Nortel News; Motorola To Leave Handset Business, Cisco's Nexus 7000, George Riedel Interview

Motorola To Leave Handset Business

According to Nomura Research analyst Richard Windsor, Motorola (MOT) may be getting out of the handset business so it can focus on becoming an enterprise and government players.

Hmm.

If this scenario actually materializes, what could it mean for a potential Nortel (NT) -Motorola marriage given that Nortel is strategically focused on the enterprise and government markets as well? Perhaps this would clear the decks for a merger/acquisition to happen with Mike Z. making a triumphant return as Nortorola’s CEO.

Source:MarketWatch

Cisco's Nexus 7000

Cisco’s (CSCO) poised to release a new switch called the Nexus 7000 that offers some staggering metrics: 15 trillion bits of data/second, which could transfer 90,000 Netflix movies in 38.4 second, or send a two megapixel image to every human in 28 minutes, according to the New York Times.

Nicholas Carr said Nexus has two important messages: one, it suggests the shift to utility-style computing, and two, it shows that scale is becoming increasingly important on the supply side.

Total investment by Cisco in Nexus: $250-million.

George Riedel Interview

When George Riedel was lured away from Juniper Networks (JNPR) two years ago to become Nortel’s chief strategy officer, it was seen as a sign Nortel was prepared to ramp up its M&A activity. After all, Riedel had carved out a solid reputation for deal-making during his three years with Juniper.

While Nortel has entered into strategic partnerships with Microsoft (MSFT) and IBM (IBM), it hasn’t made a significant acquisition since buying Tasman Networks for $100-milllion. There’s apparently speculation Riedel is far from a happy camper - not surprising given Nortel has done a lot of tire-kicking (e.g. Avaya) but hasn’t consummated anything recently, not even an interesting strategic acquisition.

So what’s Riedel thinking these days and what is Nortel’s strategic focus? Fortunately, Nortel blogger - and CTO - John Roese managed to snag Riedel for a video interview.

For those of you interested in Nortel’s acquisition strategy, Riedel doesn’t shed much, if any, light on things other than suggesting that until a year ago, Nortel wasn’t ready to make a deal.