A Year In The Avaya Channel: 10 Key Events

Avaya Mounts Up

In the past year alone, Avaya has seen two major transformations to its business: an insistently more channel-savvy model said to minimize the long-held conflict between Avaya's direct and indirect sales forces, and the digestion of Nortel's former enterprise unit -- a former competitor that's now part of Avaya's plan for global UC domination.

With the Avaya Americas Partner Conference kicking off Wednesday in Las Vegas, here's a look at 10 key events -- and a curious trend -- from the past year in the Avaya channel, which may offer some clues at to Avaya's next moves.

October 2009: 85 Percent-Plus

At last year's Avaya Americas partner conference in Nashville, CEO Kevin Kennedy said that the acquisition by Avaya of Nortel's enterprise business unit -- still pending at the time -- would accelerate Avaya's channel growth to the point where it would reach 85 percent indirect by 2012. For a company whose channel commitment hasn't always been rock solid, it was a welcome message for VARs, especially coupled with Avaya's unveiling of Avaya Connect, its streamlined global channel program.

"We realize we have a long way to go to be what we think we need to be in the industry," Kennedy said. "Pending the Nortel acquisition, we expect another increase in relevance."

December 2009: Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Just before Christmas, Avaya confirmed it has closed the $915 million acquisition of Nortel's enterprise solutions business, and also gave solution providers the first indication -- January 19, 2010 -- of when the first plans for the integrated Avaya-Nortel product roadmap would be revealed. It marked the end of a long stretch of turmoil for some legacy Nortel VARs, many of whom were happy to see the deal become official and new work begin.

January 2010: Roadmap Revealed

Avaya went live on January 19, as promised, with an integrated product roadmap for the legacy Nortel portfolio. With a goal of as little disruption as possible, Avaya said, there were only a few discontinuations -- the MCS 5100 media conferencing server chief among them -- and also a few nods in favor of the Nortel portfolio, with Avaya promising that Avaya's Contact Center Express would be worked into a later version of Nortel's CC 7. Minus a few headaches, VARs were roundly impressed with the speed and execution of how quickly Avaya came to market with a plan, even if some questions still remained.

March 2010: Ingram Voted Off The Island

Given Nortel's longstanding relationships with several major distributors, the integration of its enterprise assets into Avaya posed a challenge: who to keep, and who to cut. Among the major broadline distributors, it ended up being Tech Data which Avaya kept, and Ingram Micro which it cut, telling CRN at the time that Avaya would move forward with "the optimum mix of distribution."

Avaya's Todd Abbott, former president, field sales, told CRN in an interview at VoiceCon that Tech represented "the best fit for us at this point in time."

April 2010: Data, Base

When the new channel program was announced -- and the initial product roadmap was later unveiled -- Avaya made it clear it planned to not only stick with Nortel's data networking portfolio, but also grow it. At Interop in the spring, Avaya introduced four new products for wireless and data networking that were the first new releases since the acquisition -- a stake in the ground for Avaya, which did not have a data networking portfolio previously. Among them were an Ethernet routing switch, a SIP gateway and several 802.11n wireless tools.

June 2010: Abbott Checks Out

In one of the most eyebrow-raising executive departures of the summer, Avaya's Todd Abbott, senior vice president of sales and marketing and president, field operations, stepped down from his post, replaced by Joel Hackney, former president of Nortel's enterprise group. It was a surprising shift -- and still raising plenty of questions -- for the Avaya channel, who came to know Abbott as one of the key executives behind Avaya's Nortel integration and it's broader sales and marketing operations. Avaya has continued to remake its executive ranks throughout the summer and fall, too.

July 2010: Six Point Oh

In late July, Avaya made one of the most substantial product upgrades since the closing of the Nortel acquisition: a glut of new UC and CC releases centered on the Avaya Aura Contact Center, the 6.0 and later releases of many software updates, Avaya Aura Conferencing, Avaya Aura Messaging, Avaya Aura Session Border Controller and Avaya Communications Server 1000. It was the biggest release yet in Avaya's recent strategy of kitchen-sink-style product updates: several releases, affected many product lines, and all tied to Aura and Avaya's other big technology plays.

September 2010: Say It With Flare

Perhaps Avaya's biggest product launch of the year happened only a few weeks ago. Avaya's Flare Experience is a collaboration dashboard designed to run on host devices -- desktop and mobile alike -- including the Avaya Desktop Video Device, an endpoint tablet for use with enteprise UC. At the same time, the company also launched a number of video endpoints and services, dramatically expanding its UC capabilities and giving Avaya an end-to-end video portfolio -- running on top of its virtualized UC platform Aura -- for the first time.

Turns out, it wasn't the only video surprise Avaya had in September, either...

September 2010: Sigrist Call-Up

Despite its UC supremacy, Avaya has never been considered among the marquee video conferencing players in the channel -- it doesn't sell video endpoints and before this year hadn't much touted video as a key opportunity for the channel. But in mid-September, it appointed Joe Sigrist as its new vice president and general manager, video -- a telling move considering Sigrist was formerly senior vice president and general manager for video solutions at a major video player, Polycom, and the move came right on the heels of the Avaya Flare Experience. Avaya as a video vendor? You bet.

September 2010: Avaya and Skype Get Tight

It was long-rumored, and finally realized: a strategic partnership between Avaya and Skype that gives Avaya another tool in its UC arsenal and Skype another inroad into the business customers it covets. As part of a two-phase integration, the deal puts Skype interoperability on Avaya UC and infrastructure products, meaning Avaya's UC products support Skype Connect, and Avaya UC users can make calls using Skype, as well as assign policy to Skype use through the Avaya software.

Bonus: M&A Galore

Several longtime channel executive observers predicted that M&A would rein supreme in the Avaya-Nortel channel this past year. Given the economic downturn, consolidation is happening anyway, and many former Nortel VARs see an opportunity to merge with existing Avaya powers instead of jump through Avaya administrative hoops for certification. In turn, given these conditions, many Avaya heavyweights saw fellow Avaya VARs and Nortel solution providers available for reasonable prices.

And sure enough, there was M&A galore in the channel: