IBM, Nortel Power Up VOIP Apps

Nortel and IBM on April 2 announced that they plan to extend their integrated suite of voice over IP and multimedia applications to IBM’s new Power System server platform.

An updated version of Nortel’s Software Communications System, which integrates IP PBX and unified communications functions with IBM’s Lotus Sametime, Lotus Notes and Domino collaboration capabilities, will move beyond its roots as a point product for the System i to run across IBM’s full portfolio of servers, including the Power Systems as well as IBM System x and Power Blades.

The suite, designed specifically for SMBs (small and midsize businesses) with between 30 and 500 employees, allows customers to exploit the reliability, scale and fast processing of IBM’s new Power Systems for their VOIP applications.

“Power Systems are the most available, reliable real-time processing platforms in the world. While business applications are transaction-centric or document-centric, communications is human-centric and it requires real-time processing. That is why this is a marriage made in heaven,” said Lori McLean, general manager of the Nortel/IBM Alliance in Toronto.

The Nortel Software Communications System on the Power Systems runs in a separate partition, so that it doesn’t have to compete for processing power with the four or five other applications SMBs typically run on their systems. “That allows us to do real-time collaboration,” said Richard Solosky, IBM Alliance global product marketing director at Nortel, in Boston.

Nortel designed the open-source SCS to be simple to operate and use. The second release of the software incorporates additional ease-of-use features based on customer feedback.

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