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One of the largest VoIP deployments has to be Nortel's (News - Alert) 10-year, $300 million dollar win with the US Social Security Administration, which will support fifty-five thousand virtual workers and baby boomers worldwide.

Nortel has had a number of DoD wins recently and part of the reason for this is due to the timing of a test network the Canadian telecom giant had at the DoD when a major network outage occurred about seven years ago. Apparently, Nortel's network was the most resilient and stayed up while others did not. Since then, the company has been doing well supplying myriad government solutions.

In an interview, Wes Durow, Nortel's vice president of enterprise solutions global product marketing, discussed the fact that the company refreshed the entire Bay Networks line (the data networking division) about seven months back. At the same time, the company was getting customer requests to develop more energy-efficient solutions.

Now Durow proudly tells me the company's data products are much more resilient, have better performance and are extremely energy-efficient.

According to Durow, “You can upgrade your data network and pay for VoIP with your energy savings.”

This is all good news and Durow said candidly that companies do not buy products for the sake of being ‘green’ but instead for the energy efficiency. I get the feeling he is right on with this comment. I just can't imagine the head of IT going into a management meeting, saying I think throwing away our old network is the green thing to do, and keeping her/his job.

Durow went on to say there has been a great deal of activity in the company’s telepresence sales. It has partnered with Tandberg and Polycom (News - Alert), companies that supply some of the most open solutions on the market.

Durow said Nortel offers a suite of products that extend mobility, referred to as ‘unified mobile convergence.’ The solutions have native Microsoft and IBM UC connectivity and they further allow access to IP PBX features from the cell phone, preventing dropped calls when moving between WiFi (News - Alert) zones.

 
We can also expect Nortel to get more active in the developer arena. This is good news for customers.