Communications Alliance With Nortel

Nortel and Microsoft will jointly develop, market, and sell solutions that unite multiple communication types (telephony, voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging, multimedia conferencing, etc.) and devices (PCs, mobile phones, VoIP phones, etc.) into a single integrated unified communications (UC) platform. As part of this alliance, Nortel will build all its telephony and other communications offerings on Microsoft software. This agreement should smooth the transition path for Nortel customers and their more than 50 million end users. However, even though the relationship is non-exclusive, it could mean sharper competition for other partners, such as Siemens and Hewlett Packard, who have already committed to Microsoft’s UC platform.

Elements of the Alliance

The key elements of the alliance are as follows:

Nortel commits to the Microsoft platform. Future Nortel product and service offerings will be built on top of the Microsoft UC platform, which has at its core Office Communications Server 2007 (formerly called Live Communications Server). Nortel will gradually phase out existing products and technologies that duplicate functionality present within the Microsoft UC platform.