Avaya is scheduled to detail its unified communications (UC) and contact center product on Jan. 19, but the company has been working for weeks to organize the combined sales, support and development staff into a single entity, says Todd Abbott, Avaya's senior vice president of global sales and marketing.

The deal brings to Avaya a line of switches and security gear that Abbot says the company will keep and promote, particularly branch office gear that supports both data switching and unified communications. Avaya's existing partnerships with other switch vendors, notably Extreme and Brocade, will continue. These vendors incorporate Avaya call control into their equipment. Abbot says Avaya customers that buy its switching gear won't gain software advantages over the equipment sold by Avaya partners, but they may be attracted by the all-in-one voice/data hardware Avaya can now offer.

He wouldn't detail what Avaya plans for Nortel's security gear, other than to say that integrating UC infrastructure at the edge -- in branch offices -- is a that requires security adapted specifically to the demands of VoIP. "Security at the edge is critical and we have an enhanced position there," he says.

To facilitate this and to oversee a new business unit at Avaya, the company is making Joel Hackney the head of the Data and Government Systems unit. Hackney had been in charge of Nortel's enterprise business unit. Abbott says Nortel had a bigger share of local, state and federal business in the United States as well as better inroads into markets in India and the Middle East that will be a boost to Avaya's reach. "The added customers will give us much greater scale in the industry," he says.