Pushback Time?
By Mark Evans | August 18, 2008
Over the past few months, it has not been easy being a Nortel employee as the company has aggressively restructured operations by slashing costs, shedding thousands of employees, and moving many jobs to lower-cost places such as Mexico, Turkey and China.
For the employees who have stuck around or managed to avoid being made redundant, you have wonder when there comes a point in time when they want to be rewarded for continuing to fight the good fight. Of course, keeping your job is reward enough but the question is whether that’s enough.
This may just be an isolated incident but 150 technicians in Monkstown, Ireland are staging a half-day strike over wage dispute. Terry Collins, a union spokesman, told the BBC that “It is time our members were paid back for all their efforts,” he said, adding the plant has slashed costs by £3m over the past 18 months.
Gven Nortel’s financial challenges and the uncertain economic environment, there may not be a lot of latitude for employees seeking more dough-ray-me but it looks like employees want a little love. The question is how you do it without having it cost you a lot more money.
Technorati Tags: Nortel
Topics: Compensation |
Nortel Climbs on Twitter Bandwagon
By Mark Evans | August 16, 2008
If you’re into Twitter - you know, the 140-character communications phenomena - then perhaps you’ll be interested in following Nortel.
Yup, Nortel’s social media menu now includes Twitter. You can it at twitter.com/nortel. As well, here’s Nortel’s Bo Gowan on why he/Nortel broke down after rejecting the lure of Twitter.
Twitter is virgin territory for corporate PR so it will be interesting to see how Twitter becomes part of Nortel’s PR and investor relations portfolio.
Note: For what it’s worth, you can follow me at twitter.com/markevans, although it’s all non-Nortel stuff.
Technorati Tags: Nortel, Twitter
Topics: Technology |
The Week in Review
By Mark Evans | August 16, 2008
In the scheme of things, it was a pretty newsy week in Nortel-Land what with yet another acquisition - PingTel. As well, traffic on AAN was as consistently high as its ever been (it usually spikes when results are released), while the number of RSS subscribers continued to stay steady at the 500 mark.
Here’s a list of the most popular stories on AAN this week.
1. Stewart on NT - Financial Post columnist Duncan Stewart weighs in on Nortel’s prospects.
2. It’s a Buying Frenzy - Nortel buys PingTel from Bluesocket; a deal that inspired many comments, including some great insight about Bluesocket and its investors.
3. Some Good News for Nortel - Synergy Research shows Nortel had the strongest quarter-over-quarter router growth in Q2
4. Nortel Makes Motley Fool’s Death List - MF suggests NT has some bad financial metrics
5. The Future of PingTel - Network World columnist Matthew Nickasch talks about how PingTel will fare under Nortel’s ownership.
Technorati Tags: Nortel
Topics: Blogs |
Zacks Rates NT a Strong Sell
By Mark Evans | August 15, 2008
Zacks.com has ranked Nortel as a #5 (aka strong sell), a ranking applied to 5% of the stocks within Zack’s research universe.
Here’s a synopsis of the rational for Zack’s ranking:
“Nortel Networks Corp (NYSE: NT) warned that a downturn in the U.S. market was choking wireless spending by carriers even as it posted a quarterly loss that tripled due to restructuring charges and currency exchange losses. The company recently cut numerous jobs and moved others to Asia in order to lower operating expenses. Nortel continues to invest in next-generation wireless technologies even though CDMA forms an important part of its business. Telecom gear manufacturers are likely to be challenged by tightened capital budgets of carriers due to ongoing recessionary conditions in the global economy.”
Technorati Tags: Nortel
Topics: Stock |
More on PingTel
By Mark Evans | August 15, 2008
Matthew Nickasch has some more thoughts on the Nortel-PingTel deal after after some blistering thoughts earlier. He even has some nice things to say about Nortel’s R&D efforts in the SIP area.
As well, CNet’s Matt Asay has some thoughts on the deal.
Technorati Tags: Nortel, pingtel, SIP
Topics: M&A, Technology |
The Future of PingTel
By Mark Evans | August 14, 2008
Matthew Nickasch over at Network World has some thoughts about the future of PingTel, which Nortel purchased earlier this week for an undisclosed amount to beef up its unified messaging portfolio.
More: Dow Jones has a story looking at the Bluesocket, which sold PingTel to Nortel.
Technorati Tags: pingtel
Topics: M&A |
It’s a Buying Frenzy!
By Mark Evans | 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.
Technorati Tags: MySpace, Nortel
Topics: M&A |
Some Good News for Nortel
By Mark Evans | August 12, 2008
As much as I’ve been accused from time to time of being overly-enthusiastic about highlighting Nortel’s struggles, I’m also happy to put the spotlight on positive news.
For example, Synergy Research Group just released its Q2 survey for router/switch sales to service providers. Guess what? The leading vendor in terms of quarter-to-quarter growth is Nortel..by a country mile over Tellabs.
In explaining the strong router sales overall, Synergy said:
“While the increasing demands of multimedia network traffic such as video are contributing to Router sales, Synergy believes managed services are also becoming a strong growth driver. Worldwide, businesses are turning to service providers for managed services as a cost-effective alternative to maintaining and running their own networks. Synergy believes as organizations continue to operate under challenging economic conditions, the trend to outsource network services to Service Providers will continue to increase.
For service providers to address this opportunity they will need to offer competitively priced services that provide a flexible access aggregation architecture and an efficient operation to the Enterprise. This will require Service Providers to increase their Router investment, especially at the edge of their networks.”
Technorati Tags: Nortel, routers, synergy research group
Topics: Industry Sales |
Stewart on NT
By Mark Evans | August 9, 2008
Duncan Stewart, one of Canada’s most knowledgeable tech analysts, offers up his thoughts on Nortel’s recent financial results in his weekly column in the Financial Post.
His advice: focus on Nortel’s CDMA sales, SG&A costs and free cash flow as much as revenue and profits.
Technorati Tags: duncan stewart, Nortel
Topics: Financials |
Nortel’s Star: PR
By Mark Evans | August 8, 2008
While Nortel’s financial performance and strategic focus might be good fodder for critical thought, one part of Nortel that’s humming along is public/media relations.
Along with a progressive approach to social media, Nortel’s PR people have got some pretty good traction with several news campaigns. This include the company’s efforts to be seen as more “green” than Cisco, and the benefits of telecommuting.
Take a look, for example, of this story in the Chicago Sun-Times about telecommuting. It features a Nortel employee in Chicago talking about how telecommuting saves her time and money, along with a Nortel spokewoman - Jamie Moody - who said about 10% of Nortel’s employees telecommute.
Moody said Nortel saves about $9,000 annually per employee in real estate costs. Back of the napkin math suggests that works out to $27-million a year.
Technorati Tags: telecommuting, Nortel
Topics: Technology |