Avaya CEO on Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and how to win over Nortel customers

Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy sees the next nine months as critical for Avaya's future

Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy recently sat down at his office in Basking Ridge, N.J., with Network World Senior Editor Tim Greene to discuss the company's progress integrating Nortel enterprise assets into the company, the changing nature of the business communications market, the effects of Facebook and Twitter on corporate networks, the impact of Skype, the competition Avaya faces from Cisco and Microsoft and the promise of cloud computing. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

How's the Nortel integration going?

The integration is going fairly well. If I were to look at it from the point of view of R&D organizations and the innovation we will bring to market over the next several months is largely due to excellent integration of our product portfolios. On the execution of R&D road maps and product portfolio I think very well. Did we go through a period of time where making sure that you can fill orders and ship from one place to another and deal with those kinds of logistics issues? We absolutely have, and I think we can say those are ebbing and those are kinds of things that you have during your first quarter of integration. We're now hitting our second quarter of integration and most of those kinds of challenges are becoming mainstreamed, moderated or eliminated.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy recently sat down at his office in Basking Ridge, N.J., with Network World Senior Editor Tim Greene to discuss the company's progress integrating Nortel enterprise assets into the company, the changing nature of the business communications market, the effects of Facebook and Twitter on corporate networks, the impact of Skype, the competition Avaya faces from Cisco and Microsoft and the promise of cloud computing. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

How's the Nortel integration going?

The integration is going fairly well. If I were to look at it from the point of view of R&D organizations and the innovation we will bring to market over the next several months is largely due to excellent integration of our product portfolios. On the execution of R&D road maps and product portfolio I think very well. Did we go through a period of time where making sure that you can fill orders and ship from one place to another and deal with those kinds of logistics issues? We absolutely have, and I think we can say those are ebbing and those are kinds of things that you have during your first quarter of integration. We're now hitting our second quarter of integration and most of those kinds of challenges are becoming mainstreamed, moderated or eliminated.

Avaya stares down Microsoft, Cisco

Whether we have fully dealt with customers and we have moved from our heels to our toes yet I think really is the work that is ahead in terms of selling the combined customer base new products from the joint entity, and can we get people excited. This period right now is about bringing a lot of innovation to market, and now the question will be are our customers as excited about it as we are? The true litmus test for the integration is probably roughly six or nine months off. On most operational details we have the normal first quarter challenges from shipments and logistics. Second quarter things are feeling pretty good and the litmus test is ahead of us.

What's your best pitch to Nortel customers to encourage them to continue as Avaya customers?

First realize that the Nortel customer base was sitting in a world of fear for a very long time, probably on the order of 18 months. I would argue that if I had been sitting and I hadn't departed from Nortel during that 18 months, when Avaya walks in and says number one we're going to support your products for the next five years so you don't have an immediate problem with things going away, and we're making investments in many of your products or their subsequent releases, and you'll get new features on them, we're financially sound, and we have a plan for the future.

The second thing is that there's a group of people that are in wait-and-see mode and the promise for Avaya and Nortel is that we can migrate that base more inexpensively now and in the future more than any competitor that will come out and rip and replace all their assets, which is what the other competitors will and have to do. One of the enablers of this group migration is this technology called SIP [Session Initiation Protocol] and what we're doing with it. You can start with SIP as a lobe and let it metastasize and grow all around the existing Nortel and/or Avaya infrastructure. And so that's working very well.
Third we have a full pipeline of innovation that is ultimately the future and we're making good on our promises.