Home Industry Deals Microsoft and Nortel target telecoms service providers
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Microsoft has significantly upped the ante in its evolution as a player in the mainstream communications systems market, with the news that it is expanding its alliance with Nortel - presently directed at systems for sale to enterprises - to offer solutions that telco service providers can use to provide hosted services.

Microsoft is making a big push into the enterprise IP communications and collaboration space  and although most of the major players - Avaya, Mitel, Siemens etc - have announced collaborations with Microsoft to ensure interoperation of their technologies, Nortel has been a favoured partner for almost a year every sinec the two companies formed the Innovative Communications Alliance in July 2006.

In January 2007 the two companies announced a range of new joint products spawned by the alliance .

Now they have announced an expansion of the alliance from the enterprise to the service provider market, with a plan to offer "solutions that will enable service providers to deliver comprehensive unified communications services to small and medium business (SMBs) and enterprises."
The latest development follows Microsoft's announcement of its IP PBX product last month.
Their joint offerings wil enable carriers to host unified business communication and collaboration services including e-mail, instant messaging, VoIP, click-to-call, video conferencing and other multimedia services.

"With these hosted communications solutions offerings, service providers will be able to equip SMB and enterprise workers with advanced tools such as click-to-call, as well as traditional voice communications and in/outbound dialing from their Microsoft Office Communicator desktop client," the two companies say.

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Stuart Corner

 

Tracking the telecoms industry since 1989, Stuart has been awarded Journalist Of The Year by the Australian Telecommunications Users Group (twice) and by the Service Providers Action Network. In 2010 he received the 'Kester' lifetime achievement award in the Consensus IT Writers Awards and was made a Lifetime Member of the Telecommunications Society of Australia. He was born in the UK, came to Australia in 1980 and has been here ever since.

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