Aastra’s Novel Approach to R&D
I’ve been spending a little time coming up to speed with Aastra lately. You may recall that the company just closed on its acquisition of Ericsson’s enterprise business. It was the latest in a string of M&A activity that brought DeTeWe, the PBX businesses of Ascom and EADS, and some of Nortel’s European operations into the fold. Also in the mix is Intecom, the PBX developer that continues to market itself as Aastra Intecom; Intecom had been acquired by EADS and was part of its PBX division.
The result of Aastra’s acquisition strategy is a much larger market presence, particularly in Europe where the various acquisitions have given the company sizable bases of customers in Germany, France, Switzerland, Benelux and Scandinavia. Not bad for a company that a few years ago had little presence outside its native Canada.
Like any other company growing through a string of acquisitions, Aastra has a jumble of PBX products, communications apps, and end points to deal with. The company is dealing with this by not making too many product line changes too quickly. Rather it will continue selling distinct communications systems in the various regions where it competes and gradually migrate them to a common communications platform.
In the meantime, Aastra has turned each of the R&D facilities of its various acquired companies into technology specialists. Large enterprise systems development is the purview of the former Matra group in France, while erstwhile Ascom in Switzerland focuses on SMB systems. Wireless is the particular charism of Germany’s DeTeWe facility, SIP end stations and user interfaces occupy the time of the former EADS in North America, while comms applications are on the plate in Belgium. As Aastra R&D SVP Hugh Scholaert explains it, products and technology developed in one group are made available for use by the others. So as the one-time DeTeWe group enhances the DECT handsets previously sold with DeTeWe PBXs, other Aastra business groups can adopt them as well. This was in fact how the Aastra 5000 was developed, by drawing on resources of all its R&D facilities to build a single solution.
All in all it’s an interesting approach from a company that’s quickly increasing its visibility, market reach and product lines in the enterprise communications space.
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