Well if you’re like a lot of us today you probably didn’t see much. I was unable to connect myself and know of three other people around the country that were also unable to connect.
Here’s the response from Avaya when I questioned them on it;
Were you aware that many Customers could not gain access to your presentation?
Please accept our apologies. Due to unprecedented demand, we experienced technical issues. The replay will be available today at 3:30pm ET, using the same link. You can also view the replay on-demand beginning 9:00am, Thursday, January 21, and will be available on demand for 6 months. It can be accessed using the same URL, user id and password that you received when you registered.
I’m in the process of trying to download the presentation and all the material. I’m hoping that I can sift through all the slides and marketing and get to the real meat, which I can then post here. In short the existing data product roadmap is getting adopted by Avaya – although I believe it’s fair to ask what is/was the data product roadmap? Let’s see it! It was obvious that the voice solutions were going to be the big issue. I heard/read that the CS1000 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon but I only heard about future support for the 1120e and 1140e IP phones, what about the millions of i2002/i2004 IP phones? I also did’t see much about the BCM/SRG other than a comment that it would continue to be manufactured into 2011.
If you’ve seen the keynote and had time to digest the information please go ahead and comment. I will update this post with additional thoughts and comments when I’ve had an opportunity to read through all the material. Hopefully I’ll be able to see the beginning of the keynote presentation today at 3:30PM.
Cheers!
Update: January 19, 2010 3:30PM
Looks like the presentation will now be available at 4:00PM as opposed to the previously announced 3:30PM.
Although many of the specifics are somewhat vague, the overall product direction is not. The Nortel BCM 50, BCM 200, BCM 400, BCM 50 and Norstar will converge / morph into the Avaya IP Office product line some time in 2011. Avaya’s intention is to take a best of breed approach with respect to product development moving forward incorporating the best of Nortel’s BCM and adding that level of functionality into theAvaya IP Office product line.
There will, eventually, be support for some of the Nortel handsets on the Avaya product line although that isn’t expected for some time.
Jeff Wiener
http://www.TheTelecomBlog.com
Thanks for taking the time to comment Jeff.
It will undoubtedly take some time to get to all the details, I already have a meeting scheduled with Avaya/Nortel to review today’s announcement. Unfortunately for some of us we sometimes need to budget 2-3 years out for very large construction projects. It’s difficult to budget for equipment that might not be available when the time comes to actually order the equipment.
So while the quick answer from Avaya/Nortel is “business as usual” and “we’ll support everything”. The long term migration strategy needs a lot of detail so customers will understand what will and won’t migrate and in what time frames.
Cheers!
Ye they have a lot work still to do, but wasn’t suprised with the information just provided. But that guy from forrester… zomg! boring…
From the presentation and the breakout session on data which is still available I get the strong impression the data side of things (ERS,8600 etc) is in good shape and will not get hit. Good news!
There were some rumors that Avaya was perhaps looking to sell the entire data portfolio for fears of entering into direct competition with some of it’s long time strategic partners in the Ethernet switch market.
While those are only rumors it does make me stop for a second and think.
I believe it’ll take time for customers to start to warm up to the idea and ultimately time will tell if the Avaya/Nortel marriage is going to be a success or failure.
Cheers