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Westcon Convergence Wins UK Tender to Distribute Nortel’s SMB Unified Communications portfolio, SCS500

Tarrytown, NY, April 23, 2008 - Westcon Group, Inc., the leading specialty distributor in networking, convergence, security and mobility, announced that it has received authorisation from Nortel to distribute the new Software Communication System (SCS) 500 unified communications solution, built on open-source technology. Westcon is one of only two distributors who were chosen to distribute the line out of several other distributors in the UK.

According to Nortel, SCS500 is capable of saving employees 30 to 50 minutes per day, and reduces conferencing costs up to 30%. Westcon will offer the SIP-centric solution to its UK-based reseller community. The introduction of SCS500 signals Nortel’s move into a new market targeting SMBs with 30 to 500+ employees in highly collaborative work environments, including finance, real estate, manufacturing, and professional services.

Tim Brooks, Sales and Marketing Director of Westcon Convergence, commented: “Our resellers continually look to us to help deliver more efficient communication systems to their customers. The flexibility SCS500 provides, given its open source architecture and SIP compatibility, will help resellers deliver measurable productivity benefits to a wide variety of SMBs that require diversity of vertically focused applications.”
 
‘Nortel’s SCS500 represents a unique mid-market opportunity for channel partners looking to move into unified communications, says Amanda Giddins, EMEA Distribution Leader of Nortel. “Westcon Convergence’s in-house training capabilities, marketing expertise and seamless on-boarding activities will help Nortel resellers attain faster time-to-revenue. Beyond this, Westcon has a very strong heritage in converged communications and are a known entity resellers can trust.”

Tom Jaques, Managing Director of London based 1st Communications added: “As SMBs become more sophisticated, they require network solutions that can carry everything from data, voice, videoconferencing and collaboration, as well as a myriad of advanced applications that demand a high performance network infrastructure. By winning the bid to distribute the SCS500, Westcon is helping resellers remain focused on the issues that count: business productivity and delivering the most competitive solutions available on the market today.”

To find out more about SCS500 and other Nortel Solutions through Westcon please visit our ConvergencePoint solutions programme at www.uk.convergencepoint.westcon.com/vendors/nortel or call Westcon at 01444 876462

About Westcon Group
Westcon Group, Inc. is the leading specialty distributor in networking, security, mobility and convergence for leading technology vendors, including Cisco, Nortel, Avaya and Polycom. Through its Westcon, Comstor and Voda One business practices, Westcon Group sells products and services to resellers, systems integrators and service providers. Westcon Group has particular expertise in the convergence of voice, data and video applications and technologies, including voice-over Internet protocol, or VoIP, security for networking and communications systems, remote access, Internet and e-business, virtual private networks, videoconferencing and wireless connectivity. For more information, visit www.westcongroup.com.

About Nortel
Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.