the Business Policy Switch 2000 (BPS 2000). The stackable BPS 2000 provides quality of service for up to 24 VoIP telephones and up to 8 BPS 2000 can be placed in a single stack.

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Ease of Installation:

With the considerable amount of equipment that Nortel brought to our lab, it CT Labs and the Nortel resellers a full hour just to set up the servers, associated networking components, and the various analog, cordless, wireless, and IP phones.

Since the software installation and initial configuration were already completed, they only had to add the required number of mailboxes in order to run their automated performance tests. Adding the mailboxes only took a couple of minutes, but they had to initialize each one as if they were the actual mailbox owner before they could be used. It took us about 1/2 hour to set up and initialize the 24 mailboxes that were needed for the tests.

The BCM system comes pre-installed with the latest major release of software. During the approximately 10-minute initial configuration of the system (done either via IP, or by serial connection), the BCM will check for newer updates and download them if required, which could take up to an additional 10 minutes to complete. The installation of each of the client applications takes no longer than 5 minutes, and only some of them require a reboot of the PC.

Overall, CT Labs found the BCM setup to be reasonably easy considering the richness of the system.

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Ongoing Maintenance:

The administrative GUI for the Nortel BCM system is the web-based Unified Manager. The Unified Manager has a main menu that presents seven different sections to the administrative user: Configuration; Wizards; Install Clients; CallPilot; Documentation; BRU (Backup and Restore Utility); and Maintenance.

See the full CT Labs report beginning on page 14 for details (including screenshots).

Overall, CT Labs found the Unified Manager web-based GUI to be easy to use. While each section has a different style of screen, they found each one to be well laid out and easy to navigate; they also thought that the access to a variety of wizards was a nice touch for the novice administrator; as well, the wizards make it easy to perform wholesale adds and changes that affect multiple users. The sheer variety of functions and resources accessible from this GUI makes for a very complete administrator tool.

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Overall System Performance:

See the full CT Labs report starting on page 26 for details of all the performance tests. Next time, we hope to do more quality testing on the VoIP functionality.

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Technical Support:

Nortel scored a perfect 10 here -- what else is there to say? It helped that they really took the testing seriously, sending highly qualified technicians to CT Labs in order to assist.

It should also be said that Nortel is stressing reseller knowledge, training and certification. Nortel supplies technical assistance to these resellers through the Nortel Customer Technical Assistance Service Program (CTASP) and through their development team.

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Product Documentation:

Overall, CT Labs found the Nortel BCM documentation to be thorough and clear in covering the different components of the system for the administrative and client users.

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Advanced Features:

As mentioned at the top, we haven't found a richer system in terms of functionality than the BCM -- and that includes platforms at all size ranges. Here's a quick list of features that caught our collective eyes:

Cool Call-Processing Features

• Automatic Set Relocation - Sets moved to a different location will retain DN and all custom programming.

• Dialing Filters - A maximum of 100 line, set, or line/set filters provide virtually unlimited flexibility in programming dialing restrictions and exceptions.

• Hospitality Feature set - Business Communications Manager includes an alarm feature, a room occupancy feature, and a room condition feature that are applicable to the hospitality industry:

• Hunt Groups - Hunt groups enable a group of sets to be called by a single directory number. Three hunting modes are available: broadcast, sequential and rotary.

• Language Choice - User can select an alternate language for their Business Series Terminals:. There are 11 different languages supported including English, French (Euro and Quebec) , Spanish (Euro and Latin), German, Italian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch.

• CLID recognition - Auto attendant can route calls based on up to 100 Calling Line Identification (CLID) numbers to either a specific CCR tree, extension, or mailbox. This routing can also be performed based on area code or prefix.

• Routing of calls to ACD Call Skillset - via Call Transfer, either blind or screened.

Contact Information:

Headquarters: One Brunswick Square, Atrium, Suite 100, Saint John, NB E2L 4V1

Telephone: 905-863-0000

Homepage: www.nortelnetworks.com

Back To The Top Of The Review

Architectural Overview:

The core platform for the Business Communications Manager Version 2.5 looks very much like an ordinary PC chassis. It contains slots for various Trunk and Station line support and LAN connectivity. According to Nortel: The sum of all the devices you connect to a BCM shouldn't exceed the following recommended guidelines -- 96 "non" IP devices and 58 IP devices for a total of 154 devices or 80 "non" IP devices and 90 IP devices for a total of 170 devices. Multiple BCM boxes, of course, can be networked together -- as the accompanying 40-page CT Labs report attests.

On the phone side, you get many options -- including wireless IP phones from Symbol (cool), analog cordless sets from Nortel and a series of rather excellent software based call-control GUIs.

And although we didn't review it this time (we actually didn't run quality tests on the IP phones), Nortel also offers a product -- indeed, they recommend it for IP telephony applications -- that promotes QoS for VoIP telephones. It's called the Business Policy Switch 2000 (BPS 2000). The stackable BPS 2000 provides quality of service for up to 24 VoIP telephones and up to 8 BPS 2000 can be placed in a single stack.

Back To The Top Of The Review

Ease of Installation:

With the considerable amount of equipment that Nortel brought to our lab, it CT Labs and the Nortel resellers a full hour just to set up the servers, associated networking components, and the various analog, cordless, wireless, and IP phones.

Since the software installation and initial configuration were already completed, they only had to add the required number of mailboxes in order to run their automated performance tests. Adding the mailboxes only took a couple of minutes, but they had to initialize each one as if they were the actual mailbox owner before they could be used. It took us about 1/2 hour to set up and initialize the 24 mailboxes that were needed for the tests.

The BCM system comes pre-installed with the latest major release of software. During the approximately 10-minute initial configuration of the system (done either via IP, or by serial connection), the BCM will check for newer updates and download them if required, which could take up to an additional 10 minutes to complete. The installation of each of the client applications takes no longer than 5 minutes, and only some of them require a reboot of the PC.

Overall, CT Labs found the BCM setup to be reasonably easy considering the richness of the system.

Back To The Top Of The Review

Ongoing Maintenance:

The administrative GUI for the Nortel BCM system is the web-based Unified Manager. The Unified Manager has a main menu that presents seven different sections to the administrative user: Configuration; Wizards; Install Clients; CallPilot; Documentation; BRU (Backup and Restore Utility); and Maintenance.

See the full CT Labs report beginning on page 14 for details (including screenshots).

Overall, CT Labs found the Unified Manager web-based GUI to be easy to use. While each section has a different style of screen, they found each one to be well laid out and easy to navigate; they also thought that the access to a variety of wizards was a nice touch for the novice administrator; as well, the wizards make it easy to perform wholesale adds and changes that affect multiple users. The sheer variety of functions and resources accessible from this GUI makes for a very complete administrator tool.

Back To The Top Of The Review

Overall System Performance:

See the full CT Labs report starting on page 26 for details of all the performance tests. Next time, we hope to do more quality testing on the VoIP functionality.

Back To The Top Of The Review

Technical Support:

Nortel scored a perfect 10 here -- what else is there to say? It helped that they really took the testing seriously, sending highly qualified technicians to CT Labs in order to assist.

It should also be said that Nortel is stressing reseller knowledge, training and certification. Nortel supplies technical assistance to these resellers through the Nortel Customer Technical Assistance Service Program (CTASP) and through their development team.

Back To The Top Of The Review

Product Documentation:

Overall, CT Labs found the Nortel BCM documentation to be thorough and clear in covering the different components of the system for the administrative and client users.

Back To The Top Of The Review

Advanced Features:

As mentioned at the top, we haven't found a richer system in terms of functionality than the BCM -- and that includes platforms at all size ranges. Here's a quick list of features that caught our collective eyes:

Cool Call-Processing Features

• Automatic Set Relocation - Sets moved to a different location will retain DN and all custom programming.

• Dialing Filters - A maximum of 100 line, set, or line/set filters provide virtually unlimited flexibility in programming dialing restrictions and exceptions.

• Hospitality Feature set - Business Communications Manager includes an alarm feature, a room occupancy feature, and a room condition feature that are applicable to the hospitality industry:

• Hunt Groups - Hunt groups enable a group of sets to be called by a single directory number. Three hunting modes are available: broadcast, sequential and rotary.

• Language Choice - User can select an alternate language for their Business Series Terminals:. There are 11 different languages supported including English, French (Euro and Quebec) , Spanish (Euro and Latin), German, Italian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch.

• CLID recognition - Auto attendant can route calls based on up to 100 Calling Line Identification (CLID) numbers to either a specific CCR tree, extension, or mailbox. This routing can also be performed based on area code or prefix.

• Routing of calls to ACD Call Skillset - via Call Transfer, either blind or screened.