With only days remaining until the close of Avaya’s purchase of Nortel’s Enterprise Division, existing Nortel and Avaya partners will start the long journey of certification and training to cross certify themselves. Current Nortel partners will not be able to sell and support Avaya products and vice versa for current Avaya partners wanting to sell Nortel technologies until training is complete.
The reality is that this will take time, money and a lot of effort and many partners will simply choose not to undertake the required training themselves and will most likely try to partner to fill in the gaps in their offerings.
Unfortunately many customers will not only prefer to work with a single partner able to offer solutions that might involve both Nortel and Avaya components, but it will be critical going forward to work with a partner who can integrate both vendors’ technologies to mitigate any risks with future product road maps from Avaya after the acquisition.
Avaya has been abundantly clear about two items. It will be Avaya’s partner program requirements that all partners will need to meet and the Aura strategy centered around Session Manager will be the way forward. In fact, it was this clarity of direction that led Combat Networks to sign up with Avaya in February 2009.
What was most impressive with Avaya’s new Aura Strategy to Combat Networks was the ability to integrate ANY manufacturers based PBX with Avaya’s Session Manager. This solution is based on the IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem – a model deployed by carriers to support mobile clients) model or as Avaya calls it E-IMS (Enterprise-IMS).
Session Manager provides a natural transition for Nortel (and other manufactures) based customers to maintain their existing investment, and allow new features sets (applications, features etc) to be provided across the enterprise. Other vendors have been pitching a rip and replace strategy for Nortel customers that was simply not acceptable. More info to come as we continue to test and assist customers with Session Manager installs at blog.combatnetworks.com in the mean time visit this brief video for an overview. We know you will be impressed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN6ge72VpAQ
In Canada there are very few partners who can deliver solutions today that encompass Nortel voice and Nortel data as well as Advanced Avaya Voice platforms such as Session Manager. Combat Networks is proud to be one of those partners in Canada who not only has been trained and certified by both Avaya and Nortel, but have successfully tested the integration of these products. For customers that need Nortel Voice, Nortel Data, Avaya Voice support or any combination of these technologies please contact Combat Networks.
To find out more visit Avaya.com for partners status, or Combat Networks for a view of our capabilities.
- Combat Team
