Ongoing coverage of VoiceCon San Francisco 2009
WEDNESDAY HIGHLIGHTS
* Siemens' Straton on Nortel
* Polycom co-founder on "chameleon" devices (and Polycom's latest offering)
* VoiceCon TV: Watch live-streamed sessions and archived interviews and sessions
INFORMATION WEEK COVERAGE:
* Siemens Brings Twitter To OpenScape
* DAY TWO COVERAGE: Click here
* DAY ONE COVERAGE: Click here

I had a chance to talk with Siemens' Mark Straton after his Wednesday keynote, and so I took the opportunity to ask him about the Nortel auction. You'll remember that the auction to acquire Nortel Enterprise Solutions pitted Avaya against Siemens, and Avaya submitted the winning bid of $900 million

"Nortel was an opportunity that came up," Mark said. "You had to look at it and had to go for it, so we went for it." He said Avaya is facing an "integration headache" (and Siemens would have as well, he added), and he predicted that Avaya will lose a significant amount of the Nortel base.

Now that the Nortel opportunity is passed, "We have to execute better and we have to make some moves," Straton said, though he declined to be more specific.

He added that Siemens"made money this year" despite the difficult economy, and "we are winning a lot of new business" in the U.S. and globally.

***

Next page: Polycom on the future of the...phone?

 LOGIN | CREATE ACCOUNT