Comments on: Nortel Interested in Avaya?

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:42:39 +0000

“Microsloth”!! That’s great!! Good blog.

By: Casual Observer

Casual Observer — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:49:22 +0000

The reason Nortel’s other deals were a disaster is because of Nortel. The Bay deal would have worked out better if not for the poor management of Nortel. This one would be too but for entirely different reasons. John Chambers must be sitting back and laughing somewhere as Cisco gains market share at the expense of everyone else.

Nortel would be better off riding the last boom in this economic cycle and seeing if they can survive it. If they can’t turn things around by 2008, then just take the company private.

By: many

many — Wed, 30 May 2007 00:30:58 +0000

Another reason Nortel bought Bay was because Lucent was a Bay reseller. It instantly got Nortel sales into a lot of switchrooms they had never seen. Unfortunately Nortel could not execute, they had serious problems with order management and could not figure out how to compensate sales teams for selling both boxes. The Nortel-Bay merger was no more successful than the Wellfleet-Synoptic merger.

Buying Avaya would be pretty stupid unless they got it for a very low price. Avaya (like Nortel) has been gutted of talent. It’s a metaphorically like lashing the sinking Titanic together with the torpedoed Lusitania and hoping they both float.

I seriously doubt Microsloth would be throwing out life preservers either. The Nortel deal being non exclusive is all window dressing.

By: The psychiatrist

The psychiatrist — Tue, 29 May 2007 15:05:09 +0000

If the Avaya deal goes through and provided Mike and his team know how to execute properly as opposed to the John Roth era,then that would yield a nice solid legacy base from which to work with.

Remember the MSFT deal lends alot of leverage within the Enterprise space.

That Mike he’s one smart cookie!

By: Mark Evans

Mark Evans — Tue, 29 May 2007 13:53:33 +0000

In many ways, this is the same situation that John Roth faced when he went after Bay. Nortel really wanted to get a bigger foothold in the enterprise market but the Bay portfolio was solid as opposed to industry-leading, which is why the deal probably failed to be a success.

By: Still An Employee

Still An Employee — Tue, 29 May 2007 13:39:52 +0000

Nortel acquiring Avaya makes sense to consolidate the enterprise voice market and reach the so desired 2nd place as per Mike’s current plans. Cisco does not have such good products or tracking record in this area so it makes a lot of sense to Cisco to buy it as well. The only wrinkle I have about that is when you consider new IP-based technology solutions like Asterisk, which would make Avaya products look like old legacy stuff. The point is, Nortel will pay billions to get something that might work out well in the short term, but not for the long term so is it worth the investment?