As I watched it, I made several notes and questions that, if I were an existing Avaya or Nortel customer, I would want to have explained to me. So I thought I would share a few of them with you. Please, take your time to read through these and respond back to me with your viewpoints, comments, and corrections.
- In today’s communication world, everything is moving towards software-based, open-architecture, application-rich solutions. Yet, from what I can see from their roadmap, Avaya is staying firmly planted in the world of proprietary, hardware-based solutions. Avaya’s roadmap to the future looks like a minefield of trouble from an IT perspective. If you are a Nortel customer today and are in need of applications from Avaya, you are going to be heavily investing in hardware and services to get there.
- In the contact center world, if you purchased a solution from Avaya, you are going to be moving to Nortel. According to
their announcement, Nortel’s CC7 product was already further along in supporting multi-vendor solutions for the mid-market contact center than Avaya’s Contact Center Express solution. Thus, CC7 is your contact center solution of choice and will be enhanced to add additional features/functionality to it. What if you bought from Avaya or were moving to Avaya to get away from the Nortel solution in the first place? Looks like you are going back. - From an IT perspective, I just cannot imagine how difficult it will be to maintain and manage all of the different products that will be coming your way as an Avaya/Nortel customer. During the announcement, it was very clear that IT groups need to be quite knowledgeable and savvy regarding the hardware/software options they are going to support with this mixed product bag. I can’t imagine trying to talk to an Avaya/Nortel sales person to find out which solution is going to be the best fit for my business needs.
- Speaking of IT, we continue to hear from prospects and customers alike that their executive teams are mandating moving away from heavy-IT investments and moving towards hosted CaaS/SaaS solutions in order to minimize the amount of on-site expertise and to reduce capital expenditures. Avaya’s roadmap of hardware-intensive solutions looks to be taking customers the other way.
- ACE or Aura? If I understand the roadmap correctly, if you are a Nortel customer, it isn’t a matter of choosing one or the other for your migration plans to Avaya, it is going to be both. Avaya stated that the Nortel’s Agile Communications Environment (ACE) was further along in being able to interface with 3rd party applications than Aura’s. It appears that you will use ACE for the applications integrations and Aura for the communications integrations. Am I missing something or does this sound like a lot of consulting time and costs involved?
From my perspective, granted a biased one, there are bumpy roads ahead for you if you are a Nortel or Avaya customer.
Let me know your thoughts.
Tim
Tim Passios
I began working for Interactive Intelligence in 1998 and have a more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and software industries. I also worked in contact centers as an agent, supervisor, field trainer and manager for eight of those 20 years. In my current role at Interactive Intelligence I have constant interactions with customers, prospects, the media and industry analysts, which all help me to understand many different perspectives related to the contact center, unified communications and business process automation markets. When I’m not working I like to spend time with my family.
All i could see in the Avaya roadmap after the merger was that they have their hands full with CTI Apps, which they are consolidating & moving to open standards. I do realise they dont have much brochures on that ..
In the end if I wanted an all in one open solution I’d go for Asterisk.
I appreciate your insight but I feel like you are stating the same point. If I am a Nortel customer in need of a communication solution, do I want to wait for Avaya to:
As for moving to an all-in-one solution – are you serious? Asterisk? All-in-one?