Analysis: VARs Impressed With Avaya Product Road Map, Channel Execution

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There have been colorful words used to describe Avaya's channel management in the past, and "impressive" hasn't often been one of them.

But Avaya and Nortel VARs interviewed by Channelweb.com this week have been just that -- impressed -- with the speed, thoroughness and execution of Avaya's just-released Avaya-Nortel product road map.

If there are still some kinks to be worked out and plenty of training to be completed, the overwhelming majority of interviewees praised Avaya for starting to integrate two large networking channels with an eye toward minimal disruption and growth opportunities for both Avaya and Nortel partners.

"I've been very impressed by the level of commitment and touch we've seen from the channel organization," said John Wrona, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Ronco Communications & Electronics, a Tonawanda, N.Y.-based solution provider. "For us at least, they've been able to provide answers to a lot of our questions and advise us on how to engage in a consultative manner with these accounts. They've been very assertive and very thorough."

Avaya confirmed details of its product road map to Channelweb.com last week, with clarifications posted as the road map was formally released Tuesday.

Avaya's plan is perhaps most notable for what it preserves: namely, Nortel's entire data portfolio, and with a few comparatively small exceptions, most of the current Avaya and Nortel product lines. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based architecture and Avaya Aura, the company's virtualized unified communications platform, will be the guts of much of Avaya's go-to-market strategy for unified communications (UC) and contact center (CC) products going forward.

Dr. Alan Baratz, Avaya's senior vice president and president of Avaya Global Communications Solutions, said on a Tuesday conference call for media and analysts that Aura will be crucial to what Avaya sees as a move from voice-integrated PBX solutions to open, flexible, modular communications systems that tie voice, video and data together.

"That move will be enabled essentially by the new SIP architecture and, moreover, will allow us to finally and truly start using communications to enable business processes," Baratz said. "We believe it is equally important that in the future we do not require our customers to rip and replace their current products or even cap growth on their current products."

That's not a surprise, VARs said, and a welcome sign that Avaya gets the deepness of Nortel's existing channel and installed base.

"I think it's dangerous when you have a base as large as Nortel's to aggressively whack products," said Jeff Hiebert, president and CEO of ROI Networks, a San Juan Capistrano, Calif.-based solution provider. "I like the story. I think Avaya's onto something with this session manager core, and I think they're going to get even more aggressive. The meetings that they've had this week, they've taken a lot of time to educate various audiences. They're going in as formal as possible and trying not to leave a lot to speculation."

"Overall, no big surprises," added Wrona, describing the product road map. "You don't want to give anyone a reason to go shopping, but I think they've got a very nice migration strategy that shows commitment to the Nortel base and to Avaya's architecture."

No dramatic changes, agreed Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president of enterprise research at The Yankee Group, although, he noted, Avaya hasn't made specific mention of the Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA) UC products Nortel developed with Microsoft. (Nortel laid off some of the executives in charge of the ICA in June 2009.)

"It's not a big surprise," Kerravala said. "I think if Avaya had wanted to have an ICA relationship with Microsoft they would have developed one before."

How Avaya would integrate the Nortel product portfolio into its channel was a source of concern for VARs following Avaya's successful bid to acquire the beleaguered Nortel's enterprise portfolio. Avaya won the bidding with a $915 million offer in September, and closed the acquisition in December.

Integrating the Nortel portfolio has also come at a time when Avaya is mounting a drastic channel revamp. Its new Avaya Connect program, announced at the Avaya Americas Partner Conference in Nashville, Tenn. in October, attempts to streamline how Avaya trains and certifies partners and structures its price lists. Among other changes, Avaya partners -- classified as Platinum, Gold, Silver and Authorized -- also see rebates processed more quickly.

Personnel changes at Avaya have also had an effect. Most of the company's channel management, including global channel chief Jeremy Butt and North American channel chief Carol Giles Neslund, were new to Avaya within the past year and a half. Avaya Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing and President, Field Operations, Todd Abbott, confirmed on the conference call that 80 percent of Avaya's vice presidents in fact joined the company within the last 18 months.

With so many channel changes, a number of VARs wondered at the conference and into the new year whether Avaya would be able to execute on Nortel as well -- especially after Avaya stated it would have a product road map ready to go less than a month after the acquisition was completed.

Mission accomplished, many agreed.

"I could take the cynical view of things and say that by not end-of-sale-ing much, they're hedging their bets. They can also take credit for having a road map in place when they said they were going to have it in place, and now take time to work through some of the overlap," said a longtime Avaya solution provider, who requested anonymity. "That said, it's a new Avaya. Everything about this so far has been as agreeable as possible, and they're really working hard to make sure they don't blow it on this. The stakes are too high."

"I tell you, all of the old-guard Nortel guys who swore they'd never drink a cup of Kool-Aid again? I'm hearing a nice tone from those guys," said Stuart Chandler, president and CEO of Optivor, an Ellicott City, Md.-based solution provider. "They've been immersed in the Avaya inkwell. It's interesting because all of the early word from the Nortel salespeople was 'I don't know, I don't know,' and the natural human reaction to that is FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt]. To the salespeoples' credit, not a single Nortel salesperson out there has called me and said they're not impressed."

Next: Lingering Questions Around Distribution, Partnering

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