Nortel Unveils Strong SOA Solution for Business Communications

| November 16, 2007 | Application Infrastructure | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Brad Shimmin

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Very High
Market Impact: Moderate

Event Summary

On November 14th Nortel unveiled a comprehensive strategy that leverages SOA (service-oriented architecture) and Web services for the simple, rapid, and efficient delivery of communication-enabled applications and business processes. The company also announced a partnership with IBM to offer a software-based foundation that brings together business applications and processes with unified communications and collaboration tools such as click-to-connect, presence, location, and VoIP services.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Nortel formally unveiling a comprehensive strategy aimed at building communication-enabled applications and business processes based fully upon SOA standards and practices. This, combined with the company’s announced partnership with IBM that will combine IBM’s WebSphere Application Server with Nortel’s own foundation environment SOA software and professional services, will give Nortel the ability to field its customary applications and appliances not as add-ons, but as central components within broader SOA deployments.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to Nortel, which needed to respond in kind to SOA strategies and deliverables already established by the company’s competitors within the business communications space, most notably by Avaya, Siemens, and Cisco. Nortel’s approach, though not playing to the company’s immediate strengths, is laudable in that it embraces the vendor/solution-agnostic requirements imposed by SOA enterprise practitioners.

• Market Impact: Moderate on the SOA and business communications markets, as Nortel’s SOA solution is still very much in an embryonic stage, with productized solutions not anticipated until Q1 2008 and the task of upgrading its professional services division in support of its new offerings still underway. Rivals have already established SOA go-to-market strategies, though these vary wildly from company to company, indicating the relative youth of this market opportunity. If Nortel can capitalize and expand upon its partnership with IBM while embracing a vendor-neutral approach to SOA, it stands a good chance of making solid inroads compared with the efforts of its competitive set.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Nortel rivals developing communications-enabled SOA foundations of their own (such as Siemens Enterprise Communications, NEC, Avaya, and Cisco) should first and foremost position Nortel’s entry into Web services applications enablement as a first step out of many required to fully engage customers in a SOA-centric conversation.

• Siemens Enterprise Communications should point out that it has been actively involved in marketing SOA-enabled solutions since mid-2006 (really since 2004, in principle) and that it possesses a strategic alliance with SAP specific to providing unified communications directly within NetWeaver deployments.

• Cisco should call attention to the fact that it has a fully realized SOA go-to-market strategy with its ANS and SONA initiatives and that it is playing to its strength as a provider of networking architecture with solutions and partnerships aligned with supportive endeavors such as governance risk and compliance (GRC), which the company has undertaken with an SAP partnership.

• Avaya should consider revamping its Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) product/solution set to support SOA environments more fully through development, acquisition, or partnership.

• NEC should move quickly to capitalize upon its recent acquisition of Sphere, which provides communications capabilities built on Web services.

• All Nortel rivals should monitor the company’s moves to provide an open set of adapters for unified communications products outside of Nortel. Though its initial adapter portfolio only reaches its own products and those by Cisco, Nortel intends to position its foundation environment as an enabling infrastructure capable of natively supporting truly heterogeneous environments.

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• Current Nortel customers interested in leveraging SOA, particularly those currently deploying the Application Server 5200 and Communication Server 2000 IP Multimedia Softswitch appliance, should welcome Nortel’s SOA strategy and partnership announcements. While both the technology and partnership are still in the development stages, both will give Nortel customers with SOA experience a significant boost in application development productivity and software reuse.
• Potential Nortel customers should monitor the vendor’s progress both with its IBM partnership and with its emerging foundation environment software solution over the next six months. While these potential customers should seek out further information at this stage, prudence would dictate a carefully measured approach to adoption, especially given the competitive landscape, which is currently marshalling its resources behind SOA-centric unified communications solutions.
• Current Nortel customers employing telephony and unified communications products from rival vendors should encourage Nortel to expand its set of native adapters. The company has indicated that it will do so only as customer engagements dictate, which is an acceptable methodology. However, if enough customer demand reaches the company’s ears, it is sure to aim development resources at a potentially lucrative competitor solution.

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Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

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