Nortel unveils communications enablement strategy, alliance with IBM 14 November, 2007 By Chris Talbot

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Wes Durow, vice president of enterprise strategy and marketing at Nortel, said he is hearing from customers every day about how there is too much complexity in providing access to information and people across a growing number of devices. Enterprises have various tools for communications and collaboration, but they're all discreet, separate applications. Nortel's new strategy will pull those applications out, away from the hardware, and couple them with business processes, he said.

"All these processes work great in a discreet manner, but now they're tripping over each other," Durow said.

Nortel's goal is to bring everything together in an integrated way so it's ready to drive the next wave of productivity, he said. That means driving communications back into the business processes.

The strategy also includes an alliance with IBM. The two companies are currently beta-testing products that fit into this enabled communications strategy. The first set of products would be jointly launched by Nortel and IBM sometime in the first quarter of 2008.

The products would offer the ability for enterprise employees to collaborate in real-time with its documents, but also see if someone else is online and available to chat in whatever type of communications they'd prefer (whether it's e-mail, instant messaging, phone or something else), he said.

"You'll be able to have those interactions in real-time," Durow said.

While presence technologies are a factor in communications enablement, Durow said it's actually a step beyond because it's putting the communications technologies back into business processes.

"Our whole strategy here is trying to eliminate the complexity . . . by really leveraging their existing communications and networking investments," he said.

The strategy is based on four key components -- enabling Web services on selective products and solutions, the development of a software-based foundation environment to simplify the creation of customized communications-enabled applications and business processes, alliances with industry leaders like IBM, and the development of a global services practice to support these SOA-based applications and solutions.

According to Durow, it would eliminate much of the human latency that reduces productivity.

"This is really groundbreaking new space for Nortel," he said.

While the initial products will have a horizontal market approach, there are certain verticals that are especially interested in what the products will offer.

"We're seeing substantial interest in some key verticals -- healthcare, finance and any business that's heavily dependent on professional services and any business that's heavily dependent on people," Durow said.

The interest will generate opportunities for the channel, as well.

"I think it's a great opportunity. IBM has a great base of channel partners and there are several customers that we have that have IBM products in place today. So this is a great opportunity for channel partners to really move up the value chain in terms of services they provide their customers, and really link communications back into business process," he added.