Over the last few days there have been many questions surrounding the announcement that Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection. Some are legitimate and some are just a panic knee jerk reaction.
What does this mean?
Well first off this only means that they have requested protection from creditors. This does not mean that the doors are going to close.
Is Nortel going to survive?
That all depends on what the leaders decide to do in the reorginization of the company. There are several things they have done wrong over the last decade that led up to this point. There are going to have to be major changes in the leadership for the company to make a turnaround.
What about my job, is it secure?
In this economy there are no jobs that are secure. With that being said, the enterprise products are not going to go away. The product is to good and there are too many of them already deployed for Nortel to just close the doors. It may be that the product is purchased by another corporation and is rebranded but the base product will remain intact. I for one am not worried about my job even though Nortel is the product that I know. It is all up to you to survive and you must do all you can to increase probability of employment. Spend extra time reading and learning all that you can in order to increase your knowledge. Don't rely on others, it is all up to you.
What about support for my PBX, BCM or Norstar etc...?
Nortel is operating in a business as usual mode for the time being and it is my belief that they will continue to do so. There are also several distributors with their own support organizations that are capable of supporting your products. I would not hesitate to purchase a Nortel product at all even in this time of turmoil. Do not let fear drive your decision of purchasing the best product for your business.
What does Nortel need to do to get things turned around?
Get back to basics with your products. Bring your support back from overseas. Language barriers are the biggest issues with your support. Get back to your roots of providing a superior product backed up by superior service and support. Bring your training back in house and/or have the classes designed to teach technicians and customers to use the NTPs. Right now classes are designed to get you to pass a test. Passing a test is not proof that you know how to manipulate the product, just a confirmation of memory. This is going to be a long and tedious process for Nortel and there will be pains along the way. Remember the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. That is going to have to be the approach that Nortel will have to take inorder to come out of this whole again.
A wise high school auto shop instructor once told me that "90% of what you know is not what you remember but rather what you know how to look up!"
I follow this rule every day and it works. There is so much information in the NTPs that there are few people that can remember even half of them.
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