There has been a rumor prevalent over the UCStrategies UC Summit since the first evening keynote. Mark Straton, an exec from Siemens, let slip that the OpenScape UC division might be sold and subtly hinted that Nortel might be the prospective buyer. There's more info and a full video of the keynote from my take on the event and John Furrier's opinion.
The big takeaway is what does this mean for Microsoft? Nortel and Microsoft have been going to market together with a pretty good story. If Nortel acquires OpenScape, which btw isn't a hafl bad platform, they'd be in a position to go to market alone with an end to end solution leaving Microsoft without a proven voice partner which could be a serious blow to their UC strategy.
Alex Lewis has been involved in the high tech industry for more than 15 years, from satellite antenna design to to executive IT management. He has been a co-author or contributing author for books on Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Windows 2003 R2 and Microsoft Technical Specialist Exam Guides. Alex is a senior consultant at Convergent Computing, an IT consulting firm specializing in Microsoft technologies. Alex is involved in many early adopter and TAP programs, working with new technology often 2-3 years before public release. Alex is also a CISSP and leads Convergent's Security and Unified Messaging practices in the field.
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I didn't hear the hint
Alex, I listened to the keynote video and I did not hear Mark specifically indicate that OpenScape is for sale. He mentioned industry consolidation and said Siemens would have an announcement in 60 days, then added shortly afterward that Siemens will be one of the top 3 UC vendors in the future, along with IBM and Microsoft. I'm assuming the vendor he didn't mention -- the one allegedly missing the software and services boat -- was Cisco. Nortel's heading towards becoming a Microsoft reseller and integrator.
Am I missing something? The YouTube clip is only 10 minutes long... does he say something afterward?
Thanks!
Jim, you're right in that he
Jim, you're right in that he didn't come out and say it. I doubt he'd still be employed if he had. However he certainly alluded to it both in the keynote and throughout the evening at the conference. I would be surprised if we don't hear something from them in the next 2-3 months on this.