Siemens archives - Unified Communications Nation
Home > IT Blogs > Unified Communications Nation >

Unified Communications Nation:

Siemens

Jun 22 2009   3:32PM GMT

Nortel auction: Avaya or Siemens-Enterasys will bid for UC business



Posted by: Shamus McGillicuddy
Unified Communications, Nortel, bankruptcy, Siemens Enterprise Networks, Siemens, Avaya

Nortel is breaking apart.

The former crown jewel of Canada’s high-tech industry revealed today that it will sell off its CDMA and LTE wireless telecom infrastructure division to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for $650 million. Nortel also revealed that it will sell of the rest of its assets. According to reports, the CDMA division generates $700 million in annual revenue, which means means that NSN will make back its money inside of a year. NSN has also established a low bar for the sale of all of Nortel’s other business units.

A sale of Nortel’s enterprise telephony and unified communications businesses is will probably follow soon. A couple months ago at VoiceCon Orlando, there was plenty of buzz circulating that Avaya and Siemens-Enterasys were both looking to acquire Nortel’s UC business. Neither of them, according to rumors, are interested in technology. Instead, they want the customer base.

A company that’s only looking for access to installed customers might not be willing to pay much for Nortel’s UC division. However, NSN’s $650 million deal with Nortel is so shockingly low that it has certainly driven down Nortel’s asking price for its UC business. The only question now is whether the price has been pushed low enough for Avaya or Siemens to pull the trigger. If that happens, Nortel customers will find themselves with two choices: They can accept whatever incentives the winning bidder offers Nortel customers to buy into their own products, or they can start looking elsewhere.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button     0 Comments     RSS Feed     Email a friend

Jun 1 2009   8:48PM GMT

Retired Nortel executives look to buy company out of bankruptcy



Posted by: Shamus McGillicuddy
Nortel, bankruptcy, Avaya, Siemens, Enterasys

Reports out of Canada say that a team of former Nortel executives hope to raise money in order to buy the company out of bankruptcy and keep it more or less intact and under Canadian ownership.  Former Nortel president Robert Ferchat, 74, leads a group that also includes former chief marketing officer Ian Craig and retired Nortel vice-president David Mann. It might be more accurate to call Ferchat the former president of Northern Telephone, since that was what Nortel was called back in 1991 when Ferchat last worked there.

Ferchat told the Ottawa Citizen that his group hopes to raise at least $1 billion US from investment banks in order to buy Nortel through the bankruptcy courts.

Meanwhile, Nortel’s current executives are still trying to sell off the company’s top business units. But Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski’s efforts have been undermined because no one is willing to pay very much for them.  For instance, Nortel sold its application delivery buisness to Radware in February for just pennies on the dollar. Nortel originally acquired that business when it bought Alteon for about $6 billion in 2000. Radware paid just $17.5 million to take the Alteon business off Nortel’s hands.

I’ve heard rumors that Avaya and especially Enterasys-Siemens  are interested in buying Nortel’s enterprise communications business, but they are more interested in gaining access to Nortel’s customers than actually owning Nortel’s technology. How much are they willing to pay when they can simply try poaching nervous customers (and partners)?

AddThis Social Bookmark Button     0 Comments     RSS Feed     Email a friend