Nortel's "feel-good marketing move" for Pingtel
Last week Nortel announced the acquisition of open-source VoIP provider, Pingtel. If you hadn't heard of Pingtel before the acquisition news, you're not alone. The company has actually been around for a long time, but has failed to make a strong imprint on the industry.
I'm therefore in the same camp as Garrett Smith in believing that there's not a lot of substance to the acquisition:
- This news is not big - The old guard has been getting in bed with IP PBX providers and open source projects in the space for the last two years. This is nothing new
- This is a cost cutting move - If you notice Nortel had a preexisting OEM relationship with Pingtel. Buying them will lower their costs because they are no longer paying the associated fees to Pingtel
- There is little value to be extracted out of the open source community [with which] Pingtel is associated - If anything, this is a feel good marketing move. Sure there have been 300 features improvements out of SIPfoundry, but what has been the net increase in profits - because at Nortel's level that is what it is all about.
I could not agree more. It's likely much like the Lineo sale to Motorola/Metrowerks with which I was involved: it wasn't a Zimbra-like acquisition of $300 million or more. It was the only viable outcome for a company that had not lived up to its potential.
In short, I don't believe the Pingtel acquisition points to the success of the open-source model, but rather suggests caution in the assumption that open source covers a multitude of poor business decisions. It doesn't. It exacerbates them.
On the other hand, it can amplify sound strategic business decisions.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.






See http://blog.tmcnet.com/the-hyperconnected-enterprise/unified-communications/nortel-opens-up-to-pingtel.asp
Is Pingtel like the cursed corner restaurant that keeps opening and closing under a new name?
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by tristanbob
August 18, 2008 10:08 PM PDT
- I also wanted to point out that Bill Miller from Digium just posted an excellent rebuttal to the post by Tony. You can find Bill's detailed response in a comment to this post:
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