how the web.alive as one of the non core projects took up resources resulting in nortel.dead

One of the hot topics today is Web Collaboration. There are some very good solutions from Cisco WebEx, Citrix Go-To-Meeting and IBM Lotus Live. These solutions allow people to interact and share information across a browser session such a presentation files, spreadsheets and are effective for group meetings. Their weakness is Audio and Person-to-Person interaction within the group context.

The best piece of technology in Web.alive is the 3D Audio that comes from the DiamondWare acquisition. It allows for multiple audio conversations to occur simultaneously without interrupting the primary speaker.

Think of this in a real life example such as a University Lecture Hall. The Professor can present to the large group while quiet side-bar conversations can happen in different corners of the room. In a traditional Audio Bridge, this is impossible to achieve.

I toured around the Lenovo eLounge and saw this in action. There were different groups of people scattered around the eLounge all interacting in their own conversations. Yet I was able to have a 1-on-1 conversation with another person without being interrupted by those other conversations.

As a result of this a clear market opportunity for Web.alive is an eCommerce environment where you can have multiple customers and multiple agents interacting at the same time.

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel's technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world.