Clarity is emerging. Over the past
several years, the convergence of
telecommunications with IT tech-
nologies has too often left CIOs and
IT decision-makers feeling reactive
to what have been characterized as
\u201cparadigm shifts\u201d in the industry. The
amount of research energy required to
make fundamental strategic decisions in
an environment of mixed messages and
competing technologies has placed
an extraordinary burden on already
stretched IT resources. Recently,

As enterprises compare and contrast
their partnership options, four clear
lines have been drawn between Nortel
and Cisco. By highlighting key differ-
ences in the strategic direction between
the two suppliers, IT strategists can now
more readily evaluate which vendor is
in the best position to help them align
IT investments with their business
strategies. Consider the contrasting
approaches (Figure 1.)

investment with a single vendor,
network-centric environment, or
that leverages an open application
ecosystem and network simplification.

Best fit into desktop environment and total cost of ownership: single client vs. multiple clients.

near-real-time communications (email, voicemail, short message services) into a single environment, whether at the employee\u2019s desktop or when mobile on

private and public networks. Native
client integration with directories,
email, calendaring, and other desktop
applications simplifies life for both the
user and IT. Unified Communications
integration with desktop applications

Communications Alliance (ICA), a
single Unified Communications Office
Communicator client, working into
Live Communications Server, extends
the user experience by providing design
integration with desktop applications
such as Office and Outlook, under

Microsoft announced their multi-year
joint solution roadmap and dozens of
joint customers including Shell and BT.

As part of the Nortel-IBM alliance,
Nortel is committed to fit into the
desktop environment of another global
desktop leader. For example, Nortel
recently demonstrated Sametime client
integration with the Communication
Server 1000 IP PBX, while launching
the Nortel Multimedia Client for IBM
Lotus Notes for its leading MCS 5100
multimedia solution. In addition to

desktops, Nortel will continue to offer
its own rich Unified Communications
client for PCs, laptops and BlackBerries
in order to provide more choices and
flexibility for our customers.

Cisco requires two clients (their own
and Microsoft Office Communicator)
for mobile users when interoperating
with Live Communication Server,
adding complexity and cost.

Vendor choice and flexibility in
rolling out IP Telephony and Unified
Communications applications.

Unified Communications is becoming
a software application that can be
integrated into business applications to
eliminate human delays. Enterprises
have already invested billions of dollars
in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA),
an industry standard realized through
solutions such as Microsoft\u2019s .Net
and IBM\u2019s Websphere. In this way,
Microsoft's and IBM\u2019s ecosystems of
millions of developers can be leveraged
to deliver communications-enabled
business processes and accelerate the
transformation of the enterprise.

Truly integrated Unified
Communications client
approach via Microsoft and
IBM partnerships

Application-aware sub-second
failover avoiding costly
interruption

Simplified Provider Backbone
Transport (PBT) Ethernet-based
architectures

Desktop integration
Application architecture
Real-time application

Cisco desktop client and
Office Communicator client
required in LCS environments

Network-centric architecture
based on SONA with required
linkage to Cisco network

Vendor choice and flexibility in
rolling out Unified Communi-
cations and communications-
enabled applications

User satisfaction and
avoidance of downtime
costs

\u201cIntegration, integration, integration. Our users were already used to the Microsoft email and messaging clients. Cisco has its own client software, and it would have been a big change. Cisco says you can integrate their solution with Microsoft, but it still would have been a headache for my IT guys. And like they say, 'Time is money.\u2019\u201d

Nortel has fully embraced SOA for
employee and customer-facing environ-
ments as the best fit into our customers\u2019
IT infrastructures. In fact, Nortel is
already a leader in leveraging SOA in its
SIP-enabled Contact Center solution.
SOA will also add value to Nortel\u2019s suite
of secure networking solutions through
dynamic identity, policy, context and
security management. Finally, as
Nortel's Communication Server 1000
IP-PBX becomes available on HP and
IBM servers, Nortel\u2019s SOA-based appli-
cations approach provides a truly open
and flexible application architecture.

Cisco\u2019s proprietary network-centric
SONA strategy, while confusing to
many analysts who question Cisco\u2019s
ability to execute, seems to put them
on a collision course with IBM and
Microsoft and, more importantly,
with customers who have invested
heavily in SOA frameworks. Equally

limiting, Cisco only supports applica-
tions such as IP Telephony and Unified
Communications when connected to
Cisco data networks.

In addition to network intelligence
to optimally support time-critical
applications, the network must be
able to recover from failures very
quickly while minimizing packet loss.
Sub-second recovery is required to make
failures virtually transparent to users.

Nortel addresses these requirements
through its comprehensive application-
aware networking portfolio. This

includes Power over Ethernet (PoE)
switches that offer up to 11X improve-
ment in price/performance compared
to Cisco. In the head office and
regional office environments, Nortel\u2019s
switch clustering technology leverages

link failures whether in the wiring
closet, aggregation or core layers of the
campus network. This architecture
dynamically load balances traffic across
multiple links and across multiple
switches without manual intervention.
When a link failure is detected, the
traffic is automatically distributed in
sub-second speeds across the remaining
links. Very importantly, the network
investment is used all the time. This
proof point has been certified through
independent Tolly Group testing.

Cisco\u2019s campus architecture, based
on manually configured per VLAN
multiple rapid spanning trees, is
complex to administer, does not
provide dynamic load balancing, is

Enterprises need to simplify their opera-
tional environments in order to free up
resources to leverage transformational
opportunities. Up until recently, service

Fabbi says he\u2019s disappointed with SONA and remains skeptical about whether Cisco\u2019s products actually incorporate the ability to provide application intelligence.\u201d

\u201cNortel\u2019s solution\u2026 recovers from link and switch outages
almost 10x faster using Nortel\u2019s SMLT implementation than
the RSTP implementation in the Cisco Catalysts solution.\u201d

evaluation of Nortel ERS 5000 vs. Cisco, Jan 2006; and
Report 207171 on their evaluation of ERS for real-time
traffic with LCS (February 2007)