We're always looking for new ways to interact with customers - that's just good business. And, we're always tinkering with new technologies. I mean, Nortel was basically built on innovation. So, while it may have slipped under the radar last week, we made a cool little announcement that shows a bit of both.

Basically, we're enabling organizations to trial and evaluate our communications portfolio over the Internet by using the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud technology (Amazon EC2). This provides on-demand access to a broad range of Nortel technologies, including Unified Communications, Contact Center solutions and our Interactive Communications Portal and Agile Communication Environment. And, it allows prospective customers to test out these technologies in a simple, low-cost and risk-free environment. Plus, since it's accessible from an information rich portal , it's a community-oriented site that also serves as a knowledge base for the developer community - it features discussion forums, product documentation, sample applications, source code, tutorials, podcasts, white papers and other shared info.

Avaya and Nortel have received a couple of key regulatory approvals (see Reuters story here) for the proposed sale of Nortel's Enterprise business.

As Avaya announced earlier today, we were notified by the U.S. Department of Justice of early termination of the antitrust waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) act. We also received regulatory clearance from the Canadian Competition Bureau. While finalization of the deal still remains subsequent to further regulatory review, these are two major milestones reached by our integration team as we work toward our expected close in December.