Both Nortel and Avaya have been global leaders in the world of business telephone systems for quite some time. Both companies have a long and storied history, and their growth and evolution into business communication leaders was an interesting journey. Now, with Avaya's acquisition of a major portion of the Nortel company, the two histories have merged into one future path.

Nortel was born out of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada in the late 1800s. Originally a manufacturer of phone call boxes and alarm boxes, the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company. Over the decades a series of acquisitions, mergers and changes in strategy and technology eventually led to Nortel becoming heavily invested in their own product development, and in the furthering of digital technologies.

Over the last few decades Nortel has prided itself on research and development, innovation, new technology and more. They have invested heavily into these areas and were a consistent leader in the development of new products, systems and solutions.

Avaya has a much more recent history, only being founded in the year 2000. It was originally the business communications unit within Lucent Technologies. Since its brief inception, Avaya has continued to expand globally with acquisitions of various firms and now of course with the acquisition of Nortel.

Avaya has always creatively found new solutions and gotten new concepts and ideas to market. In fact, one of their core beliefs is that they succeed with velocity. That means getting new technologies working and to the market as quickly as possible. That also means understanding the right course to invest in now, that will pay off in the future.

One very interesting factor to keep in mind with this acquisition is that the companies already shared much in common. This includes of course not just the industry that they were in, but also much more. Both companies were dedicated to the concepts of developing new technology and innovating new products and solutions. Both companies had a clear sense of where the industry was headed and what it was going to take to stay ahead of the curve.

Therefore, as opposed to some mergers and acquisitions where contradicting values end up serving as the downfall of the project, the existing similarities will likely make this transition as smooth as possible. Both already had core values and beliefs about what they were doing, now the best of those can be combined into one cohesive, powerful and progressive strategy in the future.

Nortel and Avaya business telephone and communication systems are now combined under the Avaya roof. This puts a whole lot of history, manpower, technology and expertise into one place, and will enable Avaya to continue to grow stronger than ever before. The acquisition made perfect sense, with a history of a customer focus and commitment to technology in both firms, the new Avaya and Nortel combined effort will surely be a big winner.

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