June 22, 2009

For more information:

Camille Beasley                        Greta Brown

972-684-2577                        +44-(0)1628-432968

camillbe@nortel.com                 gretab@nortel.com

Nortel Establishes New Industry Paradigm for Simple, Open Unified Communications

Delivers Best in Ease of Use, Capabilities, and Openness with New-to-Market Software Communication System

TORONTO – Prompted by strong demand from customers and partners, Nortel* [TSX: NT | OTC: NRTLQ], is bringing the Software Communication System (SCS) to the enterprise, extending it beyond small and medium-size businesses. Adding management simplicity, new applications, further plug-and-play interoperability and more opportunities for third-party development communities; SCS provides customers with unprecedented choice and customization, for a competitive edge. 

Many corporate communications systems are strained to support businesses in today’s global economy. The number of touch-points, stakeholder communities, and the speed required for making decisions is greater than ever. Traditional lines between communications functions and IT are also blending and offering new opportunities to improve productivity and better serve customers.

Responding to this trend, many businesses are departing from PBX systems of the past and turning to SCS, a unified communications (UC) software solution, based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the standard for universal communications and interoperability. With SCS, businesses can converge all of their communications into a centralized, easy-to-install, manage-and-use solution that can integrate seamlessly into an existing IT environment with open Web-based interfaces.

"Many of our customers are moving to open standards based, software solutions and away from traditional proprietary systems. Having choices in the components that they can use helps them to maintain vendor independence and prevents them from being locked into higher-priced proprietary configurations," said Gary Scroggs, Managing Partner, Innovational IP Solutions, a Nortel partner and Washington state-based company specializing in the development of low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) VoIP solutions.

With Release 3.0 SCS, now extends support to industry-standard platforms from IBM, Dell and HP including IBM Power Systems and System i, Dell Optiplex, and HP Proliant DL360 as well as the recently announced IBM x3350 and Dell PowerEdge R300. In addition to the supported platform expansion, the rapidly growing Nortel SCS Developer Program also offers dozens of interoperable third-party products such as desktop phones; soft phones; gateways; IP consoles; applications like call recording and call accounting; wireless mobility solutions; and much more.

Release 3.0 has also evolved to scale from small and medium-size businesses all the way up to large, distributed enterprise networks. Installation, use and administration remain simple to help businesses avoid outsourcing expenses by enabling them to add new users and make other changes in-house.

“The ability to customize Nortel SCS quickly and cost effectively has allowed us to dramatically improve our customer service,” says Joshua Van Buskirk, Technology Evangelist, PFW Systems Corporation, a leading provider of Dealership Management Systems throughout North America. PFW is both a Nortel SCS partner and customer.

Van Buskirk added, “We’ve developed an application (PFW VoIPLink) to integrate with Nortel SCS so our dealership customers have all the relevant details on their customers before a representative even answers the call. We believe in the benefits provided by VoIPLink, so we also use it internally to better serve our own customers – the Dealers themselves.”

SCS also offers transparent pricing with an ‘all-in-one’ approach. A base user license includes all applications like voicemail and unified messaging, integrated voice conferencing, secure presence and instant messaging, desktop-based video conferencing, single number reachability, an ‘informal’ call center, and integration with Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes and Sametime.  

“Nortel SCS had the best solution with an inclusive pricing approach that was cost effective and easy to understand and provided the best overall value. Even though other vendors had what they called ‘open-standard’ solutions, they weren’t nearly as open as the Nortel SCS solution,” George Kupka, director of Information Technology, Easter Seals, a leading non-profit provider.

By using SCS, businesses can further reduce costs and see compelling return on their investment (ROI) as it allows them to eliminate or cut back on the expenses related to outsourced conferencing fees, calling card and second line costs for teleworkers, real estate costs, and legacy PBX maintenance charges.

“We did our homework, and Nortel SCS was simply the best return on our investment,” said Erick Wentlandt, director of Information Technologies, Tax Technologies Inc., a New Jersey-based provider of solutions for corporate tax departments. “We’re saving close to $40,000 per year with an ROI of less than 13 months.”

Further, preliminary research by Info-Tech Research Group has found that the three-year TCO of Nortel’s SCS solution is much lower than similar offerings from competitors.

Nortel SCS was named a TMC 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award. SCS was also a recipient of the 2008 Product of the Year Award from Unified Communications Magazine.

SCS was developed in collaboration with Nortel and the open source community within the SIPfoundry project, sipXecs. Nortel continues to support the sipXecs open source initiative as the primary developer, and maintains a close relationship with developers and end users to evolve the SCS solution to better meet our customer needs.

For more information on Nortel SCS, please visit www.nortel.com/scs

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as “could”, “expects”, “may”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “intends”, “estimates”, ”targets”, “envisions”, “seeks” and other similar language and are considered forward-looking statements or information under applicable securities legislation. These statements are based on Nortel’s current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict and the actual outcome may be materially different from those contemplated in forward-looking statements. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel’s Annual Report on Form10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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