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About BCMguy.comHello, my name is Marty Beutler. Thank you for visiting my website. I hope that you will find some useful information here. If you are an end-user, or an occasional installer of Nortel’s Norstar or Business Communications Manager, you almost certainly will benefit from something here. About the Site's FeaturesStay in tune with new site features and recent changes on the What's New page. Make your way to the Contact Us page if you need help with an existing Norstar or BCM, would like a quote on a new system, or to contact me for any other reason. Check the Nortel Info page for loads of Norstar and BCM documents on Nortel's site. Trying to find this stuff among all the other info on their website can be tough. The Products page offers recommended third party products, that are known to work with the Norstar and BCM. Visit the Feature Codes page when you can't recall the code for a particular feature, and there is no manual close at hand. Is your BCM software up to date? Our Bulletins page lists patches and updates as they are released. About the Site's CreatorMy career in communications began in 1983. Two weeks after graduating from high school I took a job with the largest interconnect company in Omaha, Nebraska. That first year, about half of the small systems that I work on were still 1A2 electro-mechanical key systems. There were a few electronic key systems available. They were pretty light on features at first, but they began to evolve very quickly. Nortel's (Northern Telecom back then) key system at the time was the Vantage 12. In 1984 Nortel introduced the Norstar, their first digital key system. My company was selling a lot of Northern SL-1 equipment, but didn’t take on the Norstar product line until 1986. I had installed several of them prior to that, as a sub-contractor. Then, when the company made an official commitment to Norstar, I became the lead engineer on the product. The Norstar made its way through several releases of software and a few hardware changes, becoming more feature rich with each revision. As time went by, an interest in server based systems began to grow in the telecommunications industry. Nortel entered this new market with the Enterprise Edge. In version 1.0 of Enterprise Edge, the advantages were not great enough to justify the costs in most cases. And, there was still considerable apprehension among would be buyers of server-based systems. Version 2.0 introduced IP trunking, and a name change, while version 2.5 included support for IP telephone sets. The Enterprise Edge had become the Business Communications Manager (BCM). The systems started moving, and true convergence was on the horizon. With an obvious trend toward IP networking developing, I expanded my studies to include Cisco certifications. My main duties for a couple of years were those of a network design engineer. And, I earned certifications on the converged voice and data products from Nortel, Cisco, and Avaya. I have worked with the other manufacturer’s products. And, I remain absolutely convinced that Nortel offers the very best solution for the Small to Medium Business (SMB) Market. The BCM and Norstar are extremely robust products. And, they continue to get better and better with every new release. Norstar 7.0 and BCM 3.7 are due to be released in the next month or so (March-April 2005). And, the brand new BCM 50 will be available in late May. Although the feature sets keep expanding, Nortel’s evergreen philosophy continues to provide investment protection. Other manufacturers offer disposable systems (at the same price point, or even more) that are planned to be obsolete within just a couple of years. My 22 years in this business has provided me with experience on a wide range of communication systems (Nortel, Avaya, Cisco, Toshiba, Iwatsu, NEC, ITT, and TIE). These days, I am focused on Nortel alone. If you have a Nortel BCM or Norstar, I am here for YOU! Marty's Industry Certifications
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