Nortel to offer UC solution for Indian SMBs

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Nortel to offer UC solution for Indian SMBs

Canada-based telecom major banks on new strategies to tap the SMB market in the country

Gagandeep Kaur

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Canadian telecommunications giant, Nortel is focusing on a slew of strategies to garner the maximum share of the SMB pie in the country.

While earlier the company was mostly focused on the hi-end part of the segment, this is no longer the case as it comes out with SMB-specific products and strategies.

"Since the middle of the last year, we are aggressively targeting the SMB segment. We are looking at voice as well as data part of this arena," says managing director of Nortel, Hitesh Lokhandwala.

Keeping the focus on SMB in mind, the company would be coming out with Unified Communications solution for SMB, Software Communication System (SCS) 500.

"SCS 500 has been specifically designed for SMB customers from 30 to 500+ users. It offers telephony, messaging and collaborative applications on an open SIP-based platform. It is an ideal PBX replacement, or as an infrastructure enhancement that provides incremental multimedia functionality. It also meets our SMB customers hyperconnectivity challenges by getting them on the right path to UC," Lokhandwala said.

The company is also increasingly moving towards solution selling instead of product or application selling.

Nortel has also started bundling bandwidth with its products, specifically for SMBs. Though Nortel has already launched hosted services to SMBs, it is facing some issues like last mile connectivity.

The availability of bandwidth is also an issue. It was with the intention of focusing on the SMB segment that Nortel had tied up with LG about two years back.

Also read: Nortel saves $12-mn with UC

The joint venture between the two companies combines LG's capabilities in research and development with Nortel's experience in global marketing.

"We offer one-stop solution for SMBs. Today we have around 300 enforced partners in the country. We have also trained 2000 engineers of the SMB segment. We have also introduced financing options for SMBs through ICICI Bank," Lokhandwala said.

The demand of the SMB segment is fast changing with the enterprises looking at affordable solutions from a single vendor.

Nortel is a big proponent of environmental friendly products and believes that it is a big differentiating factor where its products are concerned.

"Recently, we did testing through the Tolly Group and found out that our products, specifically Ethernet Router Switches consume much lower power than the ones available in the market. On an average, our products consume 39 to 50% less power than the ones available in the market. The CIOs today are not just looking at the cost of the product but also the complete OPEX cost and it is here that our products score over the ones available in the market. All our products are Restriction of Hazardous Substance (ROHS) compliant, which is an EU standard and are environmental friendly," Lokhandwala stressed.

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