Bosco,
Who are the 75 companies? Nortel has not indicated who they are and so it's difficult at best to assertain the significance or impact of OIE not knowing. However, from the fact that none of these companies are named we can imply that they are either small and by mentioning them it would detract from the significance of the release and/or that they don't want to be included in the release. That even they are hedging.
Second, OIE is middleware...it's not an OS like IOS. It sits on top of another OS. This will not allow a product build on OIE to perform at par with IOS.
Third, simply because Nortel dropped their router prices does not mean that others building using OIE will be able to match this. Furthermore, vendors building on OIE will be in the unenvyable position of competing with their supplier....a model that Intel realized long ago did not work.
Fourth, OIE offers little in the way of applications - after some reading it's clear that rudimentary functions such as L2TP are add-on application stacks. So, although OIE may be inexpensive how much for the applications?
Fifth, If a user modifies OIE (as Nortel says they will allow them to) how can we assure a full function communications ecosystem. If everyone is dipping into the IP core it'll be a mess. It's like letting everyone dip into the PC core... and look...we're still trying to get our desktops stable --- after what, 20 years! We can't afford that in the internet.
Sixth, As I've pointed out before.. Nortel has no experience in providing software development support and this is not their core competency.
So, that facts are pretty clear... OIE being the middleware it is is still expensive (requiring an underlying OS and add-on applications). It's support is suspect. Stability will be a major issue as everyone attempts different customizations. And performance - by virtue of the fact that it sits on top of an OS (btw Windows isn't real time!) will render it a poor performer.
In conclusion...OIE is an attack on Cisco - not a business in the true sense. It's an attempt to cause problems for cisco and nothing else. The fact is, the engineers at Cisco know these limitations (and probably can list about 10 more) all too well. Can anyone say "flash in the pan".
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