Avaya Presents Roadmap for Nortel Migration

Earlier this week Avaya presented the first view of their vision for moving Avaya and Nortel products forward. It was clear that Avaya did not purchase Nortel solely for the installed base as they laid out the roadmap.

Avaya’s IP Office is the going forward product for small to medium sized businesses. Both the Avaya Partner ACS and the Nortel BCM products will be migrated to the IP Office platform. Partner ACS telephones will work on the soon to be released IP Office 500 R6. Nortel BCM telephones and features will be integrated into the IP Office 500 in R7. No immediate date has been released for IP Office R7. This is great news for businesses using the Avaya Partner system, which did not have the capability for remote workers to use softphones or remote IP telephones. It is also good news for users of the Nortel BCM systems who will now see their telephone sets and key features carried forward.

The Enterprise strategy held equally good news for both Avaya and Nortel customers. The migration plan includes keeping the best of the Avaya technology and the Nortel technology to create a stronger unified product offering. The immediate integration of Avaya and Nortel systems is present with Avaya’s Aura solutions. These introduce a SIP layer between Avaya and Nortel products (and other manufacturers as well), to allow a disparate system to share features, applications, and telephones. The strongest features and applications of both product lines will eventually reside on an application server on the Avaya Aura platform. The longer term integration will also include further development of Nortel’s contact center software to incorporate it directly into the Avaya Aura solution.

Avaya will also fold the Nortel data solutions into its portfolio. This product line includes routing, switching, network access control, ssl vpn’s and firewalls. These will be further developed to operate with a tighter integration in the combined unified communications infrastructure.

All of the Avaya and Nortel products will be available for purchase as they stand today, over the next 18 months. The integration of the two product lines will be gradual. This will allow customers of both Avaya and Nortel to expand their current architecture as the products combine as one.