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Posts tagged BANKRUPTCY
When will it end?
6June 29, 2009
by Michael McNamara in Nortel
Let’s see if there will be any announcements concerning Nortel’s Enterprise division come July 1, 2009.
It certainly seems that Nortel is literally done as all talk of restructuring their debt and emerging from bankruptcy have evaporated and the “everything must go” chant is flying about everywhere.
While it sounds like Nortel’s CDMA business and LTE R&D unit will go to Nokia Siemens pending the completion of the “stalking horse” deal, the jury is still out on Nortel’s Enterprise business although the rumors all point to Avaya as the front runner. If that comes to fruition it will be interesting to see how Avaya plans to transition existing customers away from legacy Nortel products to Avaya products. Or how long they will support the legacy Nortel software and/or equipment before they sunset it.
Is it time to jump ship yet… you might want to check that you have enough lifeboats.
Cheers!
What’s going to happen to Nortel?
21March 29, 2009
It’s quite clear from the poll (included below) that the vast majority of Nortel customers were originally very content to take a “wait and see” approach to the bankruptcy filing. I created that poll on January 15, 2009. It’s now March 29, 2009 more than 90 days later and I get the impression that a lot of folks are really scratching their heads. I would almost be curious to see how many folks have changed their mind in the last 90+ days.
[poll id="4" type="result"]
There are all sorts of rumors around the street these days… everything from a sale to a complete divestiture of the company and it’s assets. While it appears that it’s still business as usual at Nortel (product is readily available, new software releases are being released, support is still responsive) you have to wonder what’s going on and what the end game might look like.
I’ve personally had Brocade (Foundry), Cisco, HP, and Juniper in to discuss their enterprise product offers around LAN/WAN routing/switching. We have quite a few small and large projects that are literally in limbo and I’m not sure how much more uncertainty we (I) as a customer can withstand. I’m curious to what people think today about Nortel?
[poll id="5"]
I’m interested in hearing your comments and/or thoughts?
Cheers!
Nortel files for bankruptcy
2January 14, 2009
by Michael McNamara in Nortel
Yes it is unfortunately true but it’s not the end of the world, not today anyway.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a media frenzy over any company such as I’ve seen with Nortel. All kidding aside I’ve received no fewer than 25 e-mail messages today from folks outside my organization concerning the Nortel news (I won’t even mention how many messages were flying around internally). At first came the trade magazines with their “newsletters” and then came the vendor/reseller solicitations (as if my Nortel network was about to implode by 12:00PM noon if I didn’t contact them).
Just looking over at Network World I spotted approximately 14 stories related to the Nortel bankruptcy. Is there really that much news that we need 14 stories dedicated to the subject?
The real story here… how is Nortel’s current customer base going to react to the news. Is this the beginning of the end for Nortel or will it be the revitalizing step that Nortel needs to finally come out from under the haze that’s been hanging over it since the dot-com bust in 2001.
I’m sure a few folks have taken notice of the current poll on the left side of this page; What vendor would you use for Enterprise LAN/WAN switching if Nortel disappeared tomorrow?
Where do we as customers go from here… as if there wasn’t enough to-do now we need to tackle the larger question of what’s the risk to my organization if I’m using Nortel equipment and if I’m reliant on Nortel support.
It’s obvious that Cisco is the market leader but how’s does Cisco stand up on price and support compared to Hewlett Packard (HP), Juniper, Foundry, etc. These are all questions quite a few of us are going to be struggling with over the next few weeks and months.
Links of interest include;
http://www.nortel.com/corporate/restructuring.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090114.wnortelstaff0114/BNStory/Technology/home
Cheers!
Update: Thursday January 15, 2008
Now that the inital frenzy is over and the sugar kick has worn off Network World is now reporting “Nortel customers staying the course – for now“.
