We're starting to hit that wave where interoperability and partnerships will define the long-term winners and losers.

You have short-term winners and losers, and that's the toughest thing to sort out.

If you believe in winners and losers you're one of the losers.

Everyone is a loser. Winners are just losers with more patience.

What they're trying to do is to take IP communications to another level. Every vendor has the same vision, but they're all at different points to getting there.

What I think a lot of companies are looking for is a multipurpose LAN device like Cisco's ISR. This is a relatively small deal. It won't turn Nortel around, but it does give them a legitimate end-to-end WAN play.