Microsoft, Nortel Forge Alliance
CONVERGING the communications and IT industries, Microsoft Corp. and Nortel announced a four-year strategic alliance integrating software and communications technologies based on a “shared vision for unified communications”, the companies said.
Encompassing the technology, marketing and business levels of the two companies, the alliance will allow them to "drive new growth opportunities, and has the potential to transform businesses communications, reducing costs and complexity and improving productivity for customers", Microsoft and Nortel said in a statement .
Additionally, Nortel and Microsoft said they will transition traditional business phone systems into software, with a Microsoft unified communications software platform and Nortel software products to provide further advanced telephone functionality. This software-centric approach will provide the easiest transition path for businesses, the companies claimed, allowing them to reduce the cost of ownership, protect current and future investments and enable the creation of new applications.
Under the agreement, the two companies will form the Innovative Communications Alliance as a go-to-market vehicle. In doing so, Microsoft and Nortel will deploy each other's technologies in their enterprise networks.
“This is a gutsy play for Nortel, accelerating the move of our voice technology into software and working with the world's software leader as part of our broader business strategy to transform the company into a software and services leader”, Mike Zafirovski, Nortel's president and CEO, added in the statement. “From this transaction, we believe we can capture well beyond $1 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.”
24-Aug-2006