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Norvaya it is then. At least, that's the way it looks like for the moment. There's already been quite a bit written on Avaya's bid for Nortel's enterprise business. Sheila McGee-Smith points out product synergies between the two companies, Zeus Kerravala sees evidence of healthy industry consolidation, Daniel Hong says Nortel's channel would be Avaya's real prize, and Allan Sulkin and Blair Pleasant remind us that the proposed deal ain't over till it's over.But just for a moment let's forget about Allan and Blair's cautions. Let's imagine that the deal is done. What happens next? Business and product integration, of course. As Sheila noted, there are certain points of synergy in the product portfolios: the Agile Communications Environment, the Communication Server 2100, the outbound dialing software in Nortel's contact center suite but lacking Avaya's customer interaction solutions. There's also Nortel's entire portfolio of data networking systems and security appliances. While perhaps not market leading in terms of market share, these are also elements of a converged communication solution that Avaya currently relies on partners to provide. Should Avaya retain these point products, it will join Cisco, 3Com, Alcatel-Lucent, and Siemens Enterprise (with sister firm Enterasys) as a communication company that can deliver an end-to-end voice-data solution.

But the more interesting question is what happens to Nortel's communications products? The Business Communications Manager, Software Communication System, and Communication Server 1000 very clearly overlap with Avaya's own SMB and enterprise PBX systems: IP Office and Communication Manager. Something will have to give. In a combined Avaya-Nortel it's likely that pretty much all of the overlapping Nortel communications products would be displaced by Avaya systems over time. This seems to be the premise of a Q&A Avaya drafted on the Nortel bid but not released publicly. Part of it is captured in a blog that ShoreTel posted on Facebook:

Q. What will the product roadmap be? What is Avaya keeping? How will the Nortel services business be integrated with Avaya's?

A: We cannot answer questions about the product or services portfolios or other integration issues at this early stage. Both companies are committed to open standards, rather than proprietary architectures. Avaya is committed to the Avaya Aura architecture which allows customers to protect their technology investments using a "wrap and extend" migration strategy. This allows for graceful product migration at the customer's desired pace.

The proposition seems to be that Nortel customers, whose communications products would be supported for a specified time but will be ultimately discontinued in terms of active development, also deploy Avaya communications platforms and applications, using Aura to connect both companies' platforms to the Aura core. There is a good deal of sense in this. An Avaya product brief explains how Aura "allows connectivity to Avaya equipment as well as Cisco, Nortel, and other third-party PBXs...and through SIP, Avaya Aura Session Manager interconnects with many Avaya as well as third party applications."

At launch, Aura supported Avaya, Nortel, and Cisco PBXs, with others on the roadmap. I never did learn precisely which Nortel PBXs are presently supported. The CS1000, certainly, and maybe the SCS since it adheres so well to the SIP standard. Perhaps someone can leave a comment to say whether Aura supports BCM as well. As far as third-party apps are concerned it's my understanding that Aura will begin to support these in November. Avaya could not specify which non-Avaya communications apps would be supported when I last spoke with them about Aura, but if Nortel messaging, conferencing, contact center and unified communications apps fall into this bucket then November or even early 2010 would be a perfect time to introduce Aura support for the full Nortel application portfolio.

Still, I'm not entirely sure how many Nortel customers will want to deploy a SIP overlay simply to gradually transition what would presumably be defunct PBX systems to actively developed Avaya models. I suppose it depends on how complex the migration will be for any given company, how many Nortel and Avaya systems will need to coexist and for how long. And if there are yet other vendors' systems and software in the mix as well--systems that could benefit from the centralized management and unified dialing plan that Aura offers--this could tip the scales in Aura's favor. However, if it's just Nortel and Avaya PBXs we're talking about, I don't really see why more conventional, Q.SIG-based interoperability methods wouldn't do the trick.

But all of this is very much jumping the gun. Avaya's acquisition of Nortel is in no way finalized, it is as yet unclear what will become of any given Nortel PBX system or communications application in the long term should the acquisition take place, and it remains to be seen what incentives Avaya will give Nortel customers to cost-effectively use Aura as a migration tool from Meridian, CS1000 and BCM environments. Until the dust settles at bit, there is no need for Avaya to provide any more detail than it already has or for Nortel's enterprise customers to be any more concerned about their investments than they have been over the past several months.The proposition seems to be that Nortel customers also deploy Avaya communications platforms and applications, using Aura to connect both companies' platforms to the Aura core.

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