The curious thing is that the unofficial 2010 drop date is coming from Avaya insiders.
It has been reported that Avaya's ultimate goal is to stop manufacturing hardware and become a software provider. A company would purchase a router and phones, and Avaya would ship a disk with software to program various features.
I admit that I am an end user and not a CPE vendor so what I know is based on information Avaya Business Partners share on this and other tech help sites.
Avaya has had to release patches to correct glitches in the R7 and that is probably a first for the company (at least with their traditional telephone systems). I don't know if any other release in the Partner ACS or Merlin Legend/Magix families needed to be patched multiple times to resolve issues.
The R7 may very well be the final release of the Partner family and the Partner has held up well over the years. But to have it go out limping, as opposed to with a bang like the Merlin Magix, is sad.
