Disruptive Telephony

When I think of "disruptive" actions in our industry, I personally don't ever tend to think of Verizon (well, I do think of them in terms of disrupting GSM service in Vermont, but that's a different post I need to write). But yesterday, Verizon issued a news release that I think bears reading: "Verizon Business Adds New Option to Simplify Move to IP". Essentially it amounts to the fact that Verizon will be offering "large-business" and government customers the option of having their IP-PBX hosted in Verizon's cloud. From a technical point of view, it's basically a hosted offering of Nortel's recent products:

The Nortel-based offerings, leveraging the Nortel Communication Server 1000 IP-PBX, Business Communications Manager and CallPilot platforms, enable advanced voice applications such as "find me, follow me," and integrated communications that allow for multimedia collaboration. They also help companies move to a unified communications platform to simplify and integrate a variety of business communications functions such as voice mail, e-mail and instant messaging. For example, end-users can see who is online, or they can prompt the system to prioritize incoming messages and send alerts to end-user devices. Verizon Business' support for the offering includes full implementation, as well as management of fault, configuration, accounting, performance and security functions.

The release also indicates that Verizon Business has set up close to 5,000 Nortel IP telephony platforms, which is certainly not a number to sneeze at. Now on one level, this isn't a terribly big deal. Verizon already provides all sorts of hosted/managed services to those large and government businesses, but this does mark Verizon's endorsement of hosted VoIP and their expansion into the support of the technology. Interesting move... and a nice win for Nortel as well.

Technorati Tags: voip, verizon, nortel