Today Nortel announced its acquisition of Pingtel, an Open Source IP PBX software company. This is some pretty big freakin news for OS VoIP… it’s BIG.. it’s HUGE.. it’s really BIG.. and here’s why…

This acquisition marks a milestone for OS VoIP as a technology because it A) shows that Open Source VoIP is a viable business model and B) it reaffirms that Open Source VoIP is finally established enough, reliable enough, and mainstream enough to warrant acceptance by one of the largest proprietary communications manufacturers around.

This move by Nortel is ballsy for their industry but mostly because they’re just one of the first. It also plays well into their plan to become a software centric company. At OS VoIP we’ve always said that proprietary companies like Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya will need to adjust their business to stay competitive in a world of Open Source VoIP, and guess what, Nortel did. Since Nortel’s image has been a few PR campaigns behind Cisco and Avaya, a move like this is exactly what they need to re-vamp their image as a cutting edge communications company, plus it makes sense considering the “open” direction the entire technology industry is heading. From the quote below, you’ll see that Nortel has positioned more than one chess piece towards being “open”.

Over a year ago Nortel joined the open source community established by SIPfoundry** as an active contributor to the sipXecs open source project (led by Pingtel Corp), providing more than 300 new applications and features to date. The acquisition of Pingtel Corp by Nortel will further accelerate the development of a global open source ecosystem and reinforce Nortel’s direction and leadership in the development of interoperable and open unified communications solutions.

So on this day, August 13th 2008, mark Nortel down as the first large proprietary telephony company to take the leap into offering their own Open Source telephony solution. I don’t expect it to be very long for other proprietary businesses to follow Nortel’s lead but I don’t expect Cisco or Avaya to be scrambling for their cash in an effort to puchase an Open Source VoIP company. What I do suspect is that these proprietary companies will either begin to Open Source parts of their own software (doubtful), or partner with an Open Source VoIP company like Digium.

3Com partnered with Digium to re-sell their SMB solutions, Dell partnered with Fonality/Trixbox for their own small business solutions, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for more proprietary vendors to take the same approach.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think this Nortel/Pingtel acquisition is great for the overall evolution of Open Source VoIP and its acceptance in the market place, but it’s not like Nortel is all of a sudden going to be the next big Open Source VoIP company. There are too many established players like Digium, Switchvox, Fonality, and many more for Nortel’s newfound openess to eat away much of their business. If anyone should be threatened by this move it’s Microsoft. Microsoft’s Office Communications Server ‘07 is a software based unified communications solution which although sexy, costs a queens dowry and doesn’t play very well with others. With an Open Source UC solution offered by a billion dollar corporation, Nortel should be able to (with some development and good marketing) compete rather well against Microsoft’s OCS.

So if you take anything from this blog, I’m not saying you should go run off to a Nortel vendor for your next OS VoIP system, because you should run off to me :) but what you should do is realize there are plenty of reasons why an Open Source IP PBX or UC solution might suite your company just as well as any proprietary option. Nortel obviously thought Pingtel’s Open Source UC solution was good enough to buy the whole damn company, so why wouldn’t your organization at least look at Open Source VoIP as an option for your next IP PBX.