Nortel Strong-Arms Open Source Vendor Fonality

leecidivo alerts us to Tom Keating's blog, where he writes about how Nortel forced a former subsidiary to return its open source-based phone system (Fonality) after the subsidiary went public with how happy they are with the Fonality phone system compared to Nortel. Quoting: "What happens when a VoIP blog (yours truly) writes about the fact that a former Nortel subsidiary (Blade Network Technologies) went looking for a new phone system, chose an open-source Asterisk-based solution from Fonality instead of using Nortel's own PBX and then agreed to go on record on the VoIP & Gadgets blog about why they made such a shocking decision? A) Nothing — it's a VoIP blog — who cares? Nortel is an $11 billion dollar company that certainly doesn't read blogs for their news. B) Nortel reads the blog post, is a little peeved, but other than some emails sent internally, no one outside Nortel would ever know they were annoyed. C) A Nortel Board Member flips out over the article, contacts Blade and then pressures Blade to return the Fonality system and have Fonality print a retraction to the blog article (and the subsequent press release)."

excellent plan

so now instead of a few people reading about a company switching to asterisk, all of slashdot reads about how Nortel are a bunch of dicks.

nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.

The guy didn't follow the PR policy

Every company I have worked at has a formal PR policy that says you cannot go on the record with the press (which is any time you are talking to them, if you are smart about it), you must clear it through PR. In some cases, once PR realizes that you're savvy enough to not say stupid things, they will put you on the "OK to contact directly" list.

Violating the company's PR policy is a big deal, for the obvious reasons. I'm surprised that the IT Director is still employed there.

Re:The guy didn't follow the PR policy

Violating the company's PR policy is a big deal, for the obvious reasons. I'm surprised that the IT Director is still employed there.

You're making a ridiculous, unfounded statement. As per the article, they followed the procedure, and at least per the article, did not deny it.

There is nothing in the article that indicates that anyone did anything wrong until the point at which they (Blade) announced that they had changed their mind.

You have no reason to believe that he DID violate their PR policy.

Until you do, please label all your speculations as such.

Re:The guy didn't follow the PR policy

Gee, did I miss the part of the article that said that Blade's PR department reviewed the quote and OK'd Fonality to use it in a release? Because if that happened, it would be really, really relevant to the article and certainly press-worthy, hmmm?

You didn't miss it because it wasn't there. But what actually was there was an unrefuted implication that they indeed did do it. Let me help you:

[...]"you didn't follow our internal process for authorizing a press release."

"But it is *your* internal process, and we spoke, with permission, to your own Director of IT, who personally signed off on the release.[...]

If Vikram had denied this, then they almost certainly would have mentioned this in the article, ostensibly to expose his lie. But the next text in the article is about how they never actually installed the product (I am assuming that the press release was concocted strictly on the strength of a demo, but that is quite irrelevant to this particular conversation) and then the next time Vikram is mentioned he is "press"ing Chris for a retraction again. Chris provides an ultimatum to Vikram and is hung up on, without any mention of Vikram ever denying (again) that proper procedure was followed.

So one of several possibilities is true; Vikram could have denied it, and not been quoted. He could have not denied it, and it could still not be true. He could have not denied it, and had it be false; it could very well be that proper procedure was followed.

My point, therefore, is that there is simply not enough information in the article to know which is true, and any indication in the article is that in fact the proper procedure was followed. But regardless, we don't know either way for sure, and so it is irresponsible to make assumptions about what really is or is not the case until we find out more.

Re:excellent plan

Not only that, I'd never heard of Fonality before this. Now I'll know their name and check out what they have to offer the next time I need to shop for a phone system.

Good move, nortel! That's the way to show 'em!

-jcr

Noone insults the family.

Noone -.-

First rule of good development:

Eat your own dogfood.

Why isn't this tortuous interference?

Just curious.

Why would it be?

The summary and article are both incorrect.

The person in question is NOT a "Nortel board member." He is on the Board of Directors of Blade Network Technologies [bladenetwork.net], the company which issued the press release. It's perfectly reasonable for a member of a company's Board of Directors to call the CEO and tell them they disagree with a decision, it no doubt happens quite frequently, since that's part of what the BoD does.

Now, that particular board member is also an employee of Nortel (Vice President of Business Development, according the BoD bio), but that does not mean that he was speaking from that capacity.

It's really pretty stupid to issue a press release which disses a company with which one of your board members has an outside relationship. Whoever approved that press release (Director of IT?) should have known that 2 of 4 members of his own company's board, including the CEO, had strong ties to the company he was dissing. The reaction shouldn't be unexpected.

Rather one sided.

OK, I don't like it that a Nortel board member strong armed another company they have a minority interest in, but the article/blog entry on this is rather one sided. This excerpt for example:

What you want me to publish a document that we're more expensive than Nortel and harder to use? How the heck do you expect me to print a retraction for something that is a) true and b) out of my control now that it is in the blogosphere?"
I interrupted Chris's retelling of the conversation with Vikram and asked Chris, "How long have they had PBXtra for?"
Incredulously, Chris responds, "They haven't even installed it yet. It's still in the box."

So, if it is not even installed yet, how do they know it is easier to use?

Confusing Summary

What happens when an article is posted in the form of an overly long rhetorical question with confusing formatting and mutiple choice answers where the third option is presumed to be the correct answer? A) Slashdot readers, being generally fairly intelligent and thorough readers, react with good humor and are amused by the clever presentation. B) People reading the summary are somewhat confused and are forced to read it again to understand what is being said. C) A snarky post is made that light-heartedly mocks the original poster.

The option no one pays attention to

D: Nortel takes the loss and redoubles its efforts to produce a VOIP system that is BETTER THAN THE OTHER OPTIONS! If companies would just shut up and stop trying to use lawyers and politics to keep customers and silence competitors maybe they could consentrate on making a product that is worthy of being used.

misleading article title

Nortel Strong-Armed a competitor via a company that they have a minority interest in, and so the title should be, "Nortel Strong-Arms competitor" instead of "Nortel Strong-Arms Open Source Vendor".

"Competitor" shows the relationship of Fonality to Nortel, while "open source" is just a blatant use of a popular term that does nothing for the article other than to misleadingly cry "look at me!!"

What's Open Source got to do with the story? The phrase appears twice to describe what kind of product Fonality sells, and then not again for the rest of the entire story. If it was a closed system, would it make any difference to the story? Or a bigger question, would the story have made /. at all?

As if we needed any more proof of the power that the blogosphere holds...

The only thing Tom Keating has shown about the blogosphere is that it has the power to distort.

Bad publicity === publicity

There are two winners here:

(a) Fonality. That a big ape like Nortel sits up and notices what they did, is testament to how well they handled the job of installing a viable alternative to Nortel's own equipment. This simply proves that Fonality and its products are justfiable expenditure.
(b) Asterisk. That a big ape like Nortel is frightened enough of it brings another feather in Asterisk and Digium's hat.

Nortel has embarassed itself on two accounts:
(a) Its own subsidiary refuses to use its products
(b) It's trying to force-feed its product on others -- how bad does that make it look?

Running Scared

What's interesting about this is how Nortel's approach to Open Source competition is similar in ways to Microsoft's: Rather than compete based on true values of real innovation and service, they will put "strong-arm" pressure on customers and associates to get their way. Clearly such dinosaurs are unwilling to make the paradigm shift and running scared. I expect this sort of thing to go one with a number of Old-School industry giants, before they either buy into the OSS concept, or wither up and die.

Beautiful

This is the best Asterisk sales pitch I've ever seen. Nortel is afraid. The big equipment vendors can barely sell to their captive customers, and they know it.

We had millions in Avaya equipment. My migration plan was to introduce Asterisk servers to perform a few specialized functions, interfacing with our existing dozen Definity switches and use that to leverage our way towards Asterisk. We'd keep the Definity PBXs for running large offices, but use the Asterisk systems for VoIP integration and offload more & more functionality to Asterisk. The Lucent/Definity stuff is great but almost twice as much as Nortel.

I pissed off the new CIO though, so I was replaced by someone who wanted to buy a thousand VoIP adapters to use with consumer VoIP accounts. It all works out though. He's smart so he'll learn (at the company's expense) and I don't have to deal with that CIO anymore. Everybody gets what they deserve.

Need a telecom manager in the IE? Try me.

Go Figure

Well, as the unfortunate user of a new Nortel telephone system (a choice in which I had no say whatsoever) I can only say that 'customer oriented' is not a term I would associate with Nortel. Not remotely so.

I found both the telephone hardware and the PBX voice interface quite poorly designed. Perhaps it is pretty on the IT integration end, I can't judge that; and the sound quality is good. But whoever designed it forgot to consider human factor. Too many superfluous (and blinking) messages on the display, too long button sequences, an unfriendly and laborious voice mail system, and generally an too complicated interface. Lots of features, but poorly tuned to actual user needs. I think that I am quite good at figuring out how things work, but this telephone system had me seriously puzzled, and the 90-odd page manual wasn't even up to date. I have known lock-in amplifiers that were far more intuitive and easier to use...

If Nortel gets in a panic about the competition getting some publicity, the most logical explanation is that they are all too aware of the weaknesses of their own systems. It shouldn't be too hard for a good competitor to take a substantial market share.

Not clear who has done what here

Nortel may or may not have strong-armed Fonality. The Fonality guy, Chris, said that Blade's Vikram Mehta (sounds Indian, is he?) tried to strong-arm Fonality and Fonality reminded Blade about the contract that was signed about using their system.

When the author of the blog called Vikram, this guy basically admitted to nothing:

We spoke a little more, but as you can tell, I was getting nowhere with Vikram. However what "wasn't said" spoke volumes -- both from his demeanor and his avoiding answering my questions, in my mind confirmed what Chris said was accurate. I then contacted Nortel to get their perspective. I spoke with a Nortel employee who wishes to remain anonymous. He stated that Eric Schoch, the Nortel board member was travelling and therefore wasn't able to get him to respond. - so the author has believed what Fonality was saying but couldn't really get Blade to confirm this. The author has got a 'gut feeling' that Chris from Fonality was telling the truth and that Vikram from Blade didn't.

Then the author called Nortel:

The employee did however admit that he was aware that Eric sent Vikram (CEO of Blade) a note about the Fonality press release where it simply stated "I would appreciate seeing copies of any news releases that have our name 'Nortel' in it before they go out." The Nortel official explained, "Anything that uses our trademark name we like to take a look at it." The employee added that he was not aware of any pressure applied by Nortel to have Blade reverse their decision on selecting Fonality or forcing a retraction. - so this is the best that we have here and yet the /. story yells out: "Nortel Strong-Arms Open Source Vendor".

Oh, don't forget that the author then brings up the fact that Nortel is loosing market share. Well, duh.

This whole thing may or may not be true actually.

PBXtra is not Open Source

Yes, PBXtra is based on Asterisk, but it is a licensed closed-source derivative of the Asterisk code.

You can not have the source for PBXtra. They'll give you the Asterisk code before they apply their patches, but they won't give you the source for their interface or their changes.

They might if you buy their product --I don't know, I've never bought it, but you are certainly not allowed to distribute the product to someone else after you buy it.

Just sayin'.

Anyway, Trixbox is FOSS. But PBXtra -- no.

Retraction?

"have Fonality print a retraction to the blog article (and the subsequent press release)."

Nortel wants some other company to do a restatement?

That's rich. :)

And now Nortel is on the zerg fest here in /.

In front of almost all the people working in the i.t.

talk about what goes around, comes around, karma and stuff like that.

they should have stomached the annoyance rather than getting shamed like this in /.

Answer to question...

Was the answer A?

Nortel phones are not good

My office (of 50 people) has been using Cisco phones for 4 years now, and they have been wonderful to us. Well, corporate (9000 people) decided that we are going to move to a full Nortel phone system. As the phones were being installed, we started complaining how much the new system sucks (our old phones were so much better). Well, the Nortel contractors that were installing our phones come over to us and proceeds to tell us how almost every single company they have helped move from Cisco to Nortel phones does nothing but complain how bad the Nortel system is.

Screw you Nortel, learn to make some phones that don't suck.

Is Nortel in end-game mode yet ?

Having witnessed a huge chunk of my city's IT population get sloppily downsized by Nortel years ago, seeing them pull this sort of cry-baby move makes me wonder if the company is on the verge of extinction. So they lost one client to a competitor, who probably offered a better fit for price and features than Nortel's big archaic systems. The fact that this client was a former subsidiary of Nortel does not give the latter a license to publicly ream their former partners in a fit of jealousy. Sure, it's a big hit against the company's image, underlining the fact that Nortel hasn't been a leader in a very long time. Where I live, the word Nortel is a synonym for fraud, failure. They fucked over their staff, they fucked over their shareholders, and now they're trying to fuck over their own offspring. It's as though they want to make sure everyone knows they can't compete anymore.

Well, thanks for the warning. Oh, and SUE ME!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

All you proprietary PBX vendors out there: Be very afraid. Asterisk is quirky, has a crappy configuration language and seven bazillion configuration files.

And it's still better than all of your proprietary products.

We switched to Asterisk about a year ago and haven't looked back. It integrates seamlessly with our CRM system, our trouble-ticketing system, etc., etc. It's amazingly liberating to be in control of your own PBX.

Re:Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Asterisk is quirky, has a crappy configuration language and seven bazillion configuration files.

And it's still better than all of your proprietary products.

Exactly. Asterisk is the new sendmail. Crap, but mostly reliable, and everything else is far worse. And just like sendmail what Asterisk proves is that there's a huge opportunity for someone to make one that works - OSS or no.

Dave

Not Shocking At All

I worked for NORTEL's R&D Labs (formerly Bell Northern Research) back in the mid/late 90s and they did this kind of stuff all the time. Our R&D Network was heavily overloaded at the time and we needed to get 100Mbps switched to the desktop badly. So the network guys speced out a kick butt system from Fore - ATM backbone with fiber to the edge switches and 100Mbps to the desktops. Spent a ton of money on it and it worked great. We also were in the initial middle of our first 802.11 deployment at the time. They installed a bunch of Aironet's access points which worked very well as wireless laptops became more prevalent.

NORTEL bought Bay Networks that year - most of the new network infrastructure was barely a year old. And all of it was ripped out and replaced with Bay Networks gear in short order. The worst part was the gear they replaced it with wasn't up to the Fore level for the backbone - that took another year or two as I recall for the Bay stuff to equal it.

I can see the PR argument for it I guess, but geez, what a colossal waste of money. I can see migrating to your own stuff as part of the refresh cycle, but why waste so much money just to avoid having to explain that 'yes, we have a competitors network installed prior to the buyout and it helps our engineers compare our products to the competition' or something.

This little incident is proof ...

This little incident is proof that in so many businesses (e.g. big corporations), the ultimate decision making authorities do not use valid reasons for things like which product to purchase.

Great customer service Fonality!!

Wow! What just happened here? A company wanted to return a system which was not yet installed (for whatever be their reasons) and the Fonality guys basically blackmailed the Blade CEO that if he tried to return it they would use the press to make them look bad. Do you really think any company will ever again do business with Fonality? CEOs of customer companies dont like being given 60 sec ultimatums. The Fonality guys might have thought just because its an Indian CEO its Okay to browbeat him but boy was he wrong. Fonality employees better start brushing up their resumes as the company is looking at bankruptcy. Sure they may have a great product but guess what - its open source so the only differentiating factor they have is the quality of support and service but if they are going to be dickheads when dealing with customers they are done for. Havnt they heard the expression - " The customer is always right!" ?

Fonality is not open souce

Fonality uses a modified Asterisk kernel. They are not open source. Their system is as proprietary as Nortel's.

Nortel is also Open Source

The Nortel BCM50 PBX is also based on Linux .... except they don't supply the source with the system.

Re:I wonder...

It wasn't meant to be.

Re:I wonder...

Just out of curiosity, do you think the government forcing them to use something in the first place would be better? Nobody thinks Free Market is perfect because people are not perfect. It is just the best way to consistently take advantage of peoples imperfections and greed. Until you find a way for everyone in the world to be nice then this is what we have.

Re:I wonder...

So, do any of you Libertarians who put such high faith in the free market's invisible hand have any comments on this?

You might note that tens of thousands of nerds reading slashdot are going to find out about this today, and that the story will likely be picked up by an actual news outlet (as opposed to aggregator and discussion board, as is slashdot) soon enough, making Nortel look like precisely the big dipshits they are.

I don't actually know anyone who takes Nortel seriously any more anyway, though. I think the invisible hand of the free market is already giving Nortel what they so richly deserved, if their market share is continuing to drop at a rate similar to that of the three quarters beginning in '04 that cost them 8% not of their share, but of the market.

Re:I wonder...

Ehm... How about... Not everyone is owned by Nortel?

Tada! Do I get a prize?

 

Re:I wonder...

well, i see a company doing the wrong thing and being called out for it, all without government interferance.

save the political BS for something relevant.

Re:The font goggles, they do nothing

So the font goggles are actually useful after all since they keep you from gouging out your eyes?

Re:I wonder...

The market's hand is quite visible in this case, and the results speak for themselves. Did a government agency step in and punish Nortel for this? No, it was many privately owned web sites (eg, slashdot) that did so.

-jcr

Re:Um, I'll take The Rapists for $200 Alex

Well, from TFA, Nortel is still holdes a minority interest in Blade (the "forced" company). Also, one of Nortel's VP's sits on Blade's board of directors.

Ownership and having control of a board memeber is an amazingly effective way to apply pressure to a company.

So while the slashdot article summary refers to Blade as a "former subsidiary", it fails to outline that Nortel does still has significant direct control over Blade.