Enclosed were white papers and reports setting out distinctions between Nortel’s and Cisco’s approaches to IP telephony. In various articles, Nortel boasts a uniquely integrated strategic alliance with Microsoft, cross-licensing patents and joint sales and marketing.
The documentation claims Cisco’s approach is more network centric. Is that a bad thing? Is such an approach better for engaging carriers as channels to market, regardless of the technical merits of the architecture? Carriers might prefer network centricity.
I note that Nortel has been named the official supplier of converged network equipment for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, with plans to converge all of the voice, video and data traffic over a single IP-based network backbone. At Nortel’s AGM this week, Mike Zafirovski spoke of the Olympics contract and others as evidence that Nortel has regained momentum, taking advantage of opportunities created with hyper-connectivity – a theme raised in the blog musings of Nortel CTO John Roese. Nortel is “back in the game“.
John Roese and Microsoft Communications Sector CTO Michel Burger are certain to provide their perspectives on their alliance during keynote addresses at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 11-13. Jeff Spagnola, Cisco’s VP Marketing for Service Providers will also be addressing the Summit in a keynote address June 13, preceded by an introduction by Cisco CEO John Chambers.
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