Nortel and IBM unveiled plans to deliver a solution for businesses that makes the move to IP telephony and unified communications as easy as a software upgrade.

As part of IBM’s unified communications and collaboration (UC2) strategy, the new solution will combine software and hardware from IBM with IP telephony and multimedia capabilities from Nortel.

The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution, targeting small to medium businesses (SMBs) and branch offices, will integrate IBM’s System i business computing platform and the IBM Lotus Sametime unified communications and collaboration platform with Nortel’s suite of VoIP and multimedia technologies into a complete Unified Communications solution that runs on a single system.

The Nortel-IBM solution will allow for the consolidation of VoIP, multimedia collaboration and other core business applications onto a single, highly-scalable System i platform that will be complemented by a portfolio of SIP clients and allow for connectivity to Nortel’s purpose-built data portfolio for SMBs.

The integration with Lotus Sametime will include capabilities such as instant messaging, Web conferencing, mobile device support and voice and video chat. The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution will provide users the flexibility to select the method of collaboration best suited for the task at hand along with the integration and reliability of the System i platform. For example, Lotus Sametime users will be able to review their contact list to determine who is on their Nortel phone, and also click-to-call or click-to-conference, to immediately connect with contacts via their Nortel telephony system on System i.

The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution will be sold through approved Nortel resellers and IBM solution providers. The solution complements Nortel’s existing SMB portfolio of voice and data offerings such as the Business Communications Manager (BCM), Business Ethernet Switch (BES) Business Secure Router (BSR) and Business Access Point (BAP).

The Nortel-IBM System i Unified Communications solution is expected to be initially available in the fourth quarter of 2007.