In a recent podcast, the UCStrategies team weighed in on the Avaya road map and what the Avaya acquisition of Nortel means for the end-user community, the Nortel customer base, and the Nortel channel partners. You can listen to the podcast here.

Here’s a very brief recap of the roadmap announcement. Avaya reassured Nortel customers that all current UC products are available for sale throughout 2010, and the onlyUC end-of-sale to be announced in 2010 are Nortel Multimedia Conferencing and the MCS 5100 for Audio Conferencing. Any future end-of-sale for any product will have at least 9 months notice, and products will have six total years of support following any end-of-sale. The roadmap places the Avaya Aura architecture as the direction and evolutionary path that all products will eventually connect to. Nortel’s Agile Communications Environment (ACE) will be integrated with Avaya Aura to accelerate Avaya Aura business application integration. In terms of tactical moves, current Nortel customers on CS1000 are advised to continue adding phones and features to their existing CS1000 systems, and in terms of strategic moves they are encourage to look at Aura for centralizing call control and management control. Avaya Aura is the architectural deployment model of choice moving forward.

The general consensus of the UCStrategies analysts/consultants is that Avaya did a very impressive job of laying out its roadmap and announcing the integration plan in a timely fashion, while allaying fears of Nortel customers about the future. Based on the roadmap, Nortel customers don’t need to make any decisions or changes for the foreseeable future, and should feel assured that with very few exceptions, their Nortel products will be supported for many years.

Jim Burton started the discussion by noting that the devil is in the details – Avaya did a great job of announcing its roadmap and in trying to keep the Nortel products alive and well for Nortel customers, while providing a migration path towards the next generation of products, that being Aura. He noted that while any customer today should be looking at new opportunities and looking at every vendor out there, they need to ensure that the vendor will support their Nortel products for some time in the future.

Marty Parker suggested that for 2010 and maybe 2011, the best enterprise action would seem to be caution, or cautious optimism, as enterprise customers watch Avaya’s plan actually unfold. Since so many products will be modified to accomplish the merger, from the Communications Manager system to the call center products to the voice messaging products, it will be important for customers to see those new releases before making major commitments to them. He added that while Avaya brings a SIP-based application-enabling layer into the Avaya story, most of the talk was about Session Manager as the vehicle for bridging across and then replacing the two current and legacy PBX product lines – Definity, Meridian, CS 1000, etc. - all coming under the Session Manager umbrella.

I interjected, noting that for quite some time, UCStrategies has suggested that IP PBXs will become feature servers in a UC world, and that Avaya is moving in this direction, with plans for the Avaya Communication Manager to become a feature server. Marty agreed, and added that beyond watching and waiting, his recommendation to customers in this transition time is to spend the available budget on preparing for the future, rather than buying more of the past. He suggested that a good start would be a pilot test or proof of concept of Avaya Session Manager as a UC application platform as I suggested, to see first hand what is really possible with this critical Avaya product. Marty suggests that customers should get their hands on Session Manager, and to focus on the future platform.

The discussion then turned to whether or not customers will continue purchasing Nortel’s CS1000 product, as I commented that I don’t see many people running out to buy CS1000 right now. Samantha Kane commented that she has several clients that are long-time loyal Nortel customers and who have recently signed up for significant upgrades to the CS1000 platforms – especially because of how well Avaya articulated its roadmap. In fact, one customer was going to replace its Nortel products but after the Avaya roadmap announcements, the company decided to rewrite its five-year strategy and include the evolution to Aura. This is good news for both Avaya and Nortel. I agreed that existing Nortel customers will upgrade to the latest version of the CS1000 in order to connect to Aura, but very few non-Nortel customers will go out and start with a CS1000.

We turned to the issue of providing financial incentives for Nortel customers to move to the latest release of CS1000. All of Avaya’s competitors are going after Nortel customers, and Avaya needs to have financial incentive for Nortel customers to stay on the Avaya path. Avaya had not yet addressed this question although the company responded during a later “Ask the Expert” session with analysts that it will offer existing Nortel customers special upgrade pricing, resulting in about a 20% reduction on list prices. Most of Avaya’s competitors are offering incentive programs to Nortel customers, and Jim stated that UCStrategies will host a webinar in late February/early March that will enable all the PBX vendors - including Avaya - to discuss their incentive programs and why customers should consider each of the vendors. This will be important not only for end users, but for channel partners as well.

Speaking of channel partners, David Yedwab opened the discussion about how the Nortel and Avaya channel partners are adapting to being supported, trained, and incented to stay with the combined Avaya/Nortel. He noted that the new Avaya Connect program is going quite a distance to make this possible. As he wrote previously (http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/does-the-avaya-nortel-roadmap-salve-most-nortel-customers-concerns.aspx), the devil is in the details and we have to wait and see how this will play out. The Avaya Connect program is being rolled out strongly over the first quarter and into second quarter of 2010. We have to keep watching since this will be one of the biggest channel groups in the industry and how they play out and move forward will affect end user customers, since it’s the channel to a large degree that impacts what customers do. Pam Avila added that this is the time for Nortel dealers to take a look at other opportunities, as they’ve spent so many years competing with Avaya, and it may be hard to now become part of the Avaya community. She suggests that channel partners should take this opportunity to look at all their options before making a decision.

Pam noted that the role of channels in the future will be more strategic, and that the channel is going through an evolution right now. Nortel and Avaya dealers can’t continue to sell the same way they used to, and channel partners now need to be broader in their expertise, approaching customer from a business problem perspective, and the vendors need to step up and help their channel partners. David added that the Nortel channel is also composed of a large number of service providers that were major distributors of the Nortel product integrated with the carriers’ network services, and are also evolving to add UC consultancy services.

While the roadmap sets in place a great starting point, we expect that things will change over time. For example, some of the products that were planned on being end of life’d at the end of 2010 may end up being extended for several years with continued support and upgrades. We expect Avaya to flush out its strategy and over time, and we may see that things are rolled out differently than originally planned. Art Rosenberg added that the evolution toward UC has been slower than expected across the industry, and everyone has work to do conceptually and in terms of implementation, suggesting that Avaya’s road map needs to be flexible enough to adapt to things that haven’t yet happened.

In terms of mobility and FMC, Nortel and Avaya took different approaches, and Michael Finneran noted that Avaya has been quiet regarding its mobility plans. He expects to see most of the Avaya products being retained, including the one-X Mobile,  one-X Communicator and Avaya’s relationship with Divitas, while leveraging Nortel’s DECT system.

The general consensus of the UCStrategies team is that Avaya did an impressive job of rolling out its roadmap in a timely fashion, providing Nortel customers with the reassurance that they do not have to make any sudden changes, and that their products will be supported for several years to come. In addition, Avaya laid out a migration roadmap, helping to bring Nortel customers to the next generation of communication products – based on SIP, open systems, with an evolutionary path. Avaya’s plan is to help Nortel customers by protecting their existing investments, extending with new applications and value, and growing into a future enterprise-wide architecture. Stay tuned for more analysis of the new Avaya over the coming months.