Nortel buys unified-comms firm Pingtel

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

The deal, announced on Wednesday, will see Nortel bring US-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 email, 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 website.

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".