They developed border control point instead of Session border Controller. Missed a trick here, who wants to manage firewalls in parallel to the media border? ACME took off in a steller way, Nortel eventualy had to partner with SBC vendors to supply them. Should have made their own.

2) they focus so much development on Geo-res for instant failover. Yet dark fibre needed for this over 200km is too expensive unless you own your own.. Should have developed it to run over a higher latency network.

3) the CS2K software releases keep slipping out. They talked about 3 release per year but it stays at two.

4) Its too friggin complicated to upgrade. Large ones can take weeks of night work.

5) it's too complex to configure. It's all disjointed. many different places to configure for one service. Invest in decent wizards. I dont want to have to log into 3 separate systems to provision one new IP customer on it!

6) The documentation was severely poor, even today half of it refers to DMS. New component docs are fine, they should have cleaned up the old disjointed documents.

7) early insistance on ers8600 inclusion really got carriers backs up. See the bigger picture and support Cisco for those devices. I think you do now but it shodl have been 7 years ago..

They developed border control point instead of Session border Controller. Missed a trick here, who wants to manage firewalls in parallel to the media border? ACME took off in a steller way, Nortel eventualy had to partner with SBC vendors to supply them. Should have made their own.

2) they focus so much development on Geo-res for instant failover. Yet dark fibre needed for this over 200km is too expensive unless you own your own.. Should have developed it to run over a higher latency network.

3) the CS2K software releases keep slipping out. They talked about 3 release per year but it stays at two.

4) Its too friggin complicated to upgrade. Large ones can take weeks of night work.

5) it's too complex to configure. It's all disjointed. many different places to configure for one service. Invest in decent wizards. I dont want to have to log into 3 separate systems to provision one new IP customer on it!

6) The documentation was severely poor, even today half of it refers to DMS. New component docs are fine, they should have cleaned up the old disjointed documents.

7) early insistance on ers8600 inclusion really got carriers backs up. See the bigger picture and support Cisco for those devices. I think you do now but it shodl have been 7 years ago..

As heir to DMS, CVAS is the once-and-current cash cow for Nortel, setting the bar that all the others strive in vain for: first in digital switching and now in Carrier VoIP. Note that while the only ones you'll hear claiming that the other divisions are #1 are Nortel execs, CVAS has been ranked #1 by independent research based on actual market position (as opposed to bonus-inflating b.s.)…

The people who ran Nortel into the ground did not know what they had in the division that became CVAS, all they knew is that they didn't want to sell big contracts to a handful of carrier customers globally anymore (too much kowtowing for egos that large), they wanted to sell smaller contracts to a larger group of smaller enterprise customers, who would individually wield less clout. And we all know how well that strategy worked out…

So like teleguy said, the folks who really know the carrier industry, as opposed to the enterprise industry or stock markets in general, know the true value of CVAS, its people and its solutions, when compared against its direct competition.

I'm sorry that your Nortel experience has been so painful (mine has been no picnic either), and I can completely understand your extremely low opinion of Nortel's so-called leaders, but CVAS was, is, and always will be Nortel's true crown jewel. And that's not just the kool-aid talking…

Like all things Nortel of any value, including former employees like yourself, the current leadership failed to recognize or capitalize on that value – that's the tragedy here. A truly amazing cocktail of hubris and ignorance destroyed literally billions of dollars of value which we labored so long and hard to build up. Very sad indeed…

CVAS #1
Optical #1
GSM-R #1
Enterprise Voice #1
MSS #1

yeah yeah whatever.