Microsoft and Nortel target telecoms service providers

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 01 April 2007 14:05

IT Industry - Deals

"In addition, workers will be able to place and receive calls and access their calendars and contacts from their PC or desktop telephone whether they are sitting at their desk, working from their home office or from their hotel rooms while travelling."

The two companies' new carrier-hosted converged office solution was announced in Orlando at Inform 2007, Nortel’s carrier user group conference attended by more than 300 global carrier customers. Richard Lowe, president, Carrier Networks, Nortel, claimed that “With these carrier solutions we can deliver feature-rich unified communications to small and medium-sized enterprises through the carrier partners that host their voice services today. Together Nortel and Microsoft are eliminating challenges that SMBs face when sourcing professional grade communications, by stripping the burden of complexity from the enterprise back office.”

Nortel will integrate its Communication Server 2000 (CS 2000) softswitch with the Microsoft solution for hosted messaging and collaboration, which incorporates hosted versions of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server and Windows SharePoint Services. In addition, Nortel will provide a full range of convergence integration services from the Nortel Global Services portfolio to "accelerate and expedite all stages of a unified communications deployment to unify disparate modes of communication into a seamless model integrating business processes at the applications level."

Optus has been using this product for several years to offer IP centrex services to large enterprises and last month announced a new service offering directed at SMEs.

The companies intend to begin field trials in the second half of 2007 with general availability planned by the end of the year.