14 July 2009

TORONTO - Five new commercial offerings for the Nortel* [OTC: NRTLQ] and Microsoft Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA) were introduced at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. The new solution packages are tailored to the specific needs of enterprises to deliver the simplicity and enhanced speed of operations enabled by unified communications. The new technologies enable companies to realize significant productivity gains and operational efficiencies that provide a competitive edge.

Nortel has experienced significant success deploying Microsoft telephony solutions for global organizations as part of the Microsoft voice pilot program. The new commercial offers demonstrate the continued innovation, investment and commitment to the ICA relationship.

"Transitioning to a unified communications environment does not need to be complicated, and these new ICA solutions are designed to provide a simple, cost-effective means for companies to make that transition," said Craig Schuman, director of business development and strategy for the unified communications group at Microsoft. "Nortel's dedication to providing unified communications solutions that integrate simply with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Exchange Server has been a key factor in the success of the Innovative Communications Alliance."

"Unified communications take business operations to a new realm," said Joel Hackney , president, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel. "CXOs are realizing a new mindset - one that goes beyond business continuity and extends into realm of business possibility. ICA solutions deliver the capabilities that enable this fundamental shift. Companies cannot stand still in this environment, and need every advantage available. Nortel and Microsoft are delivering the means to realize that advantage quickly, holistically and economically. Being the top Microsoft partner is of key importance to delivering these capabilities to our customers - and we look forward to nurturing the relationship in the years ahead."

New Solution Bundles Provide UC Foundation

The five new commercial offerings for the Innovative Communications Alliance are designed to accelerate deployment and simplify the transition to unified communications. The integrated packages lower the barrier to entry, simplify their purchase and deployment, and provide a cost-effective means to evaluate the technology to prove their value in the customer's networking environment. New solution bundles include:

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SIP Contact Center 7.0 + Microsoft Office Communications Server: The Contact Center 7.0 release brings unified communications into the contact center through its integration of OCS2007 presence capability, providing the capability to immediately contact the appropriate subject matter expert leading to higher first call resolution rates.
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Web Services: Targeted at companies with 100-500 users, this solution includes UC capabilities that enable seamless user experience with presence and click-to-call into other business applications and processes.
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Enterprise Lighthouse: This offering provides a cost-effective option for the large enterprise to take advantage of the enhanced productivity that unified communications provides. The offer includes deployment services to enable UC integration, including Office Communications Server Voice and Conferencing and Microsoft Exchange Voicemail for deployments of greater than 2,000 users.
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Enterprise Mini Lighthouse: This offering provides a cost-effective option for the small enterprise to take advantage of the enhanced productivity that unified communications provides. The offer includes deployment services to enable UC integration, Office Communications Server Voice and Conferencing and Microsoft Exchange Voicemail for deployments starting at 250 users.
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UC Conferencing: For very large-scale conferencing capabilities, this package provides a cost-effective option for enterprises to take advantage of the enhanced productivity that unified communications provides through Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2. The offer includes consulting and the needed deployment services to enable the Office Communications Server conferencing capability for a minimum of 500 users.

New Customers Drive Momentum

In addition to the 1,300 ICA customer wins over the three year agreement between the companies, Movares and SQLSoft+ are the most recent customers to realize the advantages of deploying ICA solutions.

"We anticipate a fast ROI on this deployment," said Steve Brugger, president, SQLSoft+. "We are realizing savings of 30 percent each month on reduced phone and data charges alone. Our overseas employees stay connected transparently and have all but eliminated their cell phone charges when contacting our US office. Since we had already deployed ECALS on the client machines, our client hardware costs were limited to inexpensive USB handsets, which were one-third the price of most IP phones. Being able to run our old and new phone systems in parallel during deployment made for a very fast training and adoption cycle as well as a smooth cutover. The conferencing features have also reduced our costs." SQLSoft+ selected Nortel Professional Services to help implement the solution. Nortel is a Gold Certified Systems integrator for Microsoft UC solutions.

Peter Dubbelman, senior IT advisor, Movares, an engineering consultancy company based in The Netherlands said, "We chose Nortel because of their collaboration with Microsoft, as this provided a low risk and seamless integration for Unified Communications with our existing Microsoft environment. Our objective was to enable working anywhere anytime, using integrated voice and data services on both computers and smartphones. After the pilot, 96 percent of our employees would not want to go back to our old system, and scaling up to the entire company yielded lots of compliments for our ICT department."

"Nortel remains a stalwart Microsoft partner and is committed to the success of ICA as a means to helping our customers solve their business problems," said Susan King, leader, Innovative Communications Alliance, Nortel. "We have sharpened our execution with a focus on delivering critical software and services to augment Microsoft's unified communications offering. These new capabilities are helping our customers streamline and truncate their operations by extending their unified communications capabilities deeper within their organization's business applications and processes."

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