Avaya bids $475M for Nortel Enterprise Solutions

Avaya announced it has tendered a sale agreement with beleaguered Canadian vendor Nortel Networks to buy Nortel Enterprise Solutions for $475 million, according to a release. The sale includes all of Nortel Enterprise Solutions' global assets as well as Nortel Government Solutions and DiamondWare, Ltd., according to the release.

The bid will be in "stalking horse" style, similar to Nokia Siemens Networks' bid for Nortel's CDMA and wireless tech assets. Nortel said it will file the stalking horse asset and share sale agreement with the United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware where higher offers for the division could be tendered, per the stalking horse procedure.

"We continue to be fully focused on running our operations and continuing to serve our customers while actively engaged in the sale of our businesses," Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski said in a statement. "We have determined that the sale of our businesses maximizes value while preserving innovation platforms, customer relationships and jobs to the greatest extent possible. The CDMA and LTE Access stalking horse asset sale agreement announced on June 19th, and today's agreements around our Enterprise business are solid proof of that value. This represents the best path forward, and we are advancing in our discussions with interested parties for our other businesses."

The heads of both Nortel Enterprise Solutions and Government Solutions praised the deal as well for bringing continued value and a clear roadmap for current Nortel customers, who are being courted actively [1] by other industry players as well. 

For more:
- see the press release here [2]
- see Zeus Kerravala's analysis of the deal at No Jitter here [3] 

Related articles
Nortel break-up to shift IP communications market [4]
Competitors stalk Nortel VoIP assets [5]