Any AVAYA business partners should be scared!

[BuckWeet]

Well some news for you all, if you work for an AVAYA business partner, you should be a little bit scared right now. I work for Exp@nets and AVAYA has just purchased us. We were AVAYA's largest business partner, now we're owned by them. I'm rather stressed myself. I don't know what their plans are, but I sure hope for the best.. I'll keep you all up to date as soon as I find more info out..


BuckWeet

 

[avayaman]

Any time you work for a company that has been bought out or merged, its usually bad news for front line staff. Our company merged a couple of years ago & had undergone a staff reduction of 30%. Fortunately most have been through early retirements & voluntary departure incentives.

Regardless, it always means big changes in the way things are done, which is hard to adapt to especially as you get older.

Paul Beddows
Avaya Implementation
Telus
Vancouver, Canada
E-mail via

http://www.vancouver.hm/email.html

 

[BuckWeet]

Well so far its a purchase, avaya isn't looking to be what they were. We are teh largst avaya dealer and a very large cisco shop. So avaya saw us as something to lose if we were sold to a different company. Maybe avaya would have gone a way. I don't know. but all the smaller business partners should definately be scared.. It looks liek there is a Cisco partnership coming from this, which is where we come into play.


BuckWeet

 

[avayaman]

One other thing, I'm not so sure that business partners need to worry. Here in Canada at least, Avaya is offloading more work to business partners, which in Canada means the company I work for, Telus. Nortel holds 70 % of the Canadian terminal equipment market, & they feel the large carriers are probably their best bet to crack the hold Nortel has on the market here. We have only 2 5ESS CO switches that I know of, all the rest are Nortel DMS and a few legacy GTD-5's. Nearly every large corporation has an M1. We only just announced that Avaya will be our call center product of choice. We are starting to push Avaya call centers combined with existing M1's using IP Agent and/or Contact Center. Fortunately for Avaya, Nortel is starting to shoot themselves in the foot by forcing customers to upgrade to sucession switches.

Paul Beddows
Avaya Implementation
Telus
Vancouver, Canada
E-mail via

http://www.vancouver.hm/email.html

 

[avayaman]

Notice there is nothing about this on your web site. Did this just get announced?

Paul Beddows
Avaya Implementation
Telus
Vancouver, Canada
E-mail via

http://www.vancouver.hm/email.html

 

[JBantz]

I found a press release on Avaya's web site

http://www.avaya.com/ac/common/index.jhtml?location=M1H2G5F5017&rec_id=pr-031030-1002104203

JB

 

[BobbR]

My memory is foggy and confused. My recollection of phone hardware/maintenance "ownership" is: AT&T --> Lucent --> Avaya --> Exp@nets.... and now Exp@nets back to Avaya, except this transfer is the whole package??

 

[BuckWeet]

We bougth the AVAYA gem division. Now we were up for sale and AVAYA bought us back because they didn't want our base going away. We're a majority of business for AVAYA.


And I think beddows is mistaken, in canada you might be fine, but in the US. We are AVAYA, we are the largst business partner, now we are owned by avaya, if they keep things the way they are, then its worse for business partners because we get that relationship with avaya that no one else can get. business will come our way from leads because it reflects on their bottom line. we weill get support that no one else can get. customers will see us a direct relationship with the manufacturer so they'll chose us.


so far the word is they're going to leave us alone, but who knows for how long!

 

[OldPhoneGuy]

Let me see if I've got this straight: Lucent sells it's Small Business Division to Expanets - Lucent spins off it's Large Business Division as Avaya - Avaya buys Expanets. What goes around, comes around!

 

[avayaman]

From what I've seen, expanets has some very talented people. I get the impression that the telco's down there do not get that involved in setting up terminal equipment or maintaining it anymore. It seems to me that the onus is more on the individual companies. That opens up more of an opportunity for vendors to fill that gap. That seems to be a result of the rapid deregulation that happened. That is a contrast with Canada, where the Telco's still do most of the design, installation, & maintenance. Customers tend to do simple set software changes at most. We have had deregulation here as well, but it happened much more gradually & we learned from some of the mistakes made below the border. There was not the rapid deterioation of ouside cable plant that occured in many parts of the US, for example. In fact our compnay made a fair bit of money sending personnel down to fix it up after the fact.

I've noticed customer control over switch configuration especially with Avaya, where we get a lot of branch company business from the US corporations. The Customer often wants to dictate to us how they want the switch configured rather than the other way around which has been the norm here. Mind you, you need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to program a Nortel M1.

Paul Beddows
Avaya Implementation
Telus
Vancouver, Canada
E-mail via

http://www.vancouver.hm/email.html

 

[BuckWeet]

Old Phone guy

it goes like this

Lucent --> AVAYA --> Avaya GEM division sold to expanets --> expanets bought by avaya

 

[rjblanch]

Try coming to Australia where you only really seem to have 4 business partners and an Avaya who just wants to charge anything and everything. Then if the BP try to step in and show the customer something, they are threatened with take over or even the good old "were not going to give you any more business if you keep acting like that."

 

[Picazzo]

I work for Expanets also.....we should be worried not the other BP's
Avaya is getting there scapel out now to do some surgery.
Sh** is getting heavy especially when I have 2.6 mill thats in my funnel thats NEC/Cisco Call Manager stuff.

Remember Expanets is not only the largest Avaya deal in N.A....but it is also the largest Cisco and NEC dealer in the N.A. also....

I got my parachute ....do you ?

L8tr Gater....
P-

 

[BuckWeet]

Picazzo, where are you??

Also heres is some more news

AVAYA only bought us to get their maintenance base back. It appears they're in the process of selling us off to one of the other bidders on the company.. I kinda figured this would happen..


I have the same worries as you. I'm a convergence engineer and Cisco is one of my fortees.. If we were to drop cisco, I'd definately be looking for a new job, if i wasn't forced to.


BuckWeet

 

[SuperTanker]

I don't know which is worse. The billing practices of Avaya, or the service I get from the local expanets office. Hopefully, things will improve on both counts.

 

[Picazzo]

Tank....

Where are you located ?
If you need help finding a technician and response time to your liking let me know ..Ill set you up

P-

 

[SuperTanker]

PA.

The expanets here are embarassingly slow to respond, and when they do, I've gotten techs who are so green they still have lables on their clothes.

 

[BuckWeet]

All I can say is some areas are better than others....

each business has their area downfalls


BuckWeet

 

[Picazzo]

Check out my pew thread ...lol...my 2 cents check it out ...

 

[SuperTanker]

Agreed Buckweet. We have other facilities across the US where Expanets is stellar, just here, at our corporate offices, things are not well.