Credit: Silicon Alley Insider, Jan. 14, 2009:

"Telecom gear maker Nortel's (NT) downward spiral continues: The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware today. Nortel owes companies more than $3.8 billion, according to court filings, the WSJ notes.

What happened to Nortel? The company hired former Motorola exec Mike Zafirovski more than three years ago to turn things around after a huge accounting and management mess.

But since then, Nortel has fumbled, focusing at different times on wireless equipment, large-scale ethernet buildouts, office phones -- including a high profile partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) that seems to have led nowhere, etc.

More recently, Nortel's telecom carrier customers have cut spending as the economy has soured. And asset sales haven't worked out as planned."

Check out the whole article from Yahoo Finance here.

 

Chris' take:

We all saw this coming, Nortel's stock price has been plummeting over the last 2 years and they are a dinosaur in the telecom world that has failed to innovate and provide 21st century products.  We even commented on Nortel's problems and their shaky alliance with Microsoft back in March on this posting.

Unfortunately, this is a trend for many of the telecom giants from the 80's and 90's.  The current economic conditions may hasten this process for many companies already walking the financial tightrope. 

Network World has posted an article about the ShoreTel 8 release that was reported here back in April. The article gives an overview of the new ShoreGear switches and Personal Call Manager software. You can find some of it below and the remainder here.

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

ShoreTel earlier this week announced several software and hardware upgrades and two new voice switches. Included in the announcement are enhancements to the ShoreWare Call Manager product line, more open interfaces for integration, and adds two new voice switches: the ShoreGear 24A and the ShoreGear 30.

The ShoreWare Personal Call Manager has been upgraded to provide more intuitive interfaces. Added features include an integrated client user interface with a main display for calling features and tabs for messages and history; simplified access to features designed to be easier to use and find; quick and easy dialing with exchange and phone directory along with just in time telephony presence; and a simplified, single-level user interface with personal and advanced merged options.

The ShoreWare Professional Call Manager has added improvements to its basic voice communications and it now provides automatic and on-demand video communications. The Instant Messaging interface upgrades include easy sidebar conversations; on the phone communications; and interfaces for a third party presence server. The unified communications suite has added improved call control, video calling and IM access and a rich presence integration; the suite now also supports a softphone

Credit: Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet.com

Improved collaboration and connectivity between Windows PCs and cell phones is going to get a major shot in the arm with Windows 7, according to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

During a speech for members of the Windows Digital Lifestyle Consortium in Tokyo last week, Gates referred a few times to Windows 7, the next version of Windows which Microsoft has said will ship in 2010. Gates highlighted improvements to Windows 7’s lower power and memory requirements that are in the works. But he also played up extensively during his speech the new connectivity between mobile phones and Windows which will be introduced as part of the release.

From a transcript of Gates’ remarks:

“We’re hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I’m very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don’t have a lot of work to move that data back and forth.”

The file synchronization capability to which Gates refers is the Live Mesh collaboration/synchronization platform/service which Microsoft recently unveiled. But Gates made it sound like there’s something beyond Mesh that could be in the works for Windows 7. Again, from the transcript:

“We’re also a participant in building software for the mobile phones, and our proposition is to build a great mobile operating system, but also to have it be the one that connects best to the Windows PCs. So we’re working hard on both of those things…

“For a customer there are going to be phones with larger screens, and PCs with smaller screens. In fact, there will be even an overlap, but I think the key for us is to drive all the applications, and let the user move easily back and forth. Our best customers are going to have a great mobile phone, and they’re going to have a great personal computer. And if we don’t make those scenarios work well together, that will hold back both of those markets.”

Gates also told the audience that Microsoft is going to deliver a “major new version of Windows” every two to three years. (A caveat: Gates also said not too long ago that Microsoft would deliver a new version of Internet Explorer every 9 to 12 months. IE 7 shipped in October 2006; we’re still only at Beta 1 for IE 8.)

What’s your take? What kinds of new features in Windows 7 — and Windows Mobile 7, allegedly due out in 2009 — might improve PC-to-mobile connectivity and what kinds of applications/services would benefit?

Credit: NetworkWorld.com

Here's an update to yesterday's post, it looks like Microsoft jumped the gun a little on SP3 for Windows XP.

Wired.com is reporting that the update encountered some issues with Microsoft's Dynamic Retail Application System and had to be pulled off the website. The report also states

The third service pack update for Windows XP has arrived today and is available for download on Microsoft's website. Many corporations are still very much behind Windows XP as Vista has proven to be a big disappointment for the business user. This newest service pack provides those users (and admins) with performance updates, security updates and hotfixes that have been released since the Service Pack 2 in August 2004.

Microsoft has formed some aggressive partnerships with several communication system developers in the last 12 months that have some people scratching their heads wondering where this is going. Both Mitel and Nortel have developed "strategic" partnerships and integrations with Microsoft to bring unified communications and presence applications to their customers. The applications developed through these partnerships are not the issue at hand, the questions surrounding these partnerships center on Microsoft's actual intentions.