The Toronto-based networking company has its Nortel Secure Network Access (NSNA) switch for NAC, its clientless implementation making it an interesting choice for certain networks, according to Phil Edholm, CTO and VP of network architecture at Nortel’s enterprise networking division. Nonetheless, the main thrust of Nortel’s activities will be moving towards tighter integration with [Microsoft’s] Network Admission Protection (NAP) technology, he acknowledged.
This stance reflects the prevailing mindset at Nortel, namely that its role should be to capture significant share in the provision of unified communications infrastructure top companies with a predominance, or at least a goodly proportion of their workforce in the knowledge worker category, which Edholm defined as people who use information, collaboration and interaction to create new thought, as distinct from service or information workers.
By extension, while it aims to provide the plumbing for companies where the knowledge worker is a large part or the majority of the staff, Nortel will leave the applications, i.e. documents and workflow, to Microsoft and Duet, the latter’s partnership with SAP.
While it continues to develop technologies such as NAC and collaboration (where it offers the Multimedia Communication Server, or MCS), they are targeted mainly at heterogeneous environments where the Microsoft alternatives cannot necessarily play. Lotus Notes/Domino shops are one scenario, and Nortel maintains a close relationship with IBM, Edholm recalled. Nortel also offers its SIP clients for integration with MCS on BlackBerry devices.
