Avaya and Nortel: is the honeymoon over?

Last week I spent a day up in Basking Ridge, NJ at the Avaya’s global headquarters. The purpose of the visit was to delve deeper into the product roadmap (details man, details!) and talk about the recently announced PASS program that Avaya and it’s voice resellers are implementing on July 1, 2010 regarding voice maintenance and support contracts.

While the discussions were covered by a non-disclosure agreement there wasn’t a lot of information that hasn’t already been disclosed in either the product roadmap presentations or other material released by Avaya. With that said there were some technical details on how Avaya plans to integrate the CS1000 with their Aura platform. Unfortunately I can’t really go into the details… especially since a few of the Avaya presenters actually mentioned this blog in my discussions with them. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not? I guess so far so good, and I haven’t yet received any DMCA take down notices.

In any case I thought I would give my opinion on the current state of the Avaya/Nortel marriage. In general I try to avoid posting articles based solely on opinion. I’m much more comfortable basing my discussions on facts and theories that can be proven or dis-proven rather than just subjecture and assumptions. It’s almost expected that in any large acquisition there are bound to be bumps in the road… to date I haven’t seen any as a former Nortel customer. There haven’t been any product supply or support issues and the pricing and discount models  (post Avaya) have remained virtually unchanged. In fact last week we just stood up another CS1000E with 500+ IP phones and 36 Ethernet Routing Switch 5520s with a single Ethernet Routing Switch 8600 at the core at a newly constructed corporate office. So it would appear that it’s definitely business as usual when working with Avaya to procure Nortel hardware and support. Unfortunately not everything has been all roses. I learned last week that Avaya had it’s first round of employee cuts where it eliminated some redundant positions that came about through the Nortel acquisition.

In my opinion it’s seems that Avaya is on the right course and is dedicated to retaining the existing Nortel user base and even growing that user base. The next critical step is in the actual integration of the different product offerings… how will a Nortel CS1000 communicate with the Avaya Aura platform and how will Avaya leverage the existing Nortel investment? Having sat through those presentations last week I’m fairly confident that Avaya won’t let their Nortel customers down.

Let me know what you think?

Has the transition been seamless for you and your organization?

Are you on board with the Nortel/Avaya product roadmap or have you already decided to jump ship? (I think I see a good poll question in that last one)

Cheers!