INNUA Response To Nortel Restructuring

INNUA Partners,

Many of you have likely heard that Nortel has announced plans to seek creditor protection today. While this may not appear to be good news, there are many positives that will come from this decision. Specifically, the filing will afford Nortel protection from their creditors - allowing time to restructure their organization and solutions portfolio. The intent is for Nortel to emerge from this situation even stronger.

What does this mean for INNUA and the Global Connect event?

First and foremost, I would like to assure you that INNUA is not going anywhere and we are experiencing membership growth even through this challenging economy. It is important to note that our organization operates independently of Nortel to serve the needs of Nortel customers. Our membership benefits will continue uninterrupted. In fact, we anticipate that INNUA members will be more engaged then ever as INNUA is their direct line of communication to Nortel.

INNUA’s Global Connect 2009 will take place this June 7-10 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We expect strong customer attendance and presence from Nortel corporate executives to provide an update on Nortel’s strategy. We also look forward to you joining us to meet with the customer community during this critical time.

INNUA has maintained a strong relationship with the Nortel leadership team. We have already received an initial briefing this morning on this decision from Joel Hackney, Nortel’s President of Enterprise Solutions and Wes Durow, Nortel’s Vice President of Enterprise Marketing and Strategy. We also have several discussions scheduled in the coming week where we will learn more about this decision and the impact on INNUA.

Our members have made significant investments in Nortel solutions for their organizations and will remain very loyal customers. In fact, more than 70 percent of our membership have been Nortel customers for more than ten years. We thoroughly appreciate your ongoing support of the Nortel customer community and INNUA.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Sincerely,

Steve Ford
INNUA President
sford@innua.org

Victor Bohnert
INNUA Executive Director
vbohnert@innua.org