Microsoft buying Nortel?

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.

• Microsoft
• VoIP / Convergence