IDGNS: An Avaya customer at the keynote said he thought Avaya still thinks of itself as a phone-switch maker. Do you agree that there's a migration that has to happen there?

Giancarlo: I do. Avaya evolved out of what was a very labs-oriented culture -- Bell Labs -- where the environment was that they were a regulated monopoly and where the fundamental belief was that brilliant people in white lab coats think of great new technology. I'm generalizing. But the world has evolved quite a bit, and ... the customers have many more choices today. And therefore you can't just focus on the technology, you have to focus on the effect of the technology on the customer.

IDGNS: You said this morning that the demands on unified communications have changed from network-oriented ones, such as cost-cutting, to the employees' productivity needs. Has Cisco responded to that change in requirements differently from Avaya?

Giancarlo: Cisco has some very good strengths, but part of that strength is that their customer base are the network operators. And from an organizational structure in the company, the focus is on the integration with the network. I certainly took advantage of that, and in fact, that's what you want to take advantage of as Cisco, is the integration and the synergies that you get, technical and otherwise, by integrating into the rest of the network. It's a great strategy. But it prevents them from executing on other good strategies. Microsoft, to name another one, is going to focus on the IT department. That's their power base. And the synergies that they can bring are by integration into the application base, or maybe into the desktop.

What's important for Avaya is that we not only bring a strong value proposition but that we bring a unique value proposition ... and into a constituency that matters. Business users are now much more empowered and much freer to either make demands or, in some cases, even choose the technology quite independently. And I do believe that our industry has underserved, in general, those business users. Our opportunity as Avaya is to transform at least part of the market by focusing in on those business users.