This question received a sizable percent of No Answers from the consultants and the fewest grades of Excellent, even for the top system suppliers. As mobile communications will represent a significant paradigm shift for enterprise communications during the next few years, supplier solutions need to be better marketed and promoted. A consultant wrote that "I don't think any vendor gets a true, passing grade, yet. So these evaluations are relative among this set of companies."
Avaya and Cisco received the highest grades for their mobile communications solutions. The next group was closely bunched: Mitel, Siemens, Nortel, and NEC (in that order). In my opinion, Alcatel Lucent’s grades were not a reflection of their relatively strong mobile communications capabilities.
I wasn’t sure what the grades would be for this question. Based on the results, the consultants were not kind. As one commented: "All the Vendors are guilty of 'Smoke & mirror' pricing, some more than others. They do make consultants work for their fees to assess TCO etc. Some is driven by the manufacturer, some the vendor."
Consultants gave Mitel the best overall grades for its pricing strategy, closely followed by NEC and ShoreTel. Nortel also received decent overall grades, but Cisco, Avaya and Siemens grades were not positive. About 20% of the consultants gave Cisco a grade of Weak; Avaya grades were almost evenly distributed between Weak/Fair and Good/Excellent; and Siemens Weak/Fair grades easily outnumbered its Good/Excellent grades (with almost one fifth of the respondents not providing a grade).
The remaining suppliers received grades from less than half of the responding consultants and were mostly in the Fair/Good range.
This is arguably the most important question in the survey, because it gauges consultant perceptions about each supplier's future place in the market. Cisco is easily the winner: the supplier received more than double the number of Excellent grades (49) of runner-up Avaya (24), and was the only supplier not to receive a single Weak grade. Avaya received 85% Good/Excellent grades, something that should make its owners Silver Lake and TPG happy, especially after investing $8 billion in the company last year.
Other suppliers with a decent future ahead of them, according to a majority of responding consultants, are NEC, Mitel, Interactive Intelligence, and ShoreTel. Consultants did not think that Nortel, Siemens, or Alcatel Lucent had strong futures in the North American market. For each of these three, their Weak/Fair grades outnumbered Good/Excellent grades.
This is not good news for Nortel, because North America is their primary geographic market. Siemens' new majority owner Gores Group needs to get the word out to the consultants about its future plans, because consultant perceptions of the system supplier have been declining for years. Alcatel Lucent must quickly decide if it is in or out of the North American market, and if the former, demonstrate its commitment in a big way. 3Com’s future is most in doubt, as 95% of its grades were Weak/Fair (only two were Good and zero were Excellent).
I will let one of the consultants’ comments close this section: "Avaya's new management team may not grok the business, but has strong installed base loyalty and name recognition. Nortel seems to be adrift. NEC doesn't excite. Siemens is struggling, bleeding installed base. Mitel's merger with Inter-tel is a marriage of mediocrity. Alcatel can't get no traction. Aastra is bottom of mind. ShoreTel excites. 3Who? I3 [Interactive Intelligence] is on the right track. Toshiba never a player." Sounds like a child of the 1960s!
