In Jim Duffy's NWW article, he goes over the MS/Nortel partnering strategy. Could this be a Microsoft strategy of "try before you buy" for Nortel? Nortel has no real strength in the marketplace outside of its core Voice/PBX/VoIP technology. MS could purchase Nortel , disassemble and sell off the parts it doesn't want. The acquisition would give MS a true end to end solution, like Cisco, but with a much larger installed base.
Given Nortel's stock price, MS could buy the core business, sell off the undesirable pieces and make this a very attractive acquisition. This wouldn't have much consumer impact, but the SMB through Enterprise market could be profound.
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re: Microsoft buying Nortel
I must admit that I've thought about this as well. The stock price on Nortel has been so low for so long, that there has to be pressure on the board to figure come up with a strategy. Selling at a premium to the street, and getting back some of the lost value would be an obvious one.
All of that said, I don't think this would be a good deal for Microsoft. The MS pitch has been "Voip as you are", and run MS OCS & Exchange Software on top of whatever hardware platform you have. This is the way they won the server space, this is the way they won the desktop, I think it's the way they can win voice. Buying a PBX vendor only puts them at odds with their some of their biggest potential customers (the PBX Vendors). Frankly I can't see Microsoft slugging it out with PBX and network hardware companies like Avaya, Cisco, NEC, etc ... it's so, well, undignified :-)
Nortel not needed
Microsoft doesn't need to buy Nortel, the company. They already have access to their technology if you read the announcements very carefully from last year. There was some intellectual property transfer between Nortel and Microsoft but details were not disclosed. Microsoft historically doesn't do very well buying hardware companies. They recently bought Danger for the SideKick handset. It's in Microsoft's best interest to be communications hardware vendor agnostic.
Taking over Yahoo!....and
Taking over Yahoo!....and now Nortel...
Is Microsoft running out of Software Innovations that they are going for alternate decisions...?
Every study I've seen (Meta,
Every study I've seen (Meta, Gartner, etc) says that it's generally cheaper to purchase existing technology than develop it from scratch. That's why you've seen a flood of consolidation in recent years for various industries. The downside is that consolidation usually stifles innovation.
The other issue it MS isn't just buying the IP, they're buying a brand. In the case of Yahoo it's one of the most noticeable and successful brands in the world. Nortel, despite their woes, is still the most recognizable name in the telecom industry. In both cases, the brand is worth a lot.