Nortel Expands Unified Communications Solutions For Businesses

Carrier-Enabled Solution Accelerates Productivity, Reduces Business Travel For Ibm Lotus Notes And Lotus Sametime Users
TORONTO – Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] is helping improve productivity and reduce the need for business travel with a new carrier-enabled unified communications solution with IBM. Designed specifically for IBM Lotus Notes** and IBM Lotus Sametime**, the solution will enable carriers to provide unified communications and collaboration services like real-time presence and multimedia conferencing integrated with IBM Lotus applications, helping to reduce travel costs and improve employee productivity for their business customers.

Today’s announcement expands on Nortel and IBM’s relationship in enterprise unified communications by adding a carrier-enabled solution to Nortel’s portfolio. The solution allows carriers to offer business customers a converged communications and desktop applications service based on a new, fully integrated desktop client model. The solution will enable carriers to increase revenue opportunities by offering new services using existing network investments. Businesses of all sizes will benefit from unified communications by extending their existing IBM Lotus solutions to include rich multimedia features, without having to purchase, install and manage additional voice network infrastructure.

With the new solution, businesses can limit the need to travel by conducting business meetings using advanced multimedia conferencing. As well, unified communications helps improve employee productivity and speed response time with presence, unified messaging and click-to-collaborate that launches a video or voice conference with one simple click of the mouse.

“Data from Insignia Research has shown that productivity is improved by 60 minutes each day through unified communications,” said John McCready, general manager, Carrier Multimedia Networks, Nortel. “At Nortel, we are focused on creating a versatile unified communications portfolio of productivity enhancing solutions that any business can use to streamline processes in today’s increasingly mobile work environment. The new solution allows carriers to leverage the Nortel-IBM relationship to access IBM’s existing customer base and sell rich media capabilities to the millions of Lotus users globally.”

“Together, IBM and Nortel are helping organizations focus on business, not just managing technology,” said Bruce Morse, vice president of unified communications and collaboration, IBM Lotus. “This type of carrier-enabled solution is appealing to our customers since it allows them to benefit from their collaboration software while taking advantage of carrier-grade hosted communication services.”

Nortel and IBM will provide advisory and integration services as well as network management support to help accelerate the deployment of a unified communications experience for their customers. Nortel brings its Global Services portfolio and a strong background of working with service providers in developing solutions while IBM is a proven integrator in the business market. Together they are working to transform voice, data, and application components into a converged network solution.

Nortel voice and multimedia applications can be hosted by the carrier with the enterprise maintaining management of its Lotus Notes or Lotus Sametime servers. The solution uses Nortel’s SIP Application Server (AS) 5200, Nortel’s Communication Server (CS) 2000 and the recently announced Adaptive Application Engine software, to deliver next generation SIP applications. The solution is expected to be available initially on the AS 5200 and CS 2000 with Lotus Notes 7.0 and SameTime 7.5.1 for customer trials in the third quarter of 2008 and generally available with Lotus Notes 7.0 in fourth quarter 2008.

According to Dell’Oro Group, Nortel is the worldwide leader in carrier VoIP and has maintained that position for the last six years (2002-2007). Nortel has shipped 88 million carrier IP voice and multimedia ports to over 250 carriers globally and Nortel’s IMS-ready solutions have been adopted by over 150 customers, including carriers operating across wireline, wireless and cable domains.

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as “could”, “expects”, “may”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “intends”, “estimates”, “targets”, “envisions”, “seeks” and other similar language and are considered forward-looking statements or information under applicable securities legislation. These statements are based on Nortel’s current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict and the actual outcome may be materially different from those contemplated in forward-looking statements. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel’s Annual Report on Form10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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