Avaya and Polycom are expanding their relationship to include the development and marketing of new voice and video unified communications solutions. The integrated offerings will be based on Avaya's Aura UC platform and Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy. The Avaya-Polycom partnership is the latest move in a quickly changing UC landscape as vendors attempt to take on major players like Cisco Systems.
- Avaya and Polycom are expanding their partnership to include integrated video, voice and collaborations offerings, the latest move in a quickly evolving unified communications market. The two companies March 9 announced plans to jointly develop and market a host of new, tightly integrated UC sol...

Avaya is unveiling its plans for integrating products acquired from Nortels enterprise business. Avayas plan is aimed at eliminating overlap while protecting Nortel customers, who not only will want to avoid any rip-and-replace scenarios but also will be courted by Avaya competitors. Avaya also said it is keeping Nortels data products, including switches and routers.
- Avaya is rolling out an integrated product road map that officials say aims to protect Nortel Networks customers and create a strong unified communications portfolio. In their plans, unveiled Jan. 19, Avaya officials also said they intend to keep Nortels data product lines, including switches, ...

A month after closing a $915 million deal to buy bankrupt Nortel's enterprise business unit, Avaya is preparing to unveil its integrated road map. The industry will see in which direction Avaya is moving, and Nortel customers will find out the future of their products.
- Avaya was one of the biggest winners in the 2009 fire sale that was Nortel Networks. The communications technology vendor bought Nortel's enterprise business, which includes Nortel's UC (unified communications) products. Avaya on Dec. 18 completed the acquisition, which analysts at the time of t...

Now that gearmaker Avaya and Web-calling service Skype share a private-equity owner, the two companies are discussing ways they can better work together. "We are having conversations with [Skype]," Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy said in an interview today. Kennedy didn’t go into detail, but these talks most likely focus on how the companies can work together, as opposed to some sort of combination of operations.

It's not difficult to imagine Avaya helping Skype enter new markets, such as the premises of its large business clients. While Skype's Web-calling service is already widely used by small businesses, it's yet to prove that it's reliable enough to serve the needs of large enterprise customers. Perhaps Avaya, whose business is focused on the enterprise, could help Skype make its Web-calling service more attractive to such large companies.

What's more, Skype could be integrated into Avaya's products, which include certain Nortel gear (Avaya closed its Nortel acquisition today). Nortel has long helped carriers like Verizon service their corporate customers. By integrating its offerings with Skype's, Avaya could help reduce these customers' telecommunications bills.

With enterprises looking for ways to save money, demand for unified communications and VOIP technologies is expected to grow rapidly. Gartner is predicting the unified communications and collaboration market will reach $7.4 billion by the end of the year, a 22 percent jump over 2008, and that HD-based video meeting solutions will replace 2.1 million airline seats annually by 2012, at a cost of $3.5 billion to the travel and hospitality industry every year. A host of companies, from Microsoft, IBM and Cisco Systems to Siemens Enterprise Communications, Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya, are looking for ways to expand their reach in the field. To help getter a better look at this market, eWEEK spoke to Paul McMillan, director of UC technical vision and strategy at the office of Siemens CTO. McMillan said the key to UC is enhancing the collaborative environment.
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Avaya and Cisco Systems were the top vendors in a unified communications market that saw strong growth in the third quarter, according to Dell'Oro Group. However, while the UC space is doing well in the second half of 2009 and is expected to continue growing in 2010, it will be a while before it reaches the pre-recession numbers of 2008.
- Avaya and Cisco Systems were the top vendors in a growing unified communications space in the third quarter, according to research company Dell'Oro Group. In a statement released Dec. 3, Dell'Oro analysts said more than 70 percent of the vendors in the space contributed to the market's growth in...

Avaya will pay more than $900 million for Nortel Networks' Enterprise Solutions business, which includes Nortel's unified communications technologies. The deal will give Avaya a 25 percent share of the enterprise telephony market, putting Cisco Systems in second place at 16 percent, according to analysts. The deal is part of bankrupt Nortel's decision to sell off its businesses piecemeal.
- Avaya is propelling itself to the top of the enterprise telephony market with its $900 million purchase of bankrupt Nortel Networks' enterprise business. The combination of Avaya and Nortel's enterprise business will give Avaya about 25 percent of the enterprise telephony market, outdistancing C...

Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski calls Avaya's July 20 bid for his company's enterprise solutions unit "a good starting point," and for good reasons.

While Avaya has bid $475 million for the business, other bidders could yet jockey for the unit. If they do, Zafirovski tells BusinessWeek.com he expects an auction to determine winners some time in September. So far, every one of Nortel's five businesses has attracted three to seven potential suitors, he says. How many of those actually place bids remains to be seen. Investors and creditors may get a sense of the actual interest on July 21, when potential buyers are invited to bid for another Nortel asset, comprising several wireless gear product lines.

Back in June, Nokia Siemens Networks agreed to purchase several wireless equipment business lines for a song. All counterbids must be submitted by July 21, and if there are any counterbids, the wireless businesses will go up for auction on July 24, when a bankruptcy judge must decide on the winners.

Avaya, whose bid must go through a similar process, must be watching that auction closely, and here's why: A few weeks ago, private equity firm MatlinPatterson, which owns about 10% of Nortel's debt, confirmed its plans to acquire some of Nortel's assets, including the wireless businesses. "We expect other bidders, but there are no guarantees," Zafirovski says.

A source tell BusinessWeek.com that the private equity firm is planning to up the amount offered by Nokia Siemens. And if MatlinPatterson wins this week's bidding war, it may also bid for other Nortel business units, the source says. MatlinPatterson is looking to partner up with an existing telecom industry player, such as Nokia Siemens, to buy the bulk of Nortel's assets. "We would not be surprised if the same company bids for multiple businesses," Zafirovski says.

The Avaya bid complicates things for MatlinPatterson. Whereas, until today, the firm only had to outbid Nokia Siemens, now it has to offer more money than Avaya, too. That said, both Nokia Siemens's and Avaya's bids are quite low, amounting to about a third or less of the respective divisions' annual sales.

Nortel, the bankrupt communications vendor looking to sell off its businesses to raise money, has accepted a $475 million bid from Avaya for its Enterprise Solutions Business. The agreement sets the floor for the bidding for the business unit, and gives Avaya the right to match other bids. The announcement comes a month after Nortel announced a similar agreement with Nokia Siemens Networks for two other business units. One analyst said he expects consolidation in the bloated business communications market to continue.
- Bankrupt communications vendor Nortel Networks is continuing to sell off its businesses most recently, Avaya put in a bid for its enterprise division and the fire sale looks like it will continue. Nortel July 20 announced a $475 million “stalking horse” agreement with Avaya for its Enterprise So...

IBM and Avaya are expanding their partnership to help businesses better secure their UC environments. Avaya has certified some security products from IBMs ISS unit to run with its new Aura UC architecture. In addition, IBM will incorporate Aura into its own converged communications solutions.
- IBM and Avaya are looking to increase the security around joint unified communications offerings, a key concern as more businesses embrace a converged communications environment. The two companies are planning to build UC offerings that include security products from IBMs ISS (Internet Security ...

On May 11, Nortel reported yet another quarter of disastrous results -- results that could, potentially, further pressure prices of business units the company has up for sale. Revenues, at $1.73 billion, were down 37% year over year. The company lost $507 million in the quarter.

An analyst I've talked to on background believes the revenue decline could further reduce the value of Nortel's four businesses, which are currently being shopped around to buyers as Nortel goes through bankruptcy restructuring. Nortel announced it's finished separating the four businesses on May 11. "There's a great deal of interest [in the businesses]," Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski told me today. "We've not initiated any of these discussions, but there's an enormous amount of interest in all of [the four units]." He told me that the potential acquirers are all old hands in the telecom equipment space. The Wall Street Journal had reported earlier that Nokia Siemens Networks, Avaya and LG are among potential bidders. The analyst I've talked to believes that there's the least amount of interest in the company's Metro Ethernet Networks unit, which had driven much of Nortel's growth during the Internet boom.

There are several things Nortel has going for it, however. Although its sales have fallen off a cliff, once again, in January, following news of the bankruptcy filing, they've risen sequentially in every month since, Zafirovski says. Thanks to cost cuts, the company's cash position remains stable, so there's less of a hurry to do a fire sale of assets. More favorable stock market and lending environments could help Nortel snag a better price for its assets as well. Whether these will outweigh the overall continued revenue declines' drag on prices remains to be seen.

Unified communications has been a topic in IT management circles for years. It’s a topic that can lead to packed houses at conferences and Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft and IBM all have extensive unified communications suites. The problem: Users.  Here’s the unified communications blue print: Enterprises spend heavily on suites that bundle instant messaging, Web conferencing, video presence, …

The report, Enterprise Telephony Worldwide Market Share and Forecasts , shows Cisco took the lead for the first time in the overall PBX-KTS equipment market after growing its revenue 19 per cent in 3Q08. Avaya also posted strong quarterly growth, increasing overall PBX revenue 10 per cent; Avaya is now in second place in the worldwide PBX and IP PBX equipment markets; Nortel is third.

A recently published report from Dell’Oro Group reveals that the Unified Communications market surpassed $3 billion during the third quarter of this year, driven in large part by the market’s top two vendors - Avaya and Cisco.