Nortel/GENBAND Update
As the recession tightened its grip on the world in January 2009, news hit that the telecom industry giant, Nortel, had filed for bankruptcy. In December of that year, Nortel announced that GENBAND, a provider of high–performance gateway solutions, entered a bid to acquire “substantially all” of Nortel’s Carrier VoIP and Application Solutions (CVAS) assets, which are a logical extension of the services GENBAND already offers. The bid attained first-round approvals by March 2010 in the Canadian and U.S. courts, with only a few more formalities before the acquisition is finalized.
Now, we can all rest a little easier knowing that the highly prized and widely implemented technology isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future. Instead of phasing it out and forcing users of Nortel CVAS solutions to transition to other technology, GENBAND plans to integrate it with their current models and to continue supporting it. Though under a different name, Nortel’s CVAS technology will live on.
The assets in this category are some of the most widely deployed. Nortel has shipped “more than 121 million Carrier VoIP and Multimedia ports” and has been “consistently ranked as the #1 Global Carrier VoIP and Softswitch leader since 2002,” providing VoIP solutions to 80% of IDC’s worldwide listing of top 20 carriers (by revenue). The biggest U.S. carriers have numerous CS2000 softswitches residing at the core of their networks, and Nortel CVAS products form the network backbone of numerous U.S. government organizations.
As a sigh of relief sweeps across those who waited with bated breath throughout the process, many bask in the glow of a deal gone well. At Cypress, we are proud to leverage the CS2000 softswitch at the core of our C4 IP hosted unified communications platform. A viable and trusted platform, the CS2000 provides users with advanced call handling and supports feature-intensive applications such as multiple lines appearance and intercom. As a hosted solution, Cypress owns the technology, so our customers avoid capital expenses. Cypress maintains the CS2000 and all of the other C4 IP components, as well as a private IP network, so our customers can focus on their own businesses. At Cypress, we take care of it all—from the network to the phone on each desk—so our customers can connect, communicate, collaborate and continue® working productively, no matter what.
