Avaya to buy Nortel’s enterprise segment

New Delhi
The Hindu Business Line The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)
Avaya in India will benefit from the global move by Avaya Inc to acquire Nortel Networks Corporation’s enterprise solutions business for $475 million.

The global deal was announced late on Monday from Toronto as part of Nortel’s plans to hive off its various businesses globally.

While Avaya is already the market leader in the enterprise communications segment, the acquisition of Nortel’s business solutions will give it more teeth in India. Nortel India has provided total call centre solutions and data networking equipment to a broad range of Indian enterprise customers across multiple vertical markets and diverse geographical areas.

In the call centre and BPO market, Nortel has more than 16,000 agent positions deployed for companies such as Bharti Airtel, Tata Consultancy Services, Hinduja Technology Media Telecom, iSeva, Office Tiger and ICICI OneSource among others. Nortel has contracts with four airports undertaking modernisation activities and also has a deal with TCS for the passport project.

Nortel also has traction in the data networking space with clients such as Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Indian Institute of Science, Sungard Automated Securities, Apollo Health Street, Logica and Cognizant Technology Solutions. All these clients could now move to Avaya’s portfolio.

Commenting on the announcement, the Nortel President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Zafirovski, said: “We continue to be fully focused on running our operations and continuing to serve our customers while actively engaged in the sale of our businesses. We have determined that the sale of our businesses maximises value while preserving innovation platforms, customer relationships and jobs to the greatest extent possible.”