Memo to Canada: Review Avaya-Nortel Deal Quickly
As Avaya’s channel team heads south to a partner conference in Tennessee, The VAR Guy is looking north to Canada. The reason: The Canadian government is reviewing Avaya’s pending takeover of Nortel Networks’ enterprise division. Let’s hope the review goes quickly. Here’s why.
Rewind two months. During the August 2009 CompTIA Breakaway conference in Las Vegas, multiple Nortel channel partners told The VAR Guy they were abandoning Nortel and looking for other vendor partners. The big winners in the room were Cisco Systems and Juniper.
Fast forward to the present, and plenty of Nortel partners are wondering what the future holds for Nortel’s enterprise business. Alas, red tape — otherwise known as the Canadian government — could potentially hold up the Avaya-Nortel enterprise combo. According to Canada’s Industry Minister Tony Clement in late September said: “We will be applying the net benefit to Canada test for the Avaya transaction.”
Net benefit? Huh?
Canada should applaud the fact that Avaya stepped in to bid for Nortel’s enterprise business before sales contracted even more. Time is short. Partners and customers are impatient. Canada should push the deal through or risk watching Nortel’s enterprise sales further contract.
The Other New Deal
With or without Nortel, the Avaya channel team continues to press forward. Watch for multiple announcements the week of Oct. 12. Avaya will be hosting a partner conference in Tennessee. The VAR Guy will be watching — and listening — closely.
Follow The VAR Guy via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter; and via his Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center.
EHHH.. the Canadian Government,,,, I don’t really see an issue with the approval as this is only political posturing so the Conservatives look like they actually care, Just another tactic to quiet the Liberals who are looking for any way to embarrass the Conservative government.
On the other hand Tony Clement is a wild card and could do some damage as he did while being healthcare minister and a minister in the provincial government, we will have to wait and see.
I have no doubt that the deal will go through, remember we are talking about a bankrupt company whose Canadian resellers and customers would benefit greatly by the acquisition. Prime Minister Harper knows that very well.
Moe: The last paragraph of your comment sums up the situation pretty well. The VAR Guy hopes you’re right.
Well I am surprised that all that comes up is the concern for keeping Canadian jobs at Nortel, I don’t here a word from the government (or the press) about all the jobs at the resellers, distributors, the organization providing after sales training and services, and the telcos not to mention the jobs related to Nortel at customers using Nortel equipment that could be affected. Way more of those than Nortel employees.
I think that will come into consideration if the Nortel users groups and DAC (in Canada)made their concerns known to the Canadian Government.
MoeWestcon: You raise multiple great points. The longer the Canadian Gov’t reviews the deal, the more every part of the Nortel Enterprise partner and customer ecosystem potentially suffers.