Nortel and IBM plan to offer a software-based foundation that brings together business applications and processes with the latest unified communications and collaboration tools such as click-to-connect, presence, location and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). This new foundation is built on the principles of service-oriented architecture (SOA) so that businesses can communicate with colleagues, partners, and customers in new ways without compromising service, security or existing technology investments.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the standards-based IBM WebSphere Application Server will be integrated into Nortel's new software-based solution foundation environment. Nortel is abstracting communication components from the underlying existing telecom infrastructure and making them available within this new web services-based environment. This will allow companies to easily create SOA-based communications-enabled applications and business processes by linking together business systems and applications with communication systems and networks.

IBM and Nortel will market communications-enabled solutions comprised of services, the Nortel software based foundation environment, IBM software and services and multiple hardware platforms including IBM BladeCenter and System x servers. Together, Nortel and IBM are initially targeting companies in the healthcare and retail markets.

As part of this announcement, the Nortel software based foundation environment will be integrated with IBM's unified communications and collaboration platform, Lotus Sametime. Through this integration, businesses will be able to add advanced communication and collaboration offerings including capabilities like click to call, click to conference, telephony presence and shared directory services. For example, with Lotus Sametime and the Nortel software based foundation environment, a customer could see if a contact's phone is in use without leaving the Lotus Sametime client.