What should users expect after closing Nortel enterprise acquisition?
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:
We see no reason for Avaya to continue both solution sets in the medium-term.
He also says Avaya and its channel partners will offer aggressive pricing to ward off any customer poaching from competitors:
Avaya is going to lavish attention on its channel partners to prevent other vendors like NEC, Toshiba, Panasonic, Cisco and others from picking them off.
He notes that 89% of Nortel’s sales strategy is through the channel, while only 57% of Avaya’s is indirect.
Hilton also predicts that Avaya’s telephony gear may be optimized to run on the switches and routers in obtains from the Nortel acquisition… or on any vendor’s networking gear:
VoIP, UC, video-based communications, cloud-based computing — it all hinges on tight integration of technology products across a well engineered and configured LAN and WAN. Avaya is going to learn a lot from the NES networking teams.
An analyst at Hilton’s former employer though believes Avaya might jettison the Nortel networking gear. Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group says Avaya may not want to re-enter the bloody waters of LAN switching, especially since the stakes are much higher now with data center specialists driving the market going forward.
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