Telephone Maintenance Termination and Migration Guide

If you are considering either terminating your Mitel Telephony Maintenance Contract with your current supplier or simply migrating your contract to 4Sight Communications there are a few things that you need to consider enabling that process to happen smoothly.

• The first item is that you check your annual support contract termination date.
• The second and probably the most important item is to check your “Termination Notice Period” this will detailed in your support contract T’s and C’s or your current supplier can advise. Notice periods are typically 30, 45, 60 or 90 days and this means you will need to give notice in writing 30, 45, 60 or 90 days before the end date of the contract.
• Make sure that the contract you hold is the current and latest version as often contracts are updated or resigned for various reasons.
• Check that you and your incumbent supplier have a signed copy of the current contract.
• Check Software Assurance Contracts.

Software Assurance and Re-Occurring Software Support Charges

Most IP Telephony Platforms will be built on a “license” based model, this means that most systems will now attract some kind of re-occurring manufacturer support costs. Mitel use the Software Assurance and PrairieFyre support model and other manufacturers use similar models with different terminology. The fact is that these charges will be in place for all solutions.

Software Assurance contracts are normally renewed on an annual basis but often can be signed for multiple year terms as this often attracts a discounted fee.

As part of contract termination your current supplier needs to advise what term of software assurance is in place, termination dates, and costs and if in fact it has been renewed by them in accordance with the contract.

A common myth is that if you have signed a Software Assurance contract with your current supplier it actual ties you to them, this is not the case. All software assurance models and contracts are taken directly with the system manufacturer through your current supplier, this means that you own that contract directly and can migrate that contract to 4Sight very easily.

To migrate a Software Assurance or PrarieFyre Contract to 4Sight you will simply need to send an e-mail or preferably a company headed letter to your current supplier stating that you wish to migrate the contract away from them. Your current supplier is then bound by their Partner Agreement to inform the manufacturer of this notice. Another option is to send the same letter to 4Sight stating to the manufacturer that you wish to migrate the contract to 4Sight Communications and we will take care of that process in its entirety.

Common Pitfalls

The reason for this advisory document is to help you avoid the pitfalls that often play a part in migrating support contracts. The most common pitfall is not giving the correct notice to your current supplier, in most cases suppliers will not send the support contract renewal invoice until you are past your notice period date, so you will not be alerted to the fact you have moved into a 12 month renewal phase until it’s too late. This normally means that you will be bound to pay a further 12 months costs whether you want to or not.
We advise that if you are considering moving your support contract for whatever reason that you give notice immediately so that is on record, this gives you the flexibility to migrate at any point in the future.