Nortel Buzzboard

This morning Nortel announced with this press release that Deloitte’s global organization has chosen Nortel as a global managed services provider for telepresence and video conferencing. Deloitte’s global organization and as many as 130 Deloitte member firm locations around the world will be able to obtain telepresence and open standards-based video conferencing services.

Deloitte is an interesting organization, so the details of this big telepresence win for Nortel deserve some explaining. As you can see in their About page: “Deloitte” is the brand under which 165,000 dedicated professionals in independent firms throughout the world collaborate to provide audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management, and tax services to clients. These firms are members of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (”DTT”), a Swiss Verein.

In other words, Deloitte is a big group of independent companies. While this structure surely has business benefits for Deloitte’s member firms, it probably doesn’t make it easy to create a standardized video conferencing system across the globe.

That’s where Nortel’s global services expertise and infrastructure come into play. Through Nortel’s Multimedia Network Operations Centers (MNOCs), Nortel provides fully managed telepresence services to Deloitte and its member firms. All each member firm does is set-up their telepresence room with a connection to one of Nortel’s eight MNOCs around the world (a secure VPN through their carrier). The MNOC then provides 24×7x365 concierge-level services including scheduling, set-up, pre-session testing, monitoring, troubleshooting and reporting.

I actually got a taste for these “concierge” services back in May when we had some bloggers to our Ottawa facility. After our telepresence demo was over, the group got to talking about other Nortel telepresence locations. With a push of a button, the MNOC operator was on the phone and set up a live telepresence session with our China location.

This is the true differentiation and value of Nortel’s telepresence solution. While other vendors can supply the telepresence equipment and even the networking equipment needed, the end-to-end services that Nortel offers can lower and even eliminate the technology hurdle that is keeping many companies from making the leap to telepresence.

See below for some extra material for your viewing pleasure - two new 360 degree views of Nortel facilities. First is a view of Nortel’s telepresence room, second is one of Nortel’s MNOCs. Both are located in Nortel’s RTP facility in North Carolina.