The bottom line for enterprises and channel partners following the completion of Avaya's purchase of Nortel Enterprise Solutions is to expect product consolidation, aggressive pricing and improved performance of Avaya product. Those are the takeaways of Steve Hilton, principal analyst for enterprise solutions at Analysys Mason.
In an e-mailed commentary, Hilton believes some telephony products will be whacked: Read more
Avaya this week completed its acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions group, making the company an even more formidable competitor to Cisco and everyone else in enterprise telephony and unified communications. About 6,000 Nortel employees have joined Avaya, including 25 top managers like Joel Hackney, previously president of Nortel Enterprise Solutions. Read more
After much hullabaloo, the actual Nortel auction was anti-climatic. Avaya was bid up by a bunch of other smaller players and ended up paying $900 million for Nortel's Enterprise assets. Did they overpay, maybe... But ebay-style sometimes it's hard to let something go once you've madeup your mind. Read more
Klausner Technologies said today that it is suing Cisco and Avaya for alleged patent infringement. The company asserts that the vendors' visual voicemail products violate Klausner's visual voicemail patents. Read more
The tearing apart of Nortel was the most-read story of the week, mixed with lighter fare such as a slideshow of tech-related T-shirts and a look back at the "fathers" of the technology we use every day.
1. Avaya reportedly offering $500M for Nortel enterprise biz Read more
2. Tech tees release your inner nerd
It was a long time coming, but the moment of truth appears to be upon telecom giant Nortel. Reports are surfacing that Avaya has offered $500 million for the company's enterprise business, while we know Nokia Siemens Networks has offered $650 million for the wireless business. Read more
The VoIP endpoint market has been an extremely one lately, with the introduction of many new devices by a wide variety of vendors. I recently discussed the Polycom VVX 1500, a new hybrid voice and video device that boasts a new and intuitive touch-based UI. While recent offerings by Snom and Avaya offer similar interfaces, the Polycom VVX's clear advantage is the integration of video into the device. Read more
I am a huge fan of unified communications, a somewhat imprecise term, but an exciting concept regardless. I define unified communications as the bringing together all forms of voice and data messaging into a single software platform, but also supporting many forms of (especially mobile and wireless) subscriber units. This is a little vague, but imagine having one big inbox that holds everything, and you're there. Read more
Avaya made waves in the SMB telephony markets this week, announcing Anthony Bartolo as the new leader of its Small and Medium Enterprise Division. Bartolo previously was the CEO of Skyrider, a technology company specializing in the design and marketing of peer-to-peer networking solutions. In addition, Bartolo held executive-level and senior management positions at Symbol Technologies and Nortel Networks. Read more
Avaya has launched an online energy saving calculator. Avaya isn't the first one try to position itself as a green network gear vendor. Nortel trailblazed that tactic, using its so called-energy calculator to more-or-less skewer Cisco. Nortel's tactic didn't particularly work, if you can judge by its bankruptcy. Read more
Innovation in the SMB markets continues to be at the forefront with Avaya, whose IP Office product line provides unique solutions to common problems in this market. I recently had the opportunity to spend a few weeks observing the end user perspective of the IP Office platform, which offers a pioneering solution for telecommuters and those working remotely. Read more
Is VoIP dead? That's the debate going on in the blogosphere among some VoIP experts. Systems consultant and telecoms author Ted Wallingford points to comments by other VoIP experts declaring VoIP's passing, suggesting that VoIP is now just 'plumbing' and that it's "not the exciting thing it used to be." Read more
It's a competitive world out there, especially in the IP-PBX markets these days. With a plethora of platform choices, it's becoming difficult for technology decision makers to effectively decide on a solution.
Now, interoperability seems to be newest trends in promoting such platforms, as such certifications between platforms and trunking / dialtone providers can make the difference for technology decision makers. Read more
The Free Software Foundation's copyright infringement lawsuit against Cisco filed yesterday follows just days after a debate in the blogosphere about whether Cisco is an open source leech, or whether it's poised to become an open source champion, like IBM. Read more
I'm glad to see we can finally all agree on something (sort of)...
I recently read about Avaya's new focus on products that aim to save time and money, and I thought now that's a good idea, which is exactly why we made it our focus when we started M5 back in 2000. Read more
The busy winter conference season is upon us once again, promising a dizzying array of product annoucements, IP telephony news, and presentations and discussions that will continue to revolutionize the convergence industry. Read more
There's no doubt about it: IP Centrex is gaining steam, and quickly. With a comparatively miniscule initial investment to traditional telephony platform offerings, the market may be shifting ever-so-slightly to the "switch in the cloud." Read more
Come on! You managed to leave out the leaders in UC, at least according to Gartner: Nortel & Microsoft. Nortel is already delivering communication enabled applications with UC... not just a future like it is for most other vendors.
The small and medium business IP-PBX markets are alive once again with new blood being brought in to refresh multiple vendors' existing product lines. Read more
Within the last few weeks, the dust is still settling from the announcement of the Nortel-Pingtel deal which generated much attention from end users and analysts alike. As announced in the acquisition deal, the technologies from Pingtel's SIPFoundry suite would evolve into Nortel's Software Communications System 500 (SCS500).
Dell has apparently jumped on the Nortel bandwagon, as they have become a hardware platform provider for the SCS500. In the past, Fonality partnered with Dell to provide server hardware for its appliance-like systems. What's a notable difference between the two? Simple hardware comparisons. Dell's hardware implementation of the Nortel SCS500 runs on OptiPlex "desktop-grade" systems, whereas "other" systems utilize server class hardware. Read more
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