By David Meyer
Thursday, August 14 2008 07:01 AM
URL: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,62044842,00.htm

Nortel has bought Pingtel, a designer of unified-communications software.

The deal, announced on Wednesday, will see Nortel bring U.S.-based Pingtel--which is already a supplier of SIP-based enterprise communications systems and software to Nortel--in-house. Nortel is buying Pingtel from the wireless LAN (WLAN) and security company Bluesocket, which itself bought Pingtel only last July.

According to a statement, Nortel will use Pingtel's software in its small to medium-sized business (SMB) unified-communications package, which is based on its Software Communication System 500 (SCS500) product. Like most unified-communications systems, the package brings together e-mail, instant messaging and conferencing.

The financial terms of the deal have not been announced.

"This acquisition is another building block in Nortel's vision to be a software-centric company and the leading provider of unified-communications solutions," said David Downing, general manager of enterprise and SMB communications systems at Nortel, in Wednesday's statement. "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 [original equipment manufacturer] relationship."

Apart from the existing supplier deal between Nortel and its new acquisition, the two companies already had links through the Pingtel-led sipXecs open source project. The project provides an open source IP PBX, the largest-known installation of which serves 6,000 users, according to the sipXecs Web site.

According to Nortel, the Pingtel acquisition 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".