"For a company targeting Cisco, bits and pieces of Nortel's Enterprise and Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) units are clearly attractive," said the analysts.
"Juniper, Tellabs, and Ciena would benefit from looking carefully at Nortel. More importantly, Nortel has channel depth outside of North America, which is of high value to these companies.
"A new and nimble Nortel, together with new channel opportunities to compete in larger networking equipment deals - there is potential 'good' in both outcomes.
Time will tell the success of Nortel's latest restructuring effort of course, but it does show there's upside to an act of the downturn.
Let's now take a second example - Satyam.
Last month, the Indian outsourcer revealed a US$1 billion fraud by its chairman, B. Ramalingu Raju. Again, you may ask, 'where's the good news?'
According to Jens Butler, a principal analyst at Ovum, the good news is that "corporate governance is probably now a taboo theme for marketing to play with.
"From where I sit, this can only be a good thing for both IT managers and the channel. It means that we should hopefully see less products and product marketing materials that use fluffy corporate governance motherhood statements as differentiators between that vendor and their competitors.
It reminds me of an announcement made last year by a mid-sized local data centre operator that it was allowing its co-location customers to go 'green' - simply by buying green power.
It was marketed as a major differentiator between them and their competitors that customers could host equipment in their centres that drew so-called green power - not to mention that the operator itself would switch to a greener supply as well.
Of course, there's a big problem with all this - the issue of 'greening' a data centre is much more complex than simply buying 'green' power.
After all, you can pump as much 'green' power into a centre as you like, but if you haven't optimised the floor layout, under-floor and in-room airflows, and plant, and you aren't measuring equipment draw at the node - or at very worst the power distribution unit - then you can still waste just as much energy.
The only difference is that you're paying more for the privilege.
I don't know how you feel about it, but cutbacks to this kind of feel-good marketing can't come fast enough.
As Butler said, "Environmental credentials, the broader corporate social responsibility contribution and excellence in corporate governance were all candidates that marketing departments would have used to squeeze out the maximum possible amount of differentiation."
The upshot of Raju's confession is that the ability to play the corporate governance card is much reduced for all players.
"More seriously though, outsourcing customers will also benefit from the Satyam situation as governments and other providers revamp their supervisory and governance frameworks to ensure a scandal of this scale doesn't befall them, too.
Hopefully I've managed to prove that some good can come from the downturn. Now, together let us agree to never speak of it again.
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