The wait is over for Avaya and former Nortel-turned-Avaya partners. Indeed, Avaya has formally unveiled its new product roadmap — one that strives to integrate the best of Nortel Enterprise Solutions technology into the Avaya product set.

Avaya acquired Nortel’s enterprise business in December 2009. The new roadmap, announced today, encompasses unified communications, SME communications solutions, contact center offerings and data products. Each area includes a product offering that is based on Avaya technology and utilizes complementary Nortel technology, either in part or in whole.

The unified communications offering, for example, is based on Avaya’s Aura communications platform but now also includes the former Nortel (now Avaya) Agile Communications Environment (ACE). Contact center, meanwhile, will utilize Aura as its base and incorporate technology from Nortel that include agent desktop, work assignment, experience management and analytics, shifting the contact center model to one that is more collaborative.

Avaya’s SME communications portfolio will include Avaya IP Office, BCM, Norstar, PARTNER and Integral 5 for now, but plans are in the works to converge the platforms to Avaya IP Office. The new IP Office would blend both Nortel and Avaya technology, including handsets, interfaces and features. A date on the integration has not yet been announced.

Lastly, Avaya’s data products will incorporate in whole NES’s data roadmap, which has been a strong selling point for Nortel’s partners in the past. Best not to mess with success, Avaya believes.

In announcing this new product roadmap, Avaya is doing what everyone pretty much expected, and with good reason: Nortel had a strong portfolio and a reputation as a reliable company with ultra-reliable products. Avaya would have been foolish to try and pretend Nortel never existed by folding in its technology without keeping the brands that made Nortel successful, at least for a while. The fact that Avaya recognizes this speaks volumes for it, and for the respect it has for the technology. Partners should feel good about that.