State of analog?

Hi folks. I've recently been put in charge of my company's radio system (Motorola LTR). We've got around 80 handsets, EX600-XLS and HT1250-LS (intrinsically safe handhelds are a requirement in our environment). At the turnover meeting, our equipment/service partner informed me that we really needed to be planning to switch to a digital system in the nearish future, and speculated that within a year or two our handsets would be discontinued and difficult to find parts for.



My company is being particularly tight with the budget at the moment. The analog system serves us just fine... we really wouldn't make use of many of the bells/whistles made possible by digital systems. I'm not really looking forward to trying to convince people around here that buying an entirely new fleet of handsets is a good idea.



Does anyone have any insight on this? Is the EX600-XLS likely to be phased out soon? When it is, will it likely be difficult to find a similarly-featured intrinsically safe analog handset to replace it with? I'm just trying to get a feel for the landscape, as I'll need to get the ball rolling for budgeting pretty well in advance if I do need to upgrade.



Thanks for any comments.