Ok, I'm going to throw my two cents worth into this, although I think I run counter to the optimism I'm reading everywhere. Here's a news announcement that seems to be catching an inordinate amount of buzz this morning.

Nortel gets into the Virtual Reality game
Virtual Worlds are not likely what you think of when someone mentions Nortel. That may change soon. Nortel today unveiled web.alive, a new 3D virtual reality tool targeted at enterprise collaboration.

web.alive is born from Nortel's recently established R&D Incubation Program, and is actually the first project from the Incubation Program to go into the production stage.

web.alive will be a virtual world software application that provides an immersive, interactive and web integrated world with 3D voice and graphics. Earlier today I blogged about Nortel's acquisition of 3D voice specialist DiamondWare, who's technology is a key part of making web.alive a unique virtual reality environment.
[Read full article on the Nortel Buzzboard]
[Read the Nortel press release]

I've written about Nortel a couple of times recently:

• Nortel and Pingtel - Acquisition Changes
• The future of SIP. Is it that dark?

I wasn't especially favorable. And while the bulk of the blog an analyst discussion I read was either undeserved gushing praise, or cautiously optimistic, at least one other voice questioned the wisdom of Nortel's Pingtel acquisition.

Today we have....what? Virtual reality hype? Excuse me. In order to bolster our faltering unified communications business, we're going to include 3D.

Don't get me wrong, the idea behind this is pretty awesome. The idea is. I've read a couple of pretty complimentary writeups. I went back and re-read them just now -

• Rich Tehrani - Nortel Buys DiamondWare
• Jon Arnold - Nortel Acquires DiamondWare

Both are pretty kind from my perspective.

Rich and Jon are friends and people whose opinions I really value and respect. But I have to temper what people I respect say weighed against personal experience and observations.

Diamondware is something I tried out and used a little bit. It was interesting, but unwieldy and not something I could find useful. It's an interesting approach with tremendous potential if the right horsepower gets behind it. Everything I saw needed further development Certainly Nortel brings financial backing to fuel Diamondware's progress - $10M is significant funding.

I'd see Diamondware as a huge leap forward to a company that had an existing, slolid collaboration solution and interest in enhancing it to major market leadership. When I think collaboration, I have to say I don't think of Nortel first. I don't think of Nortel at all.

Here's an excerpt from the press release I linked above.

"A key goal of Nortel has always been to use technology to replicate
the richness of a real-world communications experience," said John Roese,
Nortel's chief technology officer. "The acquisition of DiamondWare
strengthens Nortel's position in the converging telecommunications and
IT landscapes and gives us another building block to create the
ultimate communications experience for our customers."

Sorry John, but that's marketing babble unbefitting a CTO fo a company like Nortel. It sounds like a mouth full of feathers. It's smoke and mirrors without substance.

Is Nortel collecting building blocks in a spree of acquisitions hoping that they'll find enough pieces to assemble a strategy that will work? Are they trying to buy inspiration?

Sorry to my colleagues who think this is a great move. I think it's a great financial boon for Diamondware, but I think Nortel's floundering, and every step they make just lately raises my doubts. You can't buy a stratgey without leadership, and I'm pretty nonplussed by the leadership at Nortel for the moment.