Customers Continue to Switch to Nortel for Data Network Performance and Economics

Enterprise customers moving toward unified communications are increasingly recognizing the competitive benefits of Nortel's(1) (TSX: NT)(NYSE: NT) data solutions - proven by independent analysts to offer better performance and resiliency, improved energy efficiency and the best value in the industry. More than 50 recent global wins with customers choosing Nortel data solutions underscore the point that many enterprises are no longer satisfied with the performance of their incumbent supplier.

Unified communications bring order to the complexity of today's communications, effectively increasing the velocity of business. Enterprises wanting to leverage the benefits of unified communications require a data network foundation purpose-built to benefit from the business process improvements afforded by new services and applications such as VoIP, video and other real-time communications. Without the depth of network understanding Nortel brings, these services can degrade dramatically from latency caused by poor legacy network performance. For a list of customers who are trusting Nortel data solutions, please click here .

Recent independent testing from the Tolly Group and InfoTech proves that Nortel energy efficient data center solutions offer 20 times the performance, are seven times as resilient and offer up to 50 percent less energy consumption as compared to competitive offerings. The report was based on a test of a competitor's similar data center equipment in a shoot-out test regimen. (See related announcement, Better, Faster, More Energy Efficient, Nortel Redefines the Data Center ).

"We collaborated with Nortel to build a 'business optimized network' across our four campuses and two academic centers," said Carl Stokes, IT director, City University, London. "We chose Nortel based on their ability to refresh our aging network with a highly resilient, scalable, and secure design that was optimized to support our critical voice, video and data applications. Nortel provided us a high-performance data infrastructure that delivers the applications and services we depend on."

Nortel data solutions are designed to be deployed in an end-to-end fashion or to perform in a multi-vendor environment, offering flexible deployment options. Customers are recognizing there is a clear alternative to restrictive, proprietary systems that are expensive, offer compromised performance and are not compatible with similar equipment from other vendors - effectively locking customers into a poorly-performing infrastructure limited in ability to support unified communications. Unified communications mitigate the chaos of business communications, bringing the ability to contact the right person at the right time via the right device. However, without a strong data network foundation, enterprises will not be able to take advantage of the benefits the technology has to offer.

"Customers are increasingly selecting Nortel as they look to replace their legacy, proprietary data networks that are expensive and offer performance ill-suited to support the move to unified communications," said Joel Hackney , president, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel. "Unified communications injects speed and simplicity into business communications, bringing the ability to contact the right person at the right time via the right device. With a data network purpose-built for unified communications companies can experience dramatic productivity gains and a return on their investment in as little as six months."

Customers from all segments are turning to Nortel to deliver data solutions that enable unified communications.

"Nortel's data networking solution has delivered superior service to our tenants without requiring further investment in their own network equipment and services," said Dale Dennis, vice president, Information Technology for Camana Bay, a luxury residential and business development on Grand Cayman. "This has allowed for increased profitability and a reduction in their ongoing network operating expenses. The flexibility and scalability of the Nortel solution was really what made us want to work with them over any other vendor we were considering."

"At i-flex, we needed an end-to-end IP telephony as well a unified communications solution for our campus in Mumbai," said M. Ravi Kumar, vice president, IT, i-flex solutions, Ltd., based in India. "Both these applications need a stable and scalable data network and Nortel was able to demonstrate the superiority of its data solution in terms of superior redundancy and higher throughput at the core. This is the reason we chose Nortel."

"Nortel formulated an all-encompassing custom package for the University that included staff training, project management assistance and ongoing support arrangements. These extras put Nortel well above its competitors and made us very comfortable with our decision," said Michael Firsdon, Network Engineering team lead, The University of Toledo. "Another factor included costs savings on electrical consumption alone. This, combined with ease of configuration, time tested resiliency capabilities, and absence of code security issues commonly found in other vendor products provided a compelling case for making a switch from the University's incumbent vendor."