iTWire - Nortel & Microsoft flesh out unified comms alliance

Nortel & Microsoft flesh out unified comms alliance

by Stuart Corner
Thursday, 18 January 2007
Page 1 of 2 The CEOs of Microsoft and Nortel have fleshed out their joint plan for the global enterprise unified communications market, announced in July 2006 when they formed the Innovative Communication Alliance (ICA). Register now to win a Canon EOS 500D The ICA made Nortel Microsoft's strategic partner for advanced unified communications solutions and systems integration. When it was announced, Zafirovski said: "From this transaction, we believe we can capture well beyond $US1 billion in new revenue, ramping up with increased momentum through 2009 via professional services, voice products and applications, as well as data pull-through in the enterprise." Core to the latest announcement, made in New York by Steve Ballmer and Mike Zafirovski, was three new joint product offerings claimed to "dramatically improve business communications by breaking down the barriers between voice, e-mail, instant messaging, multimedia conferencing and other forms of communication," 11 new implementation services from Nortel and the opening of more than 20 joint demonstration centres in North America, Europe and Asia, to showcase the joint offerings. The two plan to open another 100 centres by mid 2007. The new product offerings are: - UC Integrated Branch. This incorporates Nortel and Microsoft technology on a single piece of hardware and promises to deliver "cost-effective, high-quality and easy-to-deploy VoIP and unified communications in remote offices." It will be available in the fourth quarter of 2007. << First page < 1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>