Nortel’s Successful Green Campaign

http://www.abiresearch.com/home.jsp

I call conspiracy.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has been ranked at the top of the latest Vendor Matrix released by ABI Research.

IBM and Cisco claimed the second and third spots in the company’s new evaluation of data center equipment vendors’ efforts to improve their performance on energy conservation and environmental issues.

Cisco Systems has been ranked at the top of the latest Vendor Matrix released by ABI Research.

Nortel Networks and Hewlett-Packard (HP) claimed the second and third spots in the company's new evaluation of network switching vendors' internal green initiatives as well as the greenness of their switches.

The Vendor Matrix is an analytical tool developed by ABI Research to provide a clear understanding of vendors' positions in specific markets. Vendors are assessed on the important parameters of "innovation" and "implementation" across several criteria unique to each vendor matrix.

"Nortel, which finished first in the Implementation category, builds the 'greenest' switches, which have been optimized for low power consumption," says ABI Research vice president Stan Schatt.

*sighs*

Ad hominem's are a Nortel specialty. Things never change.

Give someone hurting a few drinks and they will hold back nothing. Seems Proto didn't need much encouragement last night on the Nortel yahoo message board to express his true feelings towards Nortel shareholders.

Proto has an extreme unhealthy dislike for anyone even remotely positive on Nortel and it shows here, but it went to a much different level on the yahoo message board last night.

If i may, I would like to post a link along with his commentary. If you are sensitive about a persons vulgar expression under the influence of alcohol, you may want to stop reading right now. You just can't make these things up. It's the individual themself stripping and stating their true feelings, like a microphone being accidently left on after the interview ended and some unintended comments become embarassingly part of the record:

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_N/threadview?m=te&bn=12906&tid=913644&mid=913644&tof=13&frt=2#913644

10-Sep-08 09:51 pm

posted by,
protospherical1
Sentiment : Strong Sell

Shhhh Message board round campfire chats here... k?

...First throw stupid ugly pumpers into fire for calling us liars, and wanting to buy more... they burn faster than most people, after all they are in their native environment

K,,, next... Nortel is slime ball big business theatrics POS... K?, but with moral majority in opposition, politics must play out... k? zero. now shhhhh... for sure zero... shhhhh now

As for pumpers. look at MG and jack K?

shhhh... wordsofwizdumb you are next and we have people interested in you, very very powerful people... watch and learn genius... heh, poetic justice...

k ? good guys be happy don't worry, honesty draws no fire

bad guys watch and learn, when too late its too late, up to you.. see MG/jack and soon to be W0W if you don't believe me =)

my goodness I love to drink and post, hahaha pumpers. in your face 50 cents presplit for all the grief over the years hahaha looks so good on you... mydocs and triumph? FUBAR, trust me... LOL big time....

Can't say we didn't warn you poor coward POS devils

I live to kick their ass when I have a few... CHEERS! Have a nice Day! LOL

Nortel? you too... into the cornfield you go... swooosh and kaboom!

=) =) hahaha... CHEERS! disclosure: 2 beer / 2 rye =) LOL (never could drink)

PS. pumpers pull my finger LOL

Never debating facts but personal attacks ...how shameless

I guess the blogg poll was right, most of you stalking slandering reptiles really are Nortel employees!

I am not as polite as ethical Gary Daichendt. I think the stock price looks good on you bullies at 50 cents extreme presplit.

Good luck finding a job with Nortel on your resume when this company folds let alone with personalities like yours. I also dread to see what your personal lives are like from a psychological perspective, just read your posts. Poor devils.

No wonder the company is in trouble with mentality like this, next thing you know these cruel idiots will threaten to grab my face LOL

Stick to the facts, honesty draws no fire. Cowards.

The more you fruitcake weenies pump, the more shameful you appear to a moral majority.
Enough to make anyone civil throw up... shame on you, if you had any... what poor excuses for human beings I tell ya... Nortel employees to boot...

Cisco Tax BS , WiMax gone like Neptune LTE is a joke with UMTS sold, as it makes new lows 3 years later as I am painted a liar? Heh...as I get political flack from fruitcakes... too funny...What do you want from me? Happy talk? Sorry.... I don't lie. $20 was no buy a year ago and I don't contradict my word let alone written agreements on several occasions. I still believe in morality, and so do most. Look what deviates as an abnormal minority from the moral majority, crooks, and criminals are stoooopid.

Can hardly wait until fraud trials hit the news... to tell ya I told ya so yet again.

Proto, it appears you stopped drinking around 9:51pm, but didn't sober up enough by midnight to post here coherently without malice. You should stop and seriously think. All this inner anger cannot be healthy. I sincerely hope you would never do any harm beyond the words you type.

Perhaps you need to rethink the path you are walking and make a U-turn to the person you were before it all happened.

I guess there are repercussions for posting unfounded rumors after all.

Yep, the real Proto has finally come out of his shell. The fella is quite vulgar by the looks of it. I wonder why?

Tired,

Appreciate your comment and no, you have not missed my intentions. I try to see through the style and look at the substance of the comments, as I would want others to do the same with mine. The goal, as you have previously stated, is not to just agree/disagree but to have substantive discussions and offer some solutions. Nortel’s team would exercise great judgment in taking some of the suggestions presented herein to avoid the future creation of more Protos.

On a personal note, how can you possibly not like comments from such a ‘telecom expert’ :).

TIC,

I don't do cop-outs. Sadly, we will never know what Proto's responses would have been had Nortel's management team executed on half of what it promised...--bb

TIC; Others,

Proto’s posts are the symptom and not the disease and they do not prove anything. How can his lonely posts ‘damage Nortel’ when we all know that can only be done by a bunch of mostly incompetent executives that are clueless about the problems they face and even more clueless about the required solutions.

In defense of Proto, we don’t know how much money he has lost. His ramblings are only a reflection of what has transpired at Nortel, nothing more. When leadership disappoints it opens itself to the ugly side of disappointment. It is Nortel’s management that controls Proto’s (and others’) responses, not Proto, myself or anyone else for that matter. We all want to be part of a winning strategy and guessed wrong. Blaming Proto deals only with style and not substance, or the lack thereof as is the case with Nortel. Start hammering the real problem…

bb

Well, I will say that despite what I often find to be incredibly questionable comments by proto, and despite a clear desire on his part to see the company utterly destroyed, I must take into consideration his extreme losses. I haven't lost nearly as much money and I'm sure have not personally suffered to the degree that many others have. So although I dislike proto's comments a lot, and sense more malice than true rational thinking in them, I also feel a degree of sympathy and understanding for his rather slanted views. BB - thank you again for trying to bring some balance into the discussions. I don't always agree with or like what you say, but I appreciate the (somewhat) Solomon-like arguments you seem to bring to the table when there's clear division in what people feel on this board. And if I've misread your intentions, well, take the thanks all the same.

BB,

If you really want to know how much money proto lost, start reading on page 84 of this publicly available document:

http://www.nortelsecuritieslitigation.com/affdavid_en2.pdf

Just don't start calling him at home

BB, Nortel Management does not control Proto's decision to make false and misleading statements about Nortel. That is his choice, his responsibility and his accountability as an adult. Blame shifting his junk to Nortel management is a cop-out.

I agree there are problems at Nortel. They own that just as Proto owns the nonsense he chooses to write.

Proto proves once again that he will say/do anything for the purpose of damaging Nortel in the marketplace. For instance, when Mark Evans posts the IBM purchase of Nortel rumor on this blog, Proto instantly attempts to bash the idea, yet when there is a lawsuit reference in a Cisco owned blog, then of course that must be real and must be the truth about Nortel.

What we also know is that Nortel used to have a website named something like www.ciscoenergytax.com which is no longer available. The timing of that website is very similar to the date stamp of the blog post that Proto references. Perhaps Cisco did request a stop order on that website since it used the Cisco name within it.

Then there is the 3rd party and independent tests and report done by the Tolly Group in which Cisco was invited to participate but Cisco made the choice to not respond to the invitation. The report can be found at http://www.tolly.com/ts/2008/Nortel/ERS8600/Tolly208298NortelConvergedNetEnergyCosts.pdf

proto- is clearly a deviant and lives up to this title daily.

Not surprisingly he has an identical twin that posts under the name "yes4apple"

I second Nortelhand’s comment; how can you call it a “Successful Campaign” when according to Bo Gowen’s prior comment the campaign is still in its early stages. And since when did McKinsey become the expert on successful marketing campaigns in the networking sector? Shouldn’t this be a results-based conclusion?

bb

The GREEN campaign is doing wonders to the stock price. Great stratagy Mike Z. Much more of this and Nortel will be trading on the pink sheet.

Cisco has a vision that drives a strategic plan that they're executing on. I've been following it since 1999. Sure, there have been market, economy, and personality driven course corrections but that's a good thing. Cisco isn't usually first to market, but steady and undeterred execution is part of what makes Cisco strong and builds confidence within their customer base.

I haven't seen vision at Nortel since the days of John Roth and one thing that Nortel used to excel at - execution - has fallen apart. With a few exceptions, Nortel's product launch pad has become a graveyard for failed initiatives. The MZ team didn't create this problem, but I haven't seen any indication that they have what it takes to fix it. After years on the job, I still don't see a Nortel vision+strategy I can point to, let alone execution. Hyperconnectivity is a borrowed observation of what's going on in the market. Without a strong strategic plan and execution strategy to back it up, it's mere hype.

The days when Nortel was a real competitor of Cisco are fading.

Observer – Beg to differ. Not one to defend Cisco but, at the very least, Cisco has shown up to the ‘Web 2.0 party’ while Nortel is still stuck in Web 0.9; just look at Nortel’s web site, boring and so last century.

Marketing has a lot less to do with details (who, what, why) and a lot more with messaging (me, here, now). Failed to see how lower power consumption will get me a faster user experience; again, users don’t need to see the sausage-making process or what’s inside it. Let’s not forget that Web2.0 (and later incarnations) requires an underlying software architecture, which Cisco has. And where’s Nortel’s? Oh yeah, it is in the process of being hyper-connected.

The bottom line is this: Nortel has process-based marketing; Cisco has vision-based marketing.

You are right about one thing; it is definitely not a fair comparison.

Broadbandbill - your comparing apples and oranges. Cisco is late to the web 2.0 party. The real comparison would be something like Project Chainsaw to anything Cisco is doing in the UC space. Cisco is behind in the race for web 3.0. Cisco is a marketing machine that is good at selling the sizzle but in the coming age of frugality, no one will want to pay those prices. Go look at the background of Meghan Asha (Parikh) & Shane Battier - they certainly aren't like the average person on the street that works for a living. If this epic collapse of the economy teaches anything, it will teach us frugality.

To paraphrase an old adage: those that know how to market do, those that don’t try to smear the competition.

To truly appreciate the difference between Cisco and Nortel visit Cisco’s brilliant marketing campaign called ‘Digital Cribs’. While Nortel is still stuck ‘inside the box’ (power consumption, bits/per... , all that sooo 90s marketing mindset) Cisco has taken it to a whole new level – lifestyle.

As much as I do not care for Cisco can’t help but admire an effective marketing campaign that doesn’t throw mud at its competitors. Staying above the background radiation, simple and brilliant!

bb

Mark, can you confirm Proto's story that "Cisco has just filed lawsuit against Nortel for its false and misleading green campaign"?

I can't find anything like this anywhere. If this is yet another false and misleading story for the purpose of damaging Nortel, please let us know that too.

I did some digging around. I couldn't find anything about Cisco suing Nortel. Perhaps Proto can provide some more information.

Profound it comes to light from a Nortel supporter of all people too

http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/comments/power_pickups_and_polar_bears/

"As a side note, I learned today that Cisco has filed a law suit against Nortel based upon their ‘Green Campaign’."

"Profound it comes to light from a Nortel supporter of all people too http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/comments/powe..."

That was your source fella? A message by someone on another blog?

How pathetic.

I would say your credibility has taken a serious blow and recovery is remote.

I read Cisco has just filed lawsuit against Nortel for its false and misleading green campaign. I also read it was called "stupid and misleading for marketing purposes".

This strikes me as a grossly unethical marketing ploy. After the fraud with endless following contradictions, this only runs contrary to restoring any credibility.

First Nortel claims around $6 billion in wasted energy every half decade then proposes a rebate 1st year savings on their product while slandering Cisco's. As an overview to the heading, this bloats what they can afford on equal footing; The hype /paying by means of discount 20% / 1st year energy savings. Imagine Nortel paying 20% of $6B if we were to skim the heading without further discovery? Tricky.

I also read it is like comparing a Ford Focus to a Ford F150 pick up. At idle sure the Focus uses less energy but when carrying loads/packets it would take several more trips by the little Focus to do what the F150 does in one. Also, skimping on cooling causes premature failure where Cisco should have countered with reliability but their policy is to politely not comment on competitors, unlike Nortel.

The green campaign is just another of endless unethical punchlines, unfortunately this misleading ploy is winning customers like their desperate hype wins shareholders making new lows every year.

Another lawsuit they don't need and Nortel ...well Nortel, never ceases to amaze does it?