Nortel’s Enterprise Surprise

Bankrupt Vendor Says It’s Funding R&D in the Enterprise Division with a ‘Start-Up Mentality’

“CIOs more than ever have to justify their investments,” said Rybczynski. “They want a short-term payback period and they want something that fits well into their existing business environment. You have to align IT investments with the business.”

To that end, Nortel is focusing on two major areas: unified communications and data networking. The company defines the former as communications integrated within business processes in order to optimize them by eliminating delays and improving “time to X,” “X” being problem resolution, decision-making, etc.

“It’s an ever-increasing value chain from IP voice to supporting multimodal communication and presence, to integrating communications into applications,” said Rybczynski. “We’re solidly partnered with Microsoft and Intel, with whom we have thousands of UC customers for our products and services, and we have a strong relationship with IBM. We recognize that the integration of UC with e-mail and desktop software is critical.”

For UC, Rybczynski says customers are putting a focus on the contact center and providing better customer service. “In today’s economy, the customer has to be treated very well, and they want self-service and the ability to do things over the Web,” he explained. “You also have to be able to reach out to experts around the company to best serve the customer, and you have to easily get to people outside the contact center itself.”

Then there’s the data networking space, and “we know there’s a gorilla there,” Rybczynski acknowledges, referring to Cisco Systems Inc.. He said Nortel has turned to third-party testing organizations to provide some competitive metrics.

“They’ve verified that our reliability is seven times better, with a 20-times better performance, and a 40 percent reduction in energy costs,” he explained. “It’s a lot easier to use actual metrics in the sales pitch than trying to argue why a company doesn’t need a certain Cisco feature. On the data side we try and fall into the category of helping them do more with less.”

Future Focus

Unified communications and data networking might be Nortel’s main areas of focus for now, but Rybczynski sees other trends that will impact opportunities going forward.

“What customers want lies in the traditional areas – the customer experience, reducing opex and improving business efficiency, and these all map to a recession-based world,” he said. “But with a twist. The business efficiency focus can be seen in recognizing that enterprises today are not walled as they were. They deal with partners, suppliers and channel partners. Here at Nortel for instance, we’re highly virtualized, with 10,000 people inside and out of the headquarters that need access.”

Also, mobility is a growing driver. “Today’s problem is that an executive wants an iPhone but it’s not up to enterprise standards,” said Rybczynski. “It’s about manageability, security and reachability — and the industry is just starting to address this better, and we need to be able to port calls from a cellular to a wired network, for instance. UC and mobility just go hand in hand.”

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