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Microsoft Taps Nortel For VoIP Smarts |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Wednesday, 19 July 2006 |
Microsoft and Nortel have announced a broad ranging
strategic relationship that will see the two companies share technology,
co-develop new products and foster a solutions provider channel to take
IP-based unified communications to the corporate market.
The new push will bring the IP Telephony smarts of Nortel together
with the desktop and server-side communications solutions from Microsoft and
add a touch of hardware to create a new range of integrated product solutions that
tackle phone, email, messaging, voice and video conferencing.
The deal could be a revenue boost for Nortel. The company
hopes to add "well beyond" US$1 billion in the early stages of the four-year
agreement. For Microsoft it brings IP telephony smarts into a domain it knows
well - software - and provides access to telephony hardware on which to deliver
it.
"This is a gutsy play for Nortel - accelerating the move of
our voice technology into software and working with the world's software leader
as part of our broader business strategy to transform the company into a
software and services leader," said Mike Zafirovski, president and CEO of
Nortel. "By combining our unique strengths, Microsoft and Nortel will
accelerate the delivery of unified communications - delivering to our customers
a higher-quality user experience, with greater reliability and lower total cost
of ownership. That's where we can make a real difference."
Microsoft will leverage Nortel's services capabilities
appointing it as a strategic systems integration partner, which Nortel believes
can help it capture substantial new service revenue by doing convergence
planning, integration, optimisation, monitoring and managed services.
The two companies will jointly sell the solutions and will
develop training and incentive programs for the companies' sales teams. They
will also build a joint channel ecosystem using existing systems integrator,
reseller, and service provider relationships.
The two companies have created the Innovative Communications Alliance as a
go-to-market vehicle.
In product terms Nortel and Microsoft will form joint teams
to collaborate on product development that spans enterprise, mobile and
wireline carrier solutions. Nortel will deliver solutions that complement
Microsoft's unified communications platform, including enterprise contact
center applications, mission-critical telephony functions, advanced mobility
capabilities and data networking infrastructure.
"We are investing together because the communications
industry is at an inflection point," said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. "We
will have deep collaboration in product development with Nortel, allowing us to
rapidly deliver high-quality, highly reliable solutions that will support
mission-critical communications."
The relationship advances on Microsoft's latest
announcements about its move into IP telephony, but goes well beyond any of the
relationship announced in early June.
One of those relationships, with the LG Nortel joint venture,
will see Microsoft collaborate to develop VoIP phones.
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