By Sharla Sikes

Small and medium-sized businesses are the target customer for Nortel and IBM’s new unified communications joint project. Nortel will supply the multimedia and telephony, IBM the soft- and hardware. The expected availability date for the collaboration is October 2007. No pricing has been announced.

The new system will “effectively converts the System i operating system into an IP private branch exchange,” said Lori McLean, general manager of the Nortel-IBM alliance. “The integrated solution makes the move to IP telephony along with unified communications as easy as a software upgrade on IBM System i.”

Consolidating business software and communications may appeal to many smaller offices that want to run only a single system.

“Combined with Nortel’s unified communications technology, the simplicity of System i allows small and medium-sized clients to take advantage of IP Telephony in an accessible form that also delivers rich functionality,” said Mark Shearer, general manager, IBM System i. “The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution will be designed to run the business processing and real-time collaboration needs of a small or medium-sized business simultaneously with IP telephony on a single system, so IT employees can focus on the business, not managing technology.”

Instant messaging, click-to-call, e-mail, voice mail, video conferencing and presence information are all part and parcel of these unified communications packages, making them attractive.

Unfortunately, such systems may be complicated, and can increase the load on overworked IT professionals at small and medium-sized businesses—which would outweigh the benefits, namely cost and efficiency. Still, consolidation is the name of the game, with business owners looking for systems that can multitask to the nth degree.

3Com www.3com.com has also recently begun offering VoIP and “other applications” for IBM’s System i.

The System i is relatively inexpensive as servers go, making it a viable solution for a medium-sized business’ needs. 3Com and Nortel’s packages make switching to VoIP even more attractive to businesses, a reflection of the growing popularity of the service over traditional phone service.

McLean said Nortel’s IP telephony products offer advantages such as ease of deployment and the ability to “scale dramatically” to fit the company’s needs.

A Yankee Group Research analyst, Zeus Kerravala, warned that both 3Com’s and Nortel’s products are better suited for small businesses, since “larger ones wouldn’t want to combine VOIP and systems servers.”

He said the newly announced Nortel offering “in theory” should do well, although a similar offering has not been that effective for 3Com so far.

 

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