Nortel

Nortel UC For Sale

Unified communications is still a young, emerging industry. In its short lifespan the number of players has quickly grown. One of the biggest companies in unified communications has been Nortel. The Canadian network hardware giant had a solid relationship with Microsoft and visions of grandeur of taking on Avaya and Cisco.

After filing for bankruptcy protection though, Nortel is apparently taking a look in the mirror and trying to return to a simpler time with a more aggressive focus on their core business- networking. So, they sold their wireless communications infrastructure business to Nokia-Siemens. Now they are apparently considering selling off their unified communications division with Avaya and Siemens-Enterasys being suggested as the leading contenders.

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A Recipe for Success

Remember when Cisco was a network hardware company? Cisco and networking were virtually synonymous and you knew who to call if you needed a router or a switch. Once upon a time, Avaya was a provider of enterprise communications equipment. If you needed phones or maybe an IP PBX, you could call Avaya. In days gone by Microsoft focused on server and desktop operating systems and developing software applications to help businesses be more productive. Ah, the good ole days.

To be fair, each of those companies still does what it used to. But, now the waters are muddy as they all try to be all things to all customers. As Joe Schurman, CEO of Evangelyze Communications and author of Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications, points out in his musings from Voicecon 2009, nobody was content with their piece of the pie and now they all want to be the whole pie.

The thing is, none of them really have ALL of the ingredients necessary to make the best pie. If I could only buy a pie from one company I would get my pie from Microsoft because they have the most complete list of ingredients. I might need to top it off with some additional ingredients like SmartSIP, but the Microsoft Unified Communications platform offers the most comprehensive and innovative features in the most cost effective and flexible solution of the major players.

That said, these vendors and the customers both benefit when they stop competing to be the whole pie and instead focus on how to integrate their ingredients to cooperate to make the best pie possible. A Microsoft Unified Communications platform using Avaya or Nortel communications equipment connected to a Cisco network infrastructure seems like a recipe for success.

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Nortel Wins $300 Million VoIP Project for Social Security Administration

Nortel recently filed for bankruptcy protection, but bankruptcy does not mean that the company is going to disappear. On the contrary, if done right bankruptcy should enable to company to shed dead weight, restructure to operate more efficiently, and emerge stronger than they were before filing bankruptcy.

Nortel’s contract with the United States Social Security Administration should help keep revenue coming in for some time. The contract, worth $300 Million over 10 years, is a huge win for Nortel and possibly the largest VoIP deployment undertaking in existence.

According to the article on CNNMoney.com “The new system, expected to become one of the largest enterprise VoIP deployments in the world, is already supporting more than 125 offices and more than 33,500 calls daily. To date, the new system has handled over 1.6 million calls. With 12-16 offices added each week, approximately 500 offices will be added per year until all 1,526 offices are online. Nortel Government Solutions has engineered the system to support over 100,000 phones. Installation and maintenance teams are positioned across the country for rapid deployment, training, and support.”

Some have argued that $300 Million seems a tad exorbitant for a VoIP system, but this isn’t just any VoIP implementation as noted above. Those same ’some’ also argue that perhaps a United States government agency like the Social Security Administration should be investing their $300 Million with an American company rather than the Canadian Nortel. However, Nortel does a tremendous amount of business in the United States and employs many Americans, and Nortel Government Solutions (the entity that actually won the contract) is a wholly owned United States subsidiary of the Canadian networking giant. If they had the best solution at the best price, then the SSA made the right decision.

Security Concerns of UC Networks

When voice was just voice, it did not pose a security risk to the data network…at least not directly. It could be argued that there is still potential to exploit the voice network for social engineering purposes that result in a compromised data network, but that is a semi-convoluted argument and not really the point of this post.

With VoIP alone, standard best practices suggest keeping the voice VLAN and the data VLAN separate so that a compromise of the voice network would not have any effect on the data network. However, we live in a converged world. Unified communications merges voice and data and requires that they all play nice on the same network. Where does that leave us? That leaves us with some new security concerns to be aware of and guard against.

This post from Nortel’s Voice Security Blog, in conjunction with Sipera Systems Chief Marketing Officer, Eric Winsborrow, provides some additional detail and illustrates some potential scenarios that could exploit a vulnerable VoIP system and lead to a compromise of the UC or data network.

Combining the ‘Tels’: Nortel Buys Pingtel

Nortel is a major player in the unified communications arena. Much of their VoIP and UC technology is built on Pingtel’s open source solutions. In their effort to strengthen their product line and improve their ability to deliver innovative UC soutions for the SMB (small and medium business) market, Nortel purchased Pingtel. An instantmessagingplanet.com article says “The acquisition, which has Nortel buying Pingtel from the smaller firm’s parent company, BlueSocket, illustrates a growing trend as vendors strive to push out seamless and easy-to-manage UC solutions — but often don’t have the capacity to develop needed software elements in-house.” Check out the article to learn more.

Mets’ CitiField Opts For Nortel UC

I guess new baseball stadiums are all the rage in New York. Both the Yankees and the Mets are constructing new stadiums which should be set for the 2009 season. As the Mets move across the parking lot from Shea Stadium to CitiField, they are also moving to cutting-edge communications by deploying a Nortel unified communications network which will allow the employees of the Mets organization to collaborate and communicate in new ways that will help them to be more productive and efficient. According to an article from NetworkWorld, “Citi Field will have as many as 250 Wi-Fi access points to support a range of functions, including wireless ticket-scanning and letting fans order food from their seats.” To learn more about how the Nortel UC solution will enhance and improve communications for the employees and the fans at CitiField, read Unified Communications Takes Center Field at Ball Park.

Nortel Interactive Communications Platform

One of the next big frontiers for Unified Communications is integrating UC functionality into call centers or customer support departments. Granted, most organizations are still struggling to manage the original frontier of how to deploy UC in the first place and realize the values and benefits it delivers. But, the ability to leverage those same benefits and increased efficiency can really translate to ROI when you are talking about how hundreds or thousands of calls are routed for customer support centers. Nortel has introduced their Interactive Communications Platform, or ICP, which provides Web 2.0 style widgets that companies can incorporate into their web sites which will provide customers with the ability to initiate instant messaging sessions with company representatives, or use a click to call function which will automatically initiate a call back from the customer support center to the customer. Evangelyze Communications has also developed a click to chat utility that links with the Office Communicator instant messaging functionality to allow customers to chat in real-time with Evangelyze Communications representatives and get answers to their questions.

Nortel Delivers “Green” UC for Call Center

What’s better than delivering an IP-enabled solution that can handle up to 850 concurrent users and allow a call-center to efficiently manage and route calls to agents regardless of their physical location? Delivering that solution using technology that is both economically and ecologically frugal. One aspect of Nortel’s offerings which is fairly unique in the marketplace is the fact that they provide a product line designed to run with a minimal carbon footprint and help companies be more environmentally responsible. For more about Nortel’s project to deliver the Melbourne call center for PCI, read this article from Green.TMCNet.com.

China Chooses Nortel

Well, at least the Ministry of Water Resources of the People’s Republic of China chose Nortel. After a two-year evaluation and selection process, The Ministry of Water Resources selected Nortel to enable increased collaboration and productivity by merging voice, data, video and presence information and providing a unified communications platform. China represents a huge market, and this is a fairly significant win for Nortel. More than that, it validates the value and capabilities of Nortel’s unified communications solutions that a customer as large and selective, and with critical communications need such as a Chinese government agency opted to go with Nortel over competing solutions.

Nortel Partners With SecureLogix for Voice Security

Nortel has formed an alliance with SecureLogix to enable Nortel VAR’s to market and sell the SecureLogix ETM System and other security services in conjunction with Nortel’s new Voice Security Services offering. Adding to the arsenal already available to Nortel VAR’s, the SecureLogix ETM System provides a powerful voice security and management platform. Nortel customers will be able to optimize their investment in voice technologies, while protecting the voice and data networks from telephony-based attacks and abuses. Unified communications and VoIP are hot technologies that many companies have adopted or are looking at implementing soon, but few have taken the time to understand the security risks or proactively safeguard their unified communications investment. Nortel and SecureLogix are moving in the right direction by recognizing the security concerns and providing products and services to help their customers leverage the benefits of these new technologies securely.