Microsoft,Nortel ringing up SIs

It integrates Nortel’s enterprise-level CS1000 IP switch and Microsoft’s Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS), allowing workers to take advantage of LCS’s instant messaging and presence capabilities with the switch’s public system telephone connectivity.“We are working together to identify focused system integrators,” said Ingrid Trem-blay, senior marketing manager for Nortel’s enterprise multimedia systems.
“They would have the wherewithall to put solutions together from multiple vendors.”
Already the companies are in “first phase discussions” with several integrators.
The best candidates are already familiar with telephony, can develop applications and know how to deliver support, she said.
However, the number of integrators eligible to sell here won’t be large.
“I would not suspect we’d want more than a handful, at least in the initial stages.”
The solution is in customer beta trials now and expected to be available for sale before the end of the year. By then partners eligible to sell the package will be selected and trained.
It could be a lucrative opportunity: The CS1000, which can handle up to 15,000 users, sells for between US$30,000 and $60,000 said a Nortel spokesman. An installation that includes IP telephones would be worth more.
The partnership isn’t exclusive: The CS1000 uses an open standard, and Nortel has partnerships with other vendors for it.
Microsoft and Nortel have pledged to work together to identify sales opportunities and train integrators.
The arrangement is just the latest step in a strategic relationship between the two companies. Nortel announced in June it had created a plug-in for Outlook 2003 users to manage voice, data and text through Nortel’s Multimedia Communication Server 5100 and 5200 models.
Nortel also wrote software to link the CS1000 switch to Live Communications Server through Microsoft Office Communicator.
With it users can take advantage of telephony features such as initiating phone calls by clicking on a name in an application, and see pop-up notifications of incoming calls and instant messages.
A number of customers asked Microsoft to work with Nortel to make a joint telephony solution, explained Marc Sanders, senior product manager with Microsoft’s real-time collaboration group.
Nortel partners who are not Microsoft resellers won’t be excluded, he said.
However, the partners who will be favoured to sell it will be those who already have a relationship with those customers, he said.
But both vendors are prepared to help train partners need to service customers.
“The key will be finding partners who can provide both elements — the desktop integration with Office and the Nortel telephony integration.”