Nortel Delivers Unified Communications Advantage with Microsoft
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - July 14, 2009) - Five new commercial
offerings for the Nortel(1) (OTCBB: NRTLQ) and Microsoft Innovative
Communications Alliance (ICA) were introduced today at the Microsoft
Worldwide Partner Conference. The new solution packages are tailored
to the specific needs of enterprises to deliver the simplicity and
enhanced speed of operations enabled by unified communications. The
new technologies enable companies to realize significant productivity
gains and operational efficiencies that provide a competitive edge.
Nortel has experienced significant success deploying Microsoft
telephony solutions for global organizations as part of the Microsoft
voice pilot program. The new commercial offers demonstrate the
continued innovation, investment and commitment to the ICA
relationship.
"Transitioning to a unified communications environment does not need
to be complicated, and these new ICA solutions are designed to
provide a simple, cost-effective means for companies to make that
transition," said Craig Schuman, director of business development and
strategy for the unified communications group at Microsoft. "Nortel's
dedication to providing unified communications solutions that
integrate simply with Microsoft Office Communications Server and
Microsoft Exchange Server has been a key factor in the success of the
Innovative Communications Alliance."
"Unified communications take business operations to a new realm,"
said Joel Hackney, president, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel. "CXOs are
realizing a new mindset - one that goes beyond business continuity
and extends into realm of business possibility. ICA solutions deliver
the capabilities that enable this fundamental shift. Companies cannot
stand still in this environment, and need every advantage available.
Nortel and Microsoft are delivering the means to realize that
advantage quickly, holistically and economically. Being the top
Microsoft partner is of key importance to delivering these
capabilities to our customers - and we look forward to nurturing the
relationship in the years ahead."
New Solution Bundles Provide UC Foundation
The five new commercial offerings for the Innovative Communications
Alliance are designed to accelerate deployment and simplify the
transition to unified communications. The integrated packages lower
the barrier to entry, simplify their purchase and deployment, and
provide a cost-effective means to evaluate the technology to prove
their value in the customer's networking environment. New solution
bundles include:
- SIP Contact Center 7.0 + Microsoft Office Communications Server:
The Contact Center 7.0 release brings unified communications into the
contact center through its integration of OCS2007 presence
capability, providing the capability to immediately contact the
appropriate subject matter expert leading to higher first call
resolution rates.
- Web Services: Targeted at companies with 100-500 users, this
solution includes UC capabilities that enable seamless user
experience with presence and click-to-call into other business
applications and processes.
- Enterprise Lighthouse: This offering provides a cost-effective
option for the large enterprise to take advantage of the enhanced
productivity that unified communications provides. The offer includes
deployment services to enable UC integration, including Office
Communications Server Voice and Conferencing and Microsoft Exchange
Voicemail for deployments of greater than 2,000 users.
- Enterprise Mini Lighthouse: This offering provides a cost-effective
option for the small enterprise to take advantage of the enhanced
productivity that unified communications provides. The offer includes
deployment services to enable UC integration, Office Communications
Server Voice and Conferencing and Microsoft Exchange Voicemail for
deployments starting at 250 users.
- UC Conferencing: For very large-scale conferencing capabilities,
this package provides a cost-effective option for enterprises to take
advantage of the enhanced productivity that unified communications
provides through Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release
2. The offer includes consulting and the needed deployment services
to enable the Office Communications Server conferencing capability
for a minimum of 500 users.
New Customers Drive Momentum
In addition to the 1,300 ICA customer wins over the three year
agreement between the companies, Movares and SQLSoft+ are the most
recent customers to realize the advantages of deploying ICA
solutions.
"We anticipate a fast ROI on this deployment," said Steve Brugger,
president, SQLSoft+. "We are realizing savings of 30 percent each
month on reduced phone and data charges alone. Our overseas employees
stay connected transparently and have all but eliminated their cell
phone charges when contacting our US office. Since we had already
deployed ECALS on the client machines, our client hardware costs were
limited to inexpensive USB handsets, which were one-third the price
of most IP phones. Being able to run our old and new phone systems in
parallel during deployment made for a very fast training and adoption
cycle as well as a smooth cutover. The conferencing features have
also reduced our costs." SQLSoft+ selected Nortel Professional
Services to help implement the solution. Nortel is a Gold Certified
Systems integrator for Microsoft UC solutions.
Peter Dubbelman, senior IT advisor, Movares, an engineering
consultancy company based in The Netherlands said, "We chose Nortel
because of their collaboration with Microsoft, as this provided a low
risk and seamless integration for Unified Communications with our
existing Microsoft environment. Our objective was to enable working
anywhere anytime, using integrated voice and data services on both
computers and smartphones. After the pilot, 96 percent of our
employees would not want to go back to our old system, and scaling up
to the entire company yielded lots of compliments for our ICT
department."
"Nortel remains a stalwart Microsoft partner and is committed to the
success of ICA as a means to helping our customers solve their
business problems," said Susan King, leader, Innovative
Communications Alliance, Nortel. "We have sharpened our execution
with a focus on delivering critical software and services to augment
Microsoft's unified communications offering. These new capabilities
are helping our customers streamline and truncate their operations by
extending their unified communications capabilities deeper within
their organization's business applications and processes."
About Nortel
Nortel delivers communications capabilities that make the promise of
Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation
technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks,
support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel's
technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to
efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and
connecting people to the information they need, when they need it.
For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For
the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.
Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as
"could", "expects", "may", "anticipates", "believes", "intends",
"estimates", "targets", "envisions", "seeks" and other similar
language and are considered forward-looking statements or information
under applicable securities legislation. These statements are based
on Nortel's current expectations, estimates, forecasts and
projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in
which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important
assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict
and the actual outcome may be materially different from those
contemplated in forward-looking statements. For additional
information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see
Nortel's Annual Report on Form10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q
and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required
by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or
obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements,
whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
(1)Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel
Networks.
Use of the terms "partner" and "partnership" does not imply a legal
partnership between Nortel and any other party.
Contacts:
Nortel
Pat Cooper
425-450-7523
pat.cooper@nortel.com
Nortel
Greta Brown
+44-(0)1628-432968
gretab@nortel.com
www.nortel.com
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