It’s a Buying Frenzy!

By Mark Evans | Published: August 13, 2008

After sitting on the M&A sidelines for nearly three years, the deals are coming fast and furious for Nortel.

Nortel said today it has purchased the PingTel business from Bluesocket Inc. for an undisclosed amount. According to PingTel’s Web site, it is “reshaping the communications market by delivering the first enterprise-grade SIP PBX based on 100% SIP and 100% open source software”.

“This acquisition is another building block in Nortel’s vision to be a software-centric company and the leading provider of unified communications solutions,” David Downing, general manager, Enterprise and SMB Communications Systems, Nortel, said in a press release. “We believe that bringing Pingtel’s critical R&D capabilities in-house will enable us to further develop software-based solutions that go beyond the boundaries of our previous OEM relationship. We expect that this will enable Nortel to accelerate the development of new IT-centric channels to market.”

Nortel’s acquisition of PingTel, which is already a Nortel OEM partner, comes a year after Bluesocket bought PingTel as a way to move into deeper into the VoIP market from its roots as a WiFi controller vendor.

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  • former software developer @ nt

    Critical R&D capabilities? Is that what's been missing at NT all these years?
    And now they finally got around to acquiring those capabilities?
    Please!
    NT had R&D coming out of their ears. Still probably has more than it can chew on. It has so much in fact that it's been letting go (layoffs or otherwise) of so many. Many who are still there are sitting on their hands, operating in a “wait and see” mode. How else would you operate with the kind of visibility into the future? What am i talking about and why do R&D engineers need visibility? Most would like to work on something they know will not be canned in 6 months, that's what i mean.
    Anyways, I'm glad they are making an investment into open source. At least this one isn't likely to all go to waste like so many other efforts, assuming they keep it opensource and in the event they cancel it community will take over.

  • Anonymous

    So BlueSocket needed cash and Nortel raided the poor box for a few pennies….whoo-hoo someone pop a cork! I mean really, if BlueSocket could afford it a year ago, how big could Pingtel be? What's the Hot Pocket to Nortel stock conversion?

    To all Nortel customers, the end is near. Pingtel's application SIP-based VoIP, call center, and presence will scale to 10s of thousands of users in months. Why buy that 35-year-old Meridian-based junk? You'll just have to forklift it later for the Pingtel solution.

    That sound you hear is the sound of CS1000 code being abandoned and proprietary hardware rusting.

  • Anonymous

    So BlueSocket needed cash and Nortel raided the poor box for a few pennies….whoo-hoo someone pop a cork! I mean really, if BlueSocket could afford it a year ago, how big could Pingtel be? What's the Hot Pocket to Nortel stock conversion?

    To all Nortel customers, the end is near. Pingtel's application SIP-based VoIP, call center, and presence will scale to 10s of thousands of users in months. Why buy that 35-year-old Meridian-based junk? You'll just have to forklift it later for the Pingtel solution.

    That sound you hear is the sound of CS1000 code being abandoned and proprietary hardware rusting.

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