Russo takes the chair

In the foregone conclusion department, Pat Russo has been tapped Lucent chairman, replacing Henry Schacht, who never wanted the job in the first place.

In the foregone conclusion department, Pat Russo has been tapped Lucent chairman, replacing Henry Schacht, who agreed to the job on an interim basis. Schacht, as you recall, was yanked away from Avaya in the fall of 2000 to try to clean up the mess left by CEO Rich McGinn. Interim CEO Schacht then pulled ex-Lucent executive Russo away from Kodak a year ago to run things as president and CEO, while he served as interim chairman for a year. Time’s up… (Read the story)

In the never-ending stream of vendor demand-creation schemes, Nortel is the latest to divulge a grandiose plan to enable service providers – and Nortel – to make money. Nortel unveiled Succession Services, a suite of prepacked packet telephony services hosted on Nortel softswitches that carriers can offer as managed bundled services to enterprises. Kind of like slicing the bread before packaging it so the consumer won’t have to figure out how not to eat the whole loaf. Nortel hopes Succession Services will help vault the company past the $2 billion-worth-of-voice-over-packet-contracts figure it’s been trumpeting for about 18 months now. Like bread, it’s getting stale… (Read the story)

Speaking of voice-over-packet and demand creation, Sonus has a new use for its media gateway: mobile wireless switching. Sonus unveiled software for its GSX 9000 gateway that support two wireless protocols. Two equals four in this case: The new software allows operators to deploy the GSX 9000 in any of four mobile switching applications. The software is also designed to entice operators to packetize voice ASAP… (Read the story)