1. Please discuss the primary reasons for your recent acquisition of Nortel.

To further strengthen its market position, Avaya needed to expand its channel centric go to market model, expand its installed base, and complement its solution portfolio. The Nortel acquisition delivers on all three fronts.

The addition of NES further enhances Avaya's strategic position in providing business communications solutions and services for enterprise customers. The acquisition gives the company added scale, resources and expertise to deliver a portfolio of solutions and services around the globe. By combining our complementary technology portfolios, deep industry specific domain expertise, sales channels and customer bases, the new Avaya will redefine business communications and help customers to reduce costs, simplify operations and increase their business agility.

2. We realize that the acquisition has recently taken place; however, do you have any comments regarding the integration of the sales, marketing, and R&D operations of both companies

Avaya recognized and internalized the challenges of integrating another company early in the acquisition process and also appreciated Nortel’s relevance to the market. In so doing, Avaya invested time and resources to ensure a smooth integration of the Nortel Enterprise business. Sales, Marketing, Services, and R&D were seamlessly integrated immediately after the close on December 19, 2009. The best proof point of the success of the integration was Avaya’s ability to deliver an integrated roadmap thirty (30) days after the transaction was completed.

What will be Avaya’s areas of focus in 2010?  What do you anticipate will be your areas of greatest growth?
Avaya will remain focused on UC with Avaya Auratm and redefining the customer experience through our Next Generation Context Center solution. We anticipate growth in proactive customer outreach (live agent and automated), automated care, as well as optimization of the contact center to keep customer satisfaction high while keeping operational costs low. We are the market leader and the only supplier solely focused on real-time communications. As such, we will continue to invest in innovations that deliver on the value of voice, video, and collaboration technologies.

3. What new products and services can we expect from Avaya in 2010?

Avaya will continue to expand the capabilities of its next generation communications platform, Avaya Auratm. On the heels of that innovation, Avaya will begin delivering capabilities that will enable next generation customer care. Avaya will introduce a Next Generation Context Center (NGCC) suite bringing together a solution that will enable businesses to move to contextual based, real-time interactions that provide a personalized customer experience.  This will, in turn, enable and drive the business to provide proactive and participative customer engagement through traditional call centers and extended to every customer-facing resource within the enterprise.

4. Avaya has been a major player in the unified communications arena.   What have been the “hottest” applications?   What have been the greatest challenges in implementing these applications?

Mobility, Conferencing, and Collaboration have been the hottest applications in UC. The greatest challenges have been getting all of the relevant suppliers to honor their commitments to open standards and interfaces. UC is about open integration to create new levels of context. That’s Avaya’s commitment, proven through its products and solutions. The challenges stem from suppliers attempting to openly “wall-garden” their respective solutions, and unnecessarily complicating the integration process. Avaya has complemented its solution portfolio with a robust portfolio of Services designed to minimize that complexity.

5. Avaya has many prominent competitors in the Unified Communications arena, i.e. Aspect, Cisco, Interactive Intelligence, Siemens.   How do differentiate yourselves from the others?

Avaya is solely focused on enterprise-wide, real-time communications. We have demonstrated time and time again how to effectively migrate customers to revolutionary technologies following an evolutionary path: from Analog to Digital, from Digital to IP, and now from IP to SIP. While we have a great deal of respect for many of the players mentioned, we are the only vendor that can claim focused leadership in real-time communications with an absolute commitment to an open approach. That is an imperative attribute for the next generation of solutions that are only now starting to become a reality.

6. Avaya offers technology for the large as well as the mid size contact center.  Are there any major functionality differences in your systems for these two market sectors? 

 
While we currently offer separate functionality for the SMB contact center, our vision is to offer a solution that can be customized based upon the customers needs. With our Next Generation Context Center solution we will offer all markets the functionality that they require via a single platform where features/functionality are keycode enabled. This allows a business, regardless of size, to determine what features/functionality meets their own needs and provides the most value.

7. There has been much talk about managing the customer experience throughout the various touch points within the enterprise.  We can assume that these initiatives can create many challenges in implementing your technology since you must get buy in from the various groups, i.e. customer service, marketing, order processing, sales, within an organization.   How does Avaya approach this situation?

If a business has a true focus on customer centricity, working across the various enterprise organizations becomes easier. Typically businesses establish virtual collaboration teams that focus on improving the customer experience and include cross-functional team members representing each business unit.  Breaking down the enterprise silos also becomes easier when the technology utilized is based on open standards and architectures.

8. It may be an understatement to say that 2009 was a difficult year for many companies due to the volatile economic climate.   What type of business climate do you expect in 2010? What ramifications will it have on your sales cycles and bottom line?

While enterprises cut their technology spend significantly in 2009, the economy is showing signs of slow recovery. The pace of that recovery and how it relates to IT spend remains to be seen, however, we anticipate a climate in 2010 where spend is strongly related to customer retention and loyalty. Reducing costs will remain important, but not at the expense of customer satisfaction. Businesses will need to focus on balancing efficiency with effectiveness.