A Microsoft and Nortel collaboration will be a good thing for IT shops if it enables them to do less software integration in-house, said Jason Delp, president of the Pittsburgh-Western Allegheny Meridian Users Group, which is aligned with INNUA.

Delp is on the IT staff at Coventry Health Care Inc., a managed care provider and insurer in Bethesda, Md., that uses Windows, Microsoft's Office Communicator software and a Nortel network. "There's always the possibility that some Nortel users who are Microsoft haters won't like this alliance," he said. "But you have to face it that from the corporate perspective, the trend is toward Microsoft applications."

Nonetheless, Delp said he isn't convinced that working with Microsoft will help Nortel much. "After all its problems, Nortel is still in business, but who knows for how long," he said. "They still have an uphill battle.

"I wouldn't say that I would drink the Microsoft Kool-Aid just because we have Nortel already," said Andy Rebar, an IT staffer at Fujifilm Sericol USA Inc. in Kansas City, Kan. "We'd have to look at the benefits and weigh the ins and outs." Rebar is president of INNUA's Heart of America chapter.

Bill Lesieur, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc. in Hampton, N.H., said Microsoft and Nortel "will be pitted against the well-established Cisco-IBM duo in delivering IP telephony and unified communications."