A Mobility Take on the Avaya-Nortel CombinationA Mobility Take on the Avaya-Nortel Combination

We can make some pretty sound projections about what stays and what goes.

Mobility does not top the list of issues surrounding the pending acquisition of Nortel Enterprise Solutions by Avaya, but it is one where we can make some pretty sound projections about what stays and what goes. As the product lines are integrated, it will be the Avaya offerings that remain, which will spell some collateral damage for some Nortel partners.* Cellular-only Solutions: Both Avaya and Nortel have been offering mobility servers and mobile device software that would allow users to integrate their desktop and wireless devices; those would include Avaya's one-X Telephony and one-X Mobile UC offering and Nortel's MC3100. Avaya's one-X had been a stronger product from the outset, so that will clearly be staying. Nortel's MC3100 was the result of a partnership with CounterPath and their Enterprise Mobility Gateway, so CounterPath will be taking a hit as well. It appears that CounterPath's other major outlet, NEC, has also abandoned the product, so this cannot be good news.

* Dual Mode: Dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular systems have not had much of an impact on the market, and Nortel never had one; they had plans to offer the CounterPath version if it ever came out. In the meantime, Avaya discontinued their own one-X Dual Mode offering and entered a preferred vendor agreement with DiVitas Networks earlier this year, so it's fairly safe to assume that option will remain.

* Voice over WLAN: Both Avaya and Nortel resold the Polycom/SpectraLink voice over WLAN handsets so these will stick around, as will Avaya's 3631 VoWLAN handset that is manufactured by Samsung.

* DECT: The one mobility play that Avaya didn't have was a DECT wireless voice system, however Nortel has the 40xx DECT product line. DECT has not made much of a dent in the US enterprise market, but it is a significant offering in Europe, where the estimated shares of the local mobility market are 95% DECT versus 5% Wi-Fi. There has been some talk about greater US adoption based on the fact that DECT requires fewer base stations, has far better battery life, and no QoS issues (i.e. it's basically a TDM technology). However, you do have to weigh that against DECT's almost exclusive voice focus. Interestingly, consumer DECT cordless phones are catching on because they don't use the 2.4-GHz ISM band and hence don't interfere with your home Wi-Fi network.

So while mobility probably isn't the most important issue for Avaya, it is the most important one for me. As neither Avaya nor Nortel has had a ton of success with their mobility offerings to date, maybe two heads will be better than one--how many "heads" there will be after the combination remains to be seen.We can make some pretty sound projections about what stays and what goes.