Avaya Aura and Nortel ACE

Avaya Aura and Nortel ACE

Avaya has announced it's product road-map around it's UC and CC offerings.

Some of the highlights include:

1. All Avaya UC offerings will be based on Avaya Aura and Nortel ACE.
2. All Avaya CC offerings will be based on Avaya CC and Nortel ICP.
3. Aspect has pointed out the weakness in Avaya's CC roadmap in the areas of Outbound capabilities and Workforce Optimisation.
4. For SME, the Nortel BCM phones and Norstar will converge into the Avaya IP Office product line some time in 2011.
5. For Data, Avaya will adopt Nortel's switches, routers and wireless LAN products.
6. Services line will merge to provide Design, Deploy, Manage and Maintain.

There are tonnes of questions being asked at the session. The Telecom Blog covers the Q&A: http://www.thetelecomblog.com/2010/01/19/questions-from-the-avaya-nortel-integrated-roadmap-presentation/

Key Timelines:

1998 - Nortel bought Bay Networks for $7 billion to expand into routers and switches.
2000 - Nortel spent $16 billion to acquire four more companies, including Alteon Networks.
2001 to 2003 - Nortel lays off 55,000, cutting its workforce to less than half of the 94,500 employed in 2000.
2004 - CEO Frank Dunn and two other executives are fired after an accounting scandal. Bill Owens takes over as CEO, but his tenure lasts only 18 months.
2005 - Nortel names former GE and Motorola exec Mike Zafirovski as its new CEO. Zafirovski cleans up the accounting mess, cuts expenses and restructures the company.
July 2006 - Nortel and Microsoft announced partnership for UC products.
2006 to 2008 - Nortel lays off another 5,300. Company now employs less than 30,000.
14 January 2009 - The company files for bankruptcy.
18 December 2009 - Avaya closed its acquisition of Nortel's enterprise business.
19 January 2010 - Avaya confirmed the integrated product roadmap.

Francois heads Avaya Asia Pacific

Francois heads Avaya Asia Pacific

Francois Lancon replaces John DiLullo in Avaya Asia Pacific.

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Avaya bought Nortel. But it seems like it's Nortel's taking over Avaya. Francois is previously President Enterprise for EMEA and Asia. He is now President for Avaya Asia Pacific. Crossing over to Avaya from Nortel, are Rick Seeto and Chong-Win Lee. Rick is previously CMO for Nortel Asia. He is now Director of Solution Marketing Vice President of Marketing and Solutions. Chong-Win is prevously GM for Contact Center and UC Solutions for Nortel Asia, Middle East and Africa. He is now Director for Contact Center Solutions in APAC. They are all based in Singapore. John had transferred to lead Avaya Canada and Latin America.

Avaya-Nortel product roadmap

Avaya-Nortel product roadmap

Even as internal restructuring is going on globally, Avaya will be revealing its post-acquisition product roadmap.

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While there will be a lot of press releases and media coverage, I seriously doubt it is going to have immediate impact on the industry. This is because the first announcement will be to their channels. There will be a big lag between training to go-to-market. This lag can take several months to even a year as the process involves lots of human interactions which can create hard bottlenecks. Lags can come from things like channel account distributions, minimum margins, commission structures, positioning message, ROI calculations, marketing materials, white papers, sales documents. I for one know it is difficult to get a seasoned sales person to change his sales pitch. I highly doubt product roadmap is a sexy topic. Taking this back to the first sentence I wrote, the top concerns on most people's mind right now is who's going to stay in the new Avaya and who's leaving.

Aspect acquires US-based Microsoft SI Quilogy

Aspect acquires US-based Microsoft SI Quilogy

Aspect Software announces acquisition of Quilogy, a system integrator with expertise in Microsoft SharePoint.

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While this is happening in US, it is consistent with the song I have been hearing over here in Asia Pacific. Aspect continues to show its support for Microsoft Unified Communications. Aspect has traditionally been in the contact centre space, offering workforce optimisation. Right after Microsoft had divorced Nortel partnered with Aspect back in 2008, Aspect had been positioning itself as UC player integrating Microsoft's UC offerings.