Nortel announced some big things this week. I was lucky enough to spend some time with Paul Templeton, GM, Enterprise Voice and Sanjeev Gupta director of Nortel's Ethernet business.

 

Among the things we spoke about was a new version (Release 5) of the CS 1000, which is designed to provide improved reliability and redundancy, enhanced network and voice call security and new E911 capabilities, This new release will deliver unified communications capabilities as part of the Innovative Communications Alliance with Microsoft that was announced last year and built upon this past January.

 

A key feature of the new release is that it will be offered on industry standard hardware platforms such as those offered by IBM and other suppliers.

 

Additionally Nortel announced a new release of the Multimedia Communication Server (MCS) 5100. With this new release, Nortel hopes to improve users’ productivity by offering integration of telephony and multimedia applications within IBM Lotus Notes. The revamped MCS 5100 also features improved and simplified collaboration capabilities and enhanced mobility capabilities designed to provide a rich communications experience for mobile workers. The new MCS 5100 release also introduces support for new SIP-based IP phones.

 

Nortel also announced a new family of Ethernet routing switches designed for businesses that are migrating to VoIP and unified communications. According to Nortel, the new Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 2500 and ERS 4500 “...provide the foundation of a unified communications solution by enabling enterprise local area networks (LANs) to intelligently prioritize real-time business communications like voice, video, and multimedia services.”