Microsoft, Nortel Transform How People and Businesses Interact with New Joint Unified Communications Solutions

Microsoft, Nortel Transform How People and Businesses Interact with New Joint Unified Communications Solutions

Microsoft Corp. and Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] announced the availability of four new joint unified communications (UC) solutions designed to transform how people around the world connect, communicate and collaborate. The joint products include the Converged Office unified communications suite, Multimedia Conferencing, and solutions for branch offices and hosted service providers. Customer adoption continues to accelerate with more than 600 wins for the companies’ unified communications products since the formation of the alliance.

Research indicates that unified communications can improve business productivity by up to 18 percent1 with up to a 250 percent return on investment.2 With these new solutions, Nortel and Microsoft have now delivered 10 solutions to market as part of their Innovative Communications Alliance announced less than two years ago.

“With the availability of these latest solutions, Nortel and Microsoft have now delivered on the joint solutions that our two CEOs outlined in January 2007,” said Ruchi Prasad, vice president and general manager, Innovative Communications Alliance, Nortel. “With these solutions, enterprises can now choose to deploy unified communications via a customer premise solution, managed service solution, or hybrid of the two, helping accelerate the pace of unified communications adoption.”

“Customers and partners recognize the value of joint Microsoft and Nortel solutions and we expect to continue driving the adoption of software-based unified communications solutions in 2008,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president, Unified Communications Group, Microsoft. “In the coming year, we will extend the scope of our unified communications collaboration to include areas such as Contact Center integration and a mix of hybrid and fully hosted UC solutions.”

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