Big news today out of Canada on the Avaya-Nortel Enterprise deal... Avaya announced the Canadian Minister of Industry has approved its acquisition of Nortel Enterprise Solutions under the Investment Canada Act.

The Honourable Tony Clement, Canada's Minister of Industry, commented "I have approved the application by Avaya to acquire Nortel's Enterprise Solutions business because I am satisfied that the investment is likely to be of net benefit to Canada."

Hey, for anyone who missed Wednesday's Enterprise webinar, the archived version is now available here. Or, for more detail, check out Matt's post on the Enterprise Technology blog.

For any of you looking for more info on Nortel's Enterprise solutions - including an overview on the planned Avaya acquisition - you might want to check out an Enterprise Solutions webinar we're hosting November 4.

David Downing, Nortel's General Manager for Communications Solutions, and IDC Research Director Abner Germanow will host a virtual roundtable to discuss the Avaya deal (to the extent we can at this point in the process), as well as talk shop on Nortel IT networking strategies and technologies. They'll be joined by customers to discuss recent deployments. To register for the event, click here.

Anyone who's following the U.S. healthcare reform debate knows a key part of Obama's plan is to utilize new IT technologies to help healthcare professionals communicate more efficiently and cut costs.

Now, true - I'm tooting my lil' blue Nortel horn here, but we've been investing some serious time and money in healthcare communications for years now. Problem is, we often let the techo-speak and acronyms the get better of us, making it hard to for non-geeks to understand what the heck we're really doing.

Nortel has been awarded one of marketing's most presigious awards

- a 2009 Effie Gold Award for its Energy Efficiency marketing campaign that's helping businesses go green and save money on energy costs.

Nortel was recognized along with other marketing/brand giants like Apple, Converse, McDonalds & Coca-Cola - see the complete list of 2009 Effie trophy winners here.

Ok, I know I'm tooting my own horn here, but you gotta check out this story in today's Dallas Morning News: 'Nortel's clinic in Richardson aims to improve medical care' -- nice run-down on the medical networking tools we're working on...

"A tour of Nortel's new facility is eye-popping both for the ingenuity of the products and the relative simplicity of the underlying technology."

Interesting article in BizWeek - Meet Cisco, the Consumer Company... As a loyal Nortel employee, I cringe whenever I watch one of my favorite TV shows, FOX's 24, because it's already drenched with Cisco product placements. If Cisco really presses into the consumer space, how long until we start seeing Cisco ads during episodes of House and American Idol?

No doubt, Cisco dominates the enterprise routing/switching space. But, do they risk loosing focus on their bread & butter business by pushing into the polar opposite - consumer networking? Ok, ok, maybe that's just sour grapes on my part. But I just can't stand Cisco commercials during my beloved Dallas Cowboy games... Lord please.

I just wanted to give a quick Earth Day shout out to Wilson Korol and congratulate him on the launch of Greenroots - Nortel's new 'Green' blog.

And check out his post today - it's a great behind-the-scenes Q&A with Earth Rangers that looks at what the organization is doing to motivate hundreds of thousands of kids to live 'greener' lifestyles, as well as what they're doing (via Nortel technology, of course) to become a greener organization from an operational standpoint.

Sometimes 'Big Brother' can be a real pal...

Yesterday we launched Nortel's 'Identify-Aware' security portfolio which is designed to help Enterprises tighten up security throughout their communications systems (check out Network World's story here).

A few quick hits from CTIA which kicked off today in Las Vegas:

The handset guys are drawing the biggest crowds - no surprise - people always want to check out latest & greatest gizmos from the likes of Blackberry, Kyocera and of course, our partner, LG (forgive the obvious plug). From an instructure perspective, LTE remains the hot topic - and was by far the busiest part of our booth today (see pictures from the showroom floor below).

Ahhh Springtime... warmer days, green grass, birds chirping... and tradeshows - lots and lots of tradeshows.

Next week we march into the busiest events week of the year with stops in Orlando for VoiceCon, Washington for Cable Show 2009, and Vegas for CTIA. Be sure to check Buzzboard for more from the showroom floors - photos, videos, demos and on-site reports - but for now, here's a snapshot what's what next week:

CTIA Wireless 2009 - one of the year's best opportunities to engage face-to-face with current and prospective wireless customers. We'll be showing off our latest around GSM, CDMA, and especially LTE. The big focus though, will be on what has become the omnipresent question for operators - "Exactly how do we turn all these cool VoIP and multimedia applications into revenue?" And we'll also be looking at opportunities around mobile social networking and entertainment - see more here.

While Bo reports in live from the OFC/NFOEC optical conference, we're also gearing up for a few other big shows next week. So, in advance of one of the industry's top Enterprise shows, VoiceCon in Orlando, we announced today new additions to our Unified Communications portfolio, including a new software release for Nortel's Communication Server 1000 (that's our cornerstone piece of gear for installing UC for larger enterprises).

And, we spotlighted a list of UC customers, including the cities of Langford (British Columbia) and Orlanda (Florida), the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering (Boston area) and the Hospice of Palm Beach - all of which are now using Nortel UC to better manage communications and boost productivity. See the news release here.

Today, we announced another step in beefing up our web.alive platform. We're teaming up with Virtual Heroes to create new virtual 'worlds' that enterprises can use for more interactive training and collaboration.

Virtual Heroes is perhaps best known for creating the America's Army Game training platform and HumanSim, a medical training world (check out this ABC News video - it's a great example).

As Bo mentioned yesterday in his 'One Year into Nortel's Social Media' post, I'm joining Buzzboard as a regular.

I think this is a great forum, one that has received some applause (check out 'Corporate Blogs That Get It: Nortel's Buzzboard'), as well as criticism - especially considering our recent bankruptcy filings. We're admittedly a bit limited in what we can discuss, what with all the legal sensitivities. But that said, I'm looking forward to adding what I hope will be a fresh new voice, with some fresh new perspectives.

No surprise, the universal topic hanging over Mobile World Congress this year is today's challenging economic climate, fueling widespread discussion on how the mobile industry can best compete in such a tough environment.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went so far as to say that it's a "super interesting time to talk about the mobile industry". Microsoft is making a big push at MWC this year to drive uptake for their mobile platform, Windows Mobile, in an attempt to take a bigger bite out of Apple's iPhone success.