Nortel joins WLAN acquisition trend
Nortel has acquired Pingtel Corp.'s business from Bluesocket Inc, an enterprise mobility solutions provider.which bought Pingel last July. Pingtel will provide new software capabilities to Nortel's enterprise unified communications portfolio, as well as additional research and development capabilities. This transaction brings Pingtel's existing original equipment manufacturer (OEM) relationship with Nortel in-house. Nortel will use Pingtel's software in its small to medium-sized business (SMB) unified-communications package, which is based on its Software Communication System 500 (SCS500) product. Like most unified-communications systems, the package brings together email, instant messaging and conferencing.
"This acquisition is another building block in Nortel's vision to be a software-centric company and the leading provider of unified-communications solutions," said David Downing, GM of enterprise and SMB communications systems at Nortel. "We believe that bringing Pingtel's critical R&D capabilities in-house will enable us to further develop software-based solutions that go beyond the boundaries of our previous [original equipment manufacturer] relationship."
Apart from the existing supplier deal between Nortel and its new acquisition, the two companies already had links through the Pingtel-led sipXecs open-source project. The project provides an open-source IP PBX, the largest-known installation of which serves 6,000 users, according to the sipXecs website.
According to Nortel, the Pingtel acquisition will "further accelerate the development of a global open-source ecosystem and reinforce Nortel's direction and leadership in the development of interoperable and open unified-communications solutions".
Over a year ago Nortel joined the open source community established by SIPFoundry as an active contributor to the sipXecs open source project (led by Pingtel Corp), providing more than 300 new applications and features to date. The acquisition of Pingtel Corp by Nortel will further accelerate the development of a global open source ecosystem and reinforce Nortel's direction and leadership in the development of interoperable and open unified communications solutions.
Source:http://www2.nortel.com
Web: http://secure2.pingtel.com