After a merger or acquisition it’s usually headcount reduction time. The axe cometh now that Avaya has absorbed Nortel. One of the first high-profile casualties — the Avaya Australian R&D staff:

Networking vendor Avaya appears set to shut down its research and development lab in North Ryde, Sydney – remembered affectionately as the Australian arm of Bell Labs.

Multiple sources told iTnews that the majority of R&D staff at the lab were informed that their positions would no longer be available.

After repeated attempts to contact Avaya, the company confirmed that it was “consolidating some of its R&D functions” in Australia as part of a “global realignment”, but refused to divulge how many researchers were laid off.

Hmmm, “global realignment”? My guess is that the realignment is likely to be lopsided with China getting a lot of attention.