Avaya silent on Nortel buy-out rumours

Claudio Castelli, senior analyst, enterprise - Asia Pacific at Ovum told CRN Avaya and other UC vendors would be interested in the division.

"Nortel has a consistent and comprehensive enterprise product portfolio in voice and data but its main strength is in its market penetration," he said.

"The breadth of its customer base, which extends across all enterprise sizes and verticals, and its channel depth outside of North America, might represent an attractive opportunity for many players, including Avaya.

"It will put the company in a position to seriously challenge Cisco."

Castelli said Avaya is well committed to the enterprise market and is more likely to develop a proper strategy and long term migration path for Nortel's portfolio, giving customers more assurances.

"However, this wouldn't be the best outcome for Nortel Enterprise's employees," he said.

"Avaya is a direct competitor in this market and wouldn't require a large portion of Nortel's research and development team to continue with its portfolio," he said.

Avaya South Pacific has told CRN it was unable to comment on speculation about the Nortel business.

However, the vendor has confirmed the departure of Carlton Taya, managing director and Peter Dillon, sales director at Avaya South Pacific but stays mum on acquisition rumours.

The voice vendor thanked both Taya and Dillon for their contributions to the business during their tenures and wishes them all the best in their future endeavours.
 
An Avaya spokesperson told CRN, Andy Hurt has assumed the role of acting managing director, Avaya South Pacific.

"He has played an integral role in growing the Avaya South Pacific business over the past five years having held various roles including responsibility for the region's channel business, marketing and sales positions," they said.
 
"Avaya is actively recruiting the replacement for the managing director role, and we will ensure our customers, employees and partners are unaffected by this transition."