Nortel Buzzboard

Over the last 4 quarters (4Q06 to 3Q07), Nortel’s Enterprise business has shown double digit YoY growth. With roughly 85% of enterprise sales going through channel partners, growing Nortel’s channel based is key to this continued success.

In a March 2007 interview with CRN, Mike Z admitted that in the past Nortel hasn’t always done a good job working with partners, and said in 2007 Nortel channel partners would see a significant improvement.

Over the last week, David Wilkinson, Nortel’s North American VP of Channel Strategy, as been talking publicly about the progress that Nortel has made in improving channel support and growing our partner base. Here’s a quick sample…

Jessica Davis of Channel Insider highlighted the fact that Nortel has doubled its partner base and expects a 5-8x increase in growth rebate payouts to partners in 2007, then wrote separately about Nortel’s new channel partner financing program. Andrew Hickey of CRN detailed how Nortel’s Partner Advantage program is now focusing on channel value over sales volume, while Chris Talbot of eChannelLine covered how these changes will also impact Nortel’s major distributors.