Year after year of losses and a mountain of debt shall not prevent Avaya from gobbling up companies. Apparently Avaya is interested in Israel-based RADVISION, a maker of videoconferencing solutions, according to Globes:

Sources inform ”Globes” that Avaya plc (NYSE: AV) is in advanced talks to acquire video conferencing solutions developer Radvision Ltd. (Nasdaq:RVSN; TASE: RVSN) for $200 million, a 30% premium on yesterday’s market cap.

The acquisition of RadVision would give Avaya a new business, where it would compete against Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Polycom Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM). However, it cannot be ruled out that other companies will open talks to acquire RadVision.

Zohar Zisapel owns 26.4% of RadVision and his brother, Yehuda, owns 6.3%. RadVision’s share price rose 10% in the ten days through yesterday. The company’s business has been going through rough times. Revenue totaled $56.2 million in January-September 18.2% less than in the corresponding period of 2010, and its net loss nearly quadrupled to $19 million. The company fourth quarter guidance is equally bleak: $18 million revenue, 31% less than for the corresponding quarter, and a net loss of $6.8 million.

This is not the first time that the Zisapels have been in talks to sell Radvision. Negotiations with Hewlett Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) a year ago broke down over a disagreement on the price.

Let’s see — $200 million… No problem, that’s only a fraction of the $863 million Avaya lost in 2011! What’s another couple of million dollars…

Here’s the thing: Why does Avaya think it needs to get deeper into the telepresence and videoconferencing business? Clearly, this is a reaction to Cisco’s dominance in the area, but is it a wise move? Avaya has also been trying to nip at Cisco’s market share in network equipment, an area that’s undoubtedly Cisco’s crown jewel.

Telepresence and networking are two markets that Cisco will strongly defend until its death. And shareholders expect that, just look at what transpired a few months ago with the company.

Avaya must think $200 million for RADVISION is a steal or something? It’s a money-losing operation so far, but we get to expand our videoconferencing business!

It’s a crowded business. It’s not just Cisco, it’s also established firms like Polycom and Microsoft, plus the fairly new tech disrupters like Vidyo and Google. Last I checked, these companies haven’t been losing $700M-1.3B for the past few years or been burdened with $6B in long-term debts…

The company that Avaya needs to look into is CommonSense. It’s a private company with a very large global footprint, although a lot of times it prefers to be in stealth mode. Scoop it up before others do…

A few days ago I stumbled upon a report on Jeff Hawkes’ (of Sonic Management Group) blog about a near-taboo topic in telecom: the health of Avaya, and whether the business is spiraling toward implosion.

Surprisingly, I haven’t seen or heard much discussion in the telecom blogosphere and tweetverse about this report, which is a bit baffling considering the gigantic market share Avaya holds in the industry and the numerous analysts that cover every move about this company. At least there were several readers who chimed in with their own comments on Hawkes’ blog…

But in (bleak) summary:

• The company failed to earn a profit since 2007, the year of its leveraged buyout (LBO) by TPG and Silver Lake; losses were $1.3 billion in 2008, $845 million in 2009, $871 million in 2010, and $863 million in 2011 (from latest 10-K filing)
• $4 billion worth of equity destroyed from 2007 to 2010
• Long-term debt now at $6.1 billion
• Filed to IPO in June 2011 but yet to complete the transaction; hopes to raise $1 billion from 20% of the company
• Avaya may end up being the Eastman Kodak of the telecom industry

You simply cannot read the financial numbers about Avaya and not get a chill down your spine. Obviously many companies are struggling in this depressed economy, but in Avaya’s case the losses and debts are staggering, especially when the company counts TPG and Silver Lake as backers.

Dear Avaya, your brand may look mesmerizing in red but not your financials.

What do you think the future holds for Avaya? Definitely something to watch out for in the new year…

Are you still a cloud skeptic? Love those on-premise servers and equipment? Do you laugh at your competitors who are engaged in cloud-based services? Maybe Oracle CEO Larry Ellison can change your mind.

What about your voice services? Do you consider voice as a tool for collaboration? Do you even think about enabling effective collaboration within the organization? Better get on board because many of your voice service providers are no longer focused on just voice.

Oracle buys RightNow

Permira paid $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for only the Genesys unit. That’s about the same dollar amount paid by Ellison to acquire RightNow Technologies, a SaaS CRM provider. What does this say about cloud computing? Well, Genesys has been around longer and RNT was only started in 1997 (went public in 2004). Yet both valued similarly by the market. Well done, Greg Gianforte.

It’s safe to say that by now Ellison is a convert of cloud services. He may have been slow on this whole cloud thing (after witnessing the tremendous success of companies like Salesforce.com and RNT), but he can make that up by spending money to buy cloud enablers. Kind of like what Microsoft did to correct its path to compete on the World Wide Web. Oracle Public Cloud was just unveiled during OpenWorld a few weeks ago, and today Oracle has a cloud CRM offering with RightNow.

How smooth will the transition be? This is a gigantic Silicon Valley tech company with a big CEO personality gobbling up a young Bozeman, Montana outfit. All I can say is, Don’t mess with Ellison.

Avaya wants to lose its voice

Avaya is making it clear that it values channel partners who can sell collaboration solutions more than the traditional voice service sellers. This is a much needed strategic progression not only because of better profits but because it’s the demand of customers. Customers want solutions that increase productivity and efficiency, and not just some tech that’ll make a call from A to B. And with its recent acquisition of Aurix, Avaya is making a move to provide a more complete collaboration solution to its customers.

Avaya continues to make inroads into expanding its unified communications and contact center capabilities with the acquisition of UK-based Aurix. The portfolio from Aurix will enable speech analytics on the Avaya Aura platform.

Aurix’s speech analytics engine is used in several well-known products in the industry.

The Aurix acquisition came just a few weeks after Avaya’s buyout of SIP security solutions provider Sipera. Is acquisition Avaya’s strategy to boost its Aura features? Security. Speech analytics. What else is next? I’m thinking reporting or data analytics.

Official press release from Avaya:

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, today announced it has acquired Aurix, a global provider of speech analytics and audio data mining technology. A UK-based company, Aurix is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Avaya.

Aurix’s patented technology enables real-time identification, search and data mining of large volumes of audio and audio-visual material. Built on scalable, open architecture, the company’s applications integrate with Avaya Aura® as well as applications from other vendors. Aurix’s solutions help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of customer service and collaboration events, as well as support compliance requirements and expand business intelligence.

The technologies will be incorporated into Avaya’s Contact Center and Unified Communications portfolios.

Supporting Quotes:
“The value of document search engines is widely understood. There’s another dimension of data that is largely untapped, however, and that is the information exchanged through spoken interactions. Aurix’s technology will help enable Avaya’s customers to quickly find the interactions that can impact their ability to attain high customer satisfaction and increase revenue generation. The analysis of these interactions can drive enhancements in processes that advance their business objectives.”
Brett Shockley, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Strategy, and Innovation, Avaya

“Voice interactions represent a vast resource of untapped knowledge. Aurix has focused on building easy-to-use solutions to extract this intelligence to create competitive advantage. The combination of Avaya Aura and Aurix’s speech analytics solutions offer a number of opportunities to create business and customer value that we look forward to accelerating through this acquisition. Our common approach of using an open architecture and focusing on the user experience makes this a good fit for both of us.”
Peter Rogers, CEO, Aurix

“Avaya is bringing a robust set of analytic tools into its mainstream products that will add an important component to the quality of service that Avaya delivers to their enterprise customers and to their customers in turn.”
Dan Miller, Senior Analyst, Opus Research

Tags: Avaya, Aurix, Avaya Aura, unified communications, contact center, customer service, collaboration, audio search engine, speech analytics, audio data mining

About Avaya:
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world.

About Aurix:
Aurix is a global provider of phonetic speech search and analytics technology. Working with a network of technology partners, service delivery professionals and resellers, Aurix provides solutions that help improve efficiency and generate business intelligence.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya’s filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov . Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

I saw Sipera Systems at the last Enterprise Connect and was intrigued by its market niche: UC and VOIP security. Enterprises are fast to jump on the UC and VOIP bandwagon, but oftentimes they neglect the security aspect of these deployments. Sipera, backed by renowned VCs Sequoia Capital and Star Ventures, was one of the kind to offer comprehensive security solutions with its SBC and UC appliances and software.

Now Sipera has joined the Avaya family. Obviously Avaya will leverage Sipera’s tech portfolio to improve its own UC and SIP products which shouldn’t be too hard since Sipera and Avaya have been close partners for a while now. What’ll be interesting to see is whether Avaya will still offer Sipera solutions for Cisco products.

Read the press release:

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Basking Ridge, NJ – Avaya today announced it has acquired Sipera, a worldwide provider of Unified Communications (UC) solutions, including Session Border Control (SBC) functionality and a range of UC security applications. Sipera will become a fully integrated part of Avaya.

Sipera strengthens Avaya’s UC portfolio with a set of fit-for-purpose, enterprise-class SBC capabilities for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking that offers customers and channel partners flexibility, security and value.  The company’s open, standards-based solutions work in both Avaya and non-Avaya networks. Combined with Avaya Aura®, Sipera’s solutions will provide customers with secure VoIP, SIP trunks, videoconferencing, cloud-based communications, instant messaging, and collaboration tools for workers in any location using any business or consumer device.

Sipera provides application-layer security that is intuitive, easy-to-manage and can lower the total cost of ownership of UC and Contact Center deployments. Security features include a patent-pending remote worker solution that helps deploy VPN-less solutions and advanced toll fraud protection.

Quotes:
“Sipera’s broad portfolio of open, enterprise-focused security technologies strongly align with our own Avaya Aura unified communications architecture. Together, we will help customers simplify deployment, management and maintenance of secure, multi-vendor UC and contact center environments while providing them with greater flexibility to support remote and mobile employees using the device that best suits their needs.”
Dr. Alan Baratz, Senior Vice President and President, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya

“Integration of our solutions with Avaya Aura is a significant milestone in the evolution of unified communications. With the combined offerings, users enjoy rich, responsive communication experiences that span multiple channels, applications, devices and networks. These communications incorporate security and compliance features that ensure mission-critical information and resources are safeguarded. Together, our solutions simplify and streamline deployment and management of enterprise UC, improving communications flexibility, accelerating user adoption, and maximizing return on investment.”
Jim Timmer, COO, Sipera

“Kelsey-Seybold Clinic is Houston’s first and longest standing Accountable Care Organization. Kelsey-Seybold is home to more than 370 physicians providing more than 50 medical specialties throughout a network of 20 Houston-area clinics.  Robust communication capabilities and security of our integrated voice and data solutions were key considerations in our selection of Sipera’s technology with Avaya’s contact center and unified communications solutions.  We are excited that this relationship is becoming a permanent one.”
Martin Littmann, Director – Information Technology, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic

Tags:
Unified communications, session border control, SIP trunking, security collaboration, business communications, Avaya Aura, Session Manager

About Avaya:
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya’s filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Media Inquiries:
Deb Kline
908-953-6179
klined@avaya.com

Last week Gartner came out with its latest Magic Quadrant for UC. So how do things look in the cutting edge field of unified communications?

Well, it appears that everyone is either a leader or niche player.

The vendors deemed worthy enough to float on the upper-right leaders quad: Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, and Siemens Enterprise Communications.

Most of the others, designated as niche players by the ever politically correct Gartner (as opposed to “non-leaders,” “losers,” or “followers”?) in the lower-left quad, include some usual suspects like ShoreTel, Interactive Intelligence, TeleWare, Toshiba, and Aastra Technologies; but there were a couple of newbies this time: Digium and Huawei Technologies.

Between quadrants challengers (NEC and IBM) and visionaries (Mitel) were only three companies. Notice that the newcomers Digium and Huawei went straight to the niche quad instead of arriving as challengers or visionaries…

And to me that is tragic. Has the UC market place finally settled and its landscape defined?

With Microsoft leading the pack it’s clear that UC is an enterprise software application. Microsoft’s dominance in enterprise software is paying dividends in the adolescent UC market. Plus, its leadership further strengthened with the acquisition of Skype.

I wouldn’t have thought networking giant Cisco to be a close second. My #2 pick would’ve been IBM but alas, Big Blue has never quite figured out “communications” throughout its history.

Interestingly, Mitel is the only visionary in the report. The company has been making waves recently by making its products VM-friendly and exclusive — a “game changer,” according to Dave Michels of Pin Drop Soup:

Today at VMworld in Las Vegas, we learned of a new capability: virtual softphones! Mitel’s US desktop suite, UC-Advanced, includes a softphone (and presence, and IM), and it is now supported on VMware’s View virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). To my knowledge, this is the first time a softphone is truly being supported on a virtual desktop. This is a game changer.

…

So far, this is a Mitel (MCD) and VMware (View 5) exclusive. The companies have not disclosed the secret sauce that makes it work, but it will no doubt be coming to other vendors. VDI is hot! It drives down support and hardware costs while improving mobility. Allowing a softphone to tag along has huge implications, particularly for organizations embracing cloud services. Virtual desktops have the potential to turn all kinds of form factors into legitimate, secure workstations including PCs, thin client desktops, iPads, and ChromeBooks.

Thanks to Eric Krapf over at the No Jitter blog, we learn a bit about the “secret sauce“:

“In the VDI space, the reason why the math works so well is you don’t have a PC for every person in the datacenter; you oversubscribe the resource,” because you don’t have everyone using all their resources all the time, [Mitel CTO Jim Davies] explained. So “even if you solve the latency problem, which is solvable, you still have the math problem.”

Rewriting the softphone application enabled Mitel to solve the latency problem; VMWare created an API for View that lets the Mitel softphone’s media streaming function plug into the thin client on the desktop, while the remaining functions move to the datacenter.

What will the next UC Magic Quadrant look like? I hope to see more dots in the top-left and bottom-right quadrants.

The newswires are reporting that Alcatel-Lucent is meeting potential buyers for its enterprise unit this week in San Francisco. News of the company’s intent to sell first surfaced nearly two weeks ago. Possible suitors include Avaya, Cisco, HP, and Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN). It’s said that SEN is considered to be the front-runner in the deal.

Some industry analysts and bloggers are picking HP to win it and arguing that a buyout from SEN wouldn’t make much sense. But there are also detractors. Dave Michels from Pin Drop Soup postulates, rather succinctly:

If It is cash then Cisco wins (who wants their stock anyway), and if it is a stock deal SEN wins. If it is not cash or stock, it is an IPO.

To me spinning off the enterprise business (which includes Genesys) would make the most sense. There are definitely growth opportunities for this part of the business, especially with Genesys’ momentum in the industry. ALU can partly own and invest in the spinoff if it wishes to continue to enjoy the fruits of the enterprise division. But the spinoff process is sometimes messy and perhaps costly, and it appears that ALU is really eyeing for a cash transaction of at least $1 billion for this sale, instead of a stock transaction.

I don’t believe any publicly-traded company whose core competency isn’t in enterprise telecom would want to touch this deal, simply because Genesys is such a big part of the equation. Cisco, having recently trimmed its consumer business in order to appease shareholders, wouldn’t dare to spend a cool billion on ALU Enterprise. Cisco shareholders want to see more sales of big iron data routers and switches, and new products to fend off cheaper competing products.

A buyout from HP may seem like a match made in heaven, but I think HP has more to gain as a mistress than the bride in this situation. It already has a good partner relationship with ALU Enterprise. HP thrives on partnerships when it comes to augmenting and supplementing its enterprise portfolio, but it will make bold moves such as the Palm acquisition in acknowledgement of its tablet computing failure (the HP Slate) and corrected the course with the Palm buyout. A lot of what ALU Enterprise offers overlap with what HP can already do, except in the contact center and IP telephony areas. With 2Q2011 earnings release coming up in less than a month, I’m not so certain that HP would stir the pot and go for it.

That leaves private equity firms and/or other private investors. Both Avaya and SEN are backed up private equity money, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Silver Lake Partners or Gores Group decides to expand their portfolio with ALU Enterprise. These equity firms have a track record of understanding and not shying away from enterprise telecom companies. However, Avaya hasn’t completely mastered the aftermath from the Nortel Enterprise buyout yet. SEN, on the other hand, is desperate for some traction especially here in the U.S. It’s no wonder SEN is reportedly the front-runner in the deal.

However this deal goes down, my hope is that it isn’t rushed. There are plenty of potential buyers and options, including for ALU to do nothing.

The term “post-PC” had been used by Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself in the iPad debut (reiterated in the iPad 2 announcement), and this year at Enterprise Connect the catchphrase was mentioned in a keynote and in a few breakout sessions. Mobility was definitely a hot topic this year, and one can certainly sense the interest among attendees wanting to learn more about mobile devices fitting into the overall enterprise communications scheme.

When the Avaya Flare, Cisco Cius, and RIM PlayBook were announced, I begged them to stop pouring money into these “enterprise tablet” projects. Instead, I proposed that such resources be allocated to developing apps for existing tablets — Android- or iOS-based — because developing mobile computing hardware just isn’t a core competency among these communications firms.

But I’m only a n00b blogger occupying a dusty corner of the industry blogosphere — who am I to say, right? Avaya had half a dozen Avaya Flare tablets at its pavilion, and Cisco had a few Ciuses on deck for the buzz counteroffensive. Heck, even Polycom showed me its telepresence app on a Samsung Galaxy Tab…

It’s obvious that Avaya, Cisco, and Polycom each has a very different philosophy when it comes to developing an “enterprise tablet”…

Avaya Flare Experience

Watch me light up the room

I will be the first to admit: Avaya did a tremendous job designing the Flare user interface, or as the company likes to put it, “experience.” It’s evident that Avaya R&D started from scratch and came out with a whole new UI tailored to enterprise communications. Although the device (Avaya Desktop Video Device, or ADVD — yes, quite a buzzkill product moniker) runs on Android, the UI is far from the typical screen full of scattered apps.

Perhaps Avaya is carving itself a niche for this tablet to be a pure mobile communications workhorse and nothing more. It has Android DNA, but Avaya hasn’t positioned the Flare AVDV as an all-purpose tablet. I believe the selling target is the executive behind a mahogany desk who cares less about playing games or writing documents on a mobile device. That’s why it’s priced at around $2,000?

The pricing may be its downfall, but I like how it makes a bold statement by slapping on an 11.6-inch display. (Maybe it wanted a 10″ but Apple’s gobbled up all the supply for iPads?)

Cisco Cius

See me, see you, Cius

The Cisco Cius, on the other hand, is significantly smaller than the Avaya Flare, and feels somewhat cheaper in terms of material. Also running the Android operating system, it’s apparent that Cisco wants the everyday worker to have one of these things at his (or her) disposal to boost productivity and enhance collaboration. It’s meant to be docked to a desk phone/station when not out and about, but then something magical happens when it’s in docked mode: the ability to work in a virtual desktop.

Cisco knows that nobody in their right mind would want to do serious office work (e.g. typing documents, populating spreadsheets, etc.) on this 7-inch tablet running on an Intel Atom CPU (as I was told). So once the Cius is docked, the user can use a virtual desktop client to work as if s/he is in front of a real PC. Better yet, files can reside on the device if need be when connectivity is an issue or simply because of a business requirement.

During Barry O’Sullivan’s keynote he mentioned that the price for a Cius is expected to drop to around $700 because of projected demand. I still think that price point is kind of high in the face of consumer tablets like the Apple iPad and Motorola Xoom, not to mention the Dell Streak and Samsung Galaxy Tab…

Polycom Telepresence

Speaking of the Samsung Galaxy Tab… Polycom’s philosophy is clearly to stay away from designing a spanking new UI or to make some new tablet hardware. The company partnered with Samsung to have a Polycom Telepresence app loaded on the Galaxy Tab. By the way, that tablet retails for around $250.

When the telepresence app was demoed to me we ran into a few glitches at first. But in the end the Polycom folks got it working, and I was able to capture a clip of it in action. As you can see in the video, not only can you video conference but also share screens. I can see this app being useful for workers who already got one of these Samsung tablets.

If Polycom can work through the stability issues with the telepresence app, then this could become a runaway hit among enterprise users, especially at the sub-$300 unit price.

So there is hope for an enterprise tablet

Uh, not really. I believe what the user desires is the experience of the Flare, the features of the Cius, and the price of Polycom’s solution bundle.

That device arrived in April 2010, even before any of these came to exist. A 10-inch screen, smooth UI, wide selection of apps, and for $500.

It’s the Apple iPad, of course, a consumer tablet that’s making inroads into the enterprise. Apple understood all three philosophies and that’s why the iPad was such a huge success. Polycom has the right idea to partner with Samsung, which is well versed in the consumer electronics arena, to create an app instead, but Avaya and Cisco may want to reconsider their approach.

My first VoiceCon in 2010 was so much fun (oh yeah, I also learned a lot and made quite a few new acquaintances) that I knew I had to plan for Enterprise Connect 2011. It was also my first live on-site coverage for insideCTI (I’d just started the blog a month earlier), so I really didn’t know what to expect. In 2010 my family tagged along for the 8-hour road trip to Orlando to provide moral support (in the form of “We get to visit Mickey!”) and endured a few days of hotel stay with me, away from the comfort of our TV, sofas, and beds. I would go to the conference during the day, return to the hotel for a “home” cooked supper, then start organizing my notes in order to start burning the midnight oil on the blog. Thankfully the hotel WiFi offered decent speeds.

This year I flied solo, road trip and all. Driving myself for eight hours down Interstate 75 was rough — the various segments of road work made it worse — and again I was reminded that I’m not in college anymore. Still, I think eight hours was about the threshold before I’d gladly subject myself to TSA groping. Had the conference been held in Miami then the TSA would’ve had me by my… Well, you get the idea.

The Gaylord Palms Resort (commonly known as the “biodome” to returning conference goers) hadn’t changed much: the same lush plants, the humidity, the bored alligators, and lots of Avaya banners. Yep, no doubt I had arrived at the right conference when I walked in early Monday morning to pick up my media badge.

Before the trip I’d thought that Skype would be the most talked about exhibitor (and David Gurle, VP Skype Enterprise, also a featured keynote speaker). After all, everybody Skypes these days. And that’s both at home and in the office, both audio and video. Skype’s intention of moving into the enterprise market is also well known now. Some may even say that Skype’s one of the first unified communication applications.

But frankly Skype Enterprise didn’t have anything spectacular for this conference. A partnership with Citrix GoToMeeting, a pitch of 24/7 support tied to SLAs, and a closer relationship with Avaya (a sibling company also sharing Silver Lake Partners as an investor). Disappointedly, nothing too exciting, especially when details were hard to come by too. Was it being overly conservative and cautious because of the planned IPO this year?

The debut of the Innovation Showcase was awesome. Not only did I get to learn about new companies (ProtonMedia, Radish Systems, harmon.ie), but Fonolo was one of the winners and I got to catch up with CEO Shai Berger. I hope the showcase becomes a regular part of Enterprise Connect (and winning companies granted better booth locales).

Speaking of innovation, I was introduced to Hookflash CEO Trent Johnsen whose company came in second in the recent StartupCamp 3 in Miami. Always a pleasure to meet a tech entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley (he’s from Calgary, Canada).

The always professionally dressed and equally professionally equipped Dan York, Director of Communications at Voxeo, was kind enough to meet with me to chat about his company and the conference in general. Too bad he didn’t divulge any juicy news about possible acquisitions, but he did touch upon some things such as Voxeo’s new office, growth in its Beijing office, and a new data center in Asia. He also wondered why Google or Apple — two companies representing Android and iOS, respectively — weren’t represented at any of the sessions discussing UC mobility. I shared that same sentiment. I eagerly await the year when either of those companies shows up at Enterprise Connect…

Data networking giant Cisco proved it’s not just a one trick pony with SocialMiner winning Best of Enterprise Connect 2011. This social customer care solution monitors social media networks and lets a company effectively respond to customers. (Side note: Avaya also has a similar product called the Social Media Manager, and compared to SocialMiner the UX was night and day.)

The highlight of the trip was probably the invitation-only media dinner hosted by Verizon on Monday, at a steakhouse inside the biodome. The dinner was great (had the buffalo steak and bread pudding for dessert), but even better was the opportunity to chat with folks from Verizon and Cisco, not just about UCCaaS but really having regular conversations at the dinner table. Alas, it’s good to know that marketing people are humans too and not androids programmed to divulge only corporate press releases.

Was there a low point? Unfortunately, yes. If anyone found a VirginMobile MiFi hotspot, please return it to me. It’s a blogger’s best friend and I’d lost it sometime on Tuesday, March 1.

But overall, I had a blast this year. Although I didn’t do much liveblogging (I do love liveblogging though) this time, my tweet stream was fairly consistent during the events I attended. And kudos to the good WiFi coverage at the venue this year, most of the time my iPhone 4 was able to last till the end of the day even with heavy tweeting. In fact, lots of people participated in #enterprisecon (I hope Dan’s thumbs are okay) and it made the conference even better!

Enterprise Connect 2012 is March 26-29 at the same biodome. What will next year’s hot topics be? (Please, not interoperability…)

Too much SIPping from Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy

For more photos and videos of Avaya at Enterprise Connect 2011 please visit the album on Facebook.

Following Cisco SVP Barry O’Sullivan’s keynote speech on Tuesday was Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy. And traditionally like all other keynotes at the conference, it started with a video. Kennedy picked a TV ad from Kohler, the makers of beautifully designed kitchen and bath furnishings.

The point was made about innovative design and enhancing the user experience, something Avaya’s doing with the highly anticipated Flare Experience tablet.

Unfortunately for those in attendance and watching the live stream, we had to endure a good chunk of time of him (re-)stressing the importance and success of SIP. It was SIP this, SIP that, SIP everything. SIP was already prevalent in his VoiceCon keynote last year, yet there he was on stage again talking the same message instead of starting off with a bang about what’s on everybody’s mind: Flare. Kennedy failed to follow through on the momentum from the opening Kohler video and killed the buzz with a regurgitation of SIP. The sentiment was evidently shared by many Twitter users monitoring #enterprisecon (some selected tweets):

Clearly Kennedy’s keynote opening about SIP wasn’t very interesting to this crowd who’s been living and breathing SIP for a while now…

The Flare Experience demo with the help from Brett Shockley also ran into a snag when the tablet (even though Avaya won’t call it that) failed to grab a working WiFi connection. Luckily Avaya had several operational demo units at their show booth for people to really take a closer look.

Avaya indeed showed its innovation chops with the Flare Experience, but the keynote this year was more of an Avaya Flat Experience.