The initiative includes 11 new products as well as numerous enhancements to classic products. Doug Batchelor, regional director of Nortel Networks` Enterprise Solutions line of business in South Africa, says the strategy provides enterprises with new solutions founded on its Internet Communications Architecture (Inca), an Internet Protocol architecture based on open standards.
According to Batchelor, the announcement builds on Nortel`s market leadership in enterprise wide area network (WAN) switching, business communication systems, call centres and messaging.
"Nortel Networks is driving an Internet and telephony paradigm that merges the standards, simplicity and connectivity of the corporate Internet with the reliability, quality and capacity of the classic business communication systems," he says. "Our approach is to provide enterprises with choices for elegantly upgrading their classic telephony networks and preparing their data networks for telephony using a policy-based Internet infrastructure so that they can realise the benefits of the `Next Generation Internet` today. Those benefits include improved employee productivity, enhanced customer relationships and new network economics.
"As the worlds of telephony and data come together, enterprises can capitalise on a wide range of unified applications which simplify communications, enhance employee productivity and customer relationships, and facilitate employee mobility for anytime, anywhere access. Examples include CallPilot unified messaging, voice activated dialling, web-based call centres and virtual order tracking."
Nortel Networks works with customers world-wide to design, build, and deliver telecommunications and IP-optimised networks. Customers include public and private enterprises and institutions; Internet service providers; local, long-distance, cellular and PCS communications companies; cable television carriers; and utilities.
Nortel Networks` common shares are listed on the New York, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and London stock exchanges. Nortel Networks had 1998 revenues of US$17.6 billion and has approximately 75,000 employees world-wide.
Technical Background
Nortel Networks introduced its portfolio of open, IP-based telephony solutions for unified voice, data and video applications based on Inca. The market leading Accelar routing switch is at the heart of this architecture. New products scheduled for availability within the next year include:
Inca M10 Communication System: This system will be built on a policy-based network infrastructure and on an industry-standard Windows NT server. It will leverage the Quality of Service (QoS) enabled enterprise network to support new network-wide telephony applications. The M10 connection manager will support both classic analogue telephone sets and Nortel Networks` new i2004 Internet Telephones and H.323 softphone clients. A family of Passport telephony gateways will provide interconnection to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
Inca M1, Inca M100, and Inca M7500 Communication Systems: These platform-independent and highly distributed systems will consolidate telephony intelligence, complex connection management and standard protocol support over existing IP networks to deliver robust and highly scalable IP telephony solutions. They will connect to the Internet and the PSTN and support open standards interfaces for Internet Telephony products.
iRemote: Single or multi-user remote office voice-over-IP hardware and software solution that will connect to the IP WAN to extend all the Private Branch Exchange`s (PBX) digital telephones and features. It will also offer a voice QoS feature, IP VoiceFlex, that automatically switches to the circuit network if IP congestion affects voice quality, and back to IP when voice QoS is re-established on the WAN. Switching between IP and circuit switched networks will be transparent to the user.
Inca Telecommuter: Windows-based PC software that will integrate voice and data over IP. It will enable a casual telecommuter - a person waiting in an airport, for example - to use a computer as both a voice and data terminal and to receive integrated voice and data services over IP using a single analogue line.
i2004 Internet Telephone: The first in a planned series of Internet telephones that will capitalise on the convergence of telephony and data at the desktop. This telephone, which will use an open, standards-based architecture, will connect through the LAN to the Inca product portfolio and Nortel Networks` IP-enhanced classic telephony systems. It will connect to other telephony systems using an open protocol interface.
i3220 Internet Tel@phone: This web phone will make access to a rich portfolio of Internet services easier than ever. As part of this solution, the innovative multimedia device will deliver user-friendly functions for access to a wide array of applications. The i3220 Internet Tel@phone will access services either through a dial-up Internet Service Provider or a corporate Intranet. The i3220 Internet Tel@phone solution will provide the front end for intelligent networks, complementing the entire Inca portfolio.
Classic Internet-enabled communication systems provide IP functionality and applications to enterprise telephony networks, leveraging current investments and realising the cost savings and business benefits of IP.
Nortel Networks also announced plans to deliver a wide range of new telephony products that incorporate IP capabilities by the end of 1999. Solutions include:
Meridian 1IP, Meridian SL100IP, M6500IP, and MercatorIP communications systems: New Internet-enabled communications systems will be based on Nortel Networks` industry leading classic telephony systems. For certain classic Meridian digital telephones, an Internet Digital Adaptor will be available to plug into an IP network. Customer benefits will include reduced costs, simplified network management and unified applications to power e-business.
Enterprise Edge: A branch office and small business solution, Enterprise Edge will couple the advantages of IP telephony with the benefits of highly integrated voice and data on a Windows NT server-based communication system. It will enable customers to choose between packet switching and circuit switching, or both, capitalising on cost savings without sacrificing reliability, features or desktop interfaces.
As customers begin to deploy telephony over their data networks, it is critical that these networks evolve to become "telephony-grade". Nortel Networks is building telephony-grade data networks with its best-in-class Accelar enterprise switch family, Passport Multi-Service Access switch family (including the recently introduced Passport 5430) and the BayStack multi-service router solutions (including the BayStack ARN with voice over IP), which offer world-class, high-performance data network infrastructures.
Telephony-enabling data networks reduce network operation costs by simplifying administration and mobility; unifying management, policies and directories; and increasing productivity.
New Nortel Networks product enhancements scheduled for availability by the end of 1999 include:
Passport 4400 Multi-Service Access Switch v4.0: This product will include enhancements to support telephony gateways as part of a high-performance, multi-service solution for branch and regional office applications.
BayRS v13.20: Nortel Networks` industry leading multi-protocol routing software featuring Differentiated Services (DiffServ) -- a simple and standards-based approach to application prioritisation and bandwidth management. DiffServ will provide the IP QoS necessary to support telephony-grade networks.
Nortel Networks` Unified Network, Policy and Service Management solutions include features such as QoS, queuing, prioritisation and switch security that empower customers to take advantage of IP telephony. Nortel Networks` market-leading Optivity Network Management System is being adopted across the entire enterprise Internet Telephony portfolio. It is being enhanced to support data and voice communication systems from Nortel Networks as well as other vendors.
New unified applications scheduled for availability within the next year include:
Symposium Call Centre Server 3.0: This Windows NT-based call centre solution provides call centre management capabilities including the ability to route customer calls to networked agents based on their skills (skills-based routing). Release 3.0 will deliver connectivity to the Meridian SL-100 communication system and the DMS-100 family of public network switches for network-based call centre solutions. In the Meridian 1 environment, release 3.0 will extend skills-based routing across a network of Meridian Communication Systems.
Symposium Web Response Server 2.0: A Windows NT-based e-mail response management system that will enable call centres to handle e-mail and web form inquiries from customers as readily and efficiently as traditional voice inquiries. The Symposium Web Response Server will prioritise the delivery of incoming requests to the most appropriate agent who can respond via e-mail or with an automated call back.
Symposium Agent 2.0: Browser-based call centre software that will help agents to provide more efficient customer service by integrating various sources of information on the agent`s desktop.
Nortel Networks` Internet Telephony solutions will feature open application programming interfaces (APIs) and system development kits.
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