Avaya Executive Departures, Intrigue Continue

Like many other vendors, Avaya showed off its latest virtualized wares at VMworld in San Francisco this week. While putting its best face forward at VMware’s annual conference and exhibition, Avaya also experienced further behind-the-scenes executive intrigue.

Sources report that Carelyn Monroe, VP of Global Partner Support Services, resigned from the company last Friday. Monroe is said to have reported to Mike Runda, SVP and president of Avaya Client Services. She joined Avaya in 2009, coming over from Nortel.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Avaya has suffered another defection. James Stevenson, described as a “business-services expert” in a story published online by CRN ChannelWeb UK, has left Avaya to become director of operations for reseller Proximity Communications.

Prior to the departures of Monroe and Stevenson, CFO Anthony Massetti bolted for the exit door immediately after Avaya’s latest inauspicious quarterly results were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Massetti was replaced by Dave Vellequette, who has a long history of of working alongside Avaya CEO Kevin Kennedy.

In some quarters, Kennedy’s reunion with Vellequette is being construed as a circle-the-wagons tactic in which the besieged CEO attempts to surround himself with steadfast loyalists. It probably won’t be long before we see a “Hitler parody” on YouTube about Avaya’s plight (like this one on interoperability problems with unified communications).

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Amazon-RIM: Summer Reunion?

Think back to last December, just before the holidays. You might recall a Reuters report, quoting “people with knowledge of the situation,” claiming that Research in Motion (RIM) rejected takeover propositions from Amazon.com and others.

The report wasn’t clear on whether the informal discussions resulted in any talk of price between Amazon and RIM, but apparently no formal offer was made. RIM, then still under the stewardship of former co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, reportedly preferred to remain independent and to address its challenges alone.

I Know What You Discussed Last Summer

Since then, a lot has happened. When the Reuters report was published — on December 20, 2011 — RIM’s market value had plunged 77 percent during the previous year, sitting then at about $6.8 billion. Today, RIM’s market capitalization is $3.7 billion. What’s more, the company now has Thorsten Heins as its CEO, not Balsillie and Lazardis, who were adamantly opposed to selling the company. We also have seen recent reports that IBM approached RIM regarding a potential acquisition of the Waterloo, Ontario-based company’s enterprise business, and rumors have surfaced that RIM might sell its handset business to Amazon or Facebook.

Meanwhile, RIM’s prospects for long-term success aren’t any brighter than they were last winter, and activist shareholders, not interested in a protracted turnaround effort, continue to lobby for a sale of the company.

As for Amazon, it is said to be on the cusp of entering the smartphone market, presumably using a forked version of Android, which is what it runs on the Kindle tablet.  From the vantage point of the boardroom at Amazon, that might not be a sustainable long-term plan. Google is looking more like an Amazon competitor, and the future trajectory of Android is clouded by Google’s strategic considerations and by legal imbroglios relating to patents. Those presumably were among the reasons Amazon approached RIM last December.

Uneasy Bedfellows

It’s no secret that Amazon and Google are uneasy Android bedfellows. As Eric Jackson wrote just after the Reuters story hit the wires:

Amazon has never been a big supporter of Google’s Android OS for its Kindle. And Google’s never been keen on promoting Amazon as part of the Android ecosystem. It seems that both companies know this is just a matter of time before each leaves the other.

Yes, there’s some question as to how much value inheres in RIM’s patents. Estimates on their worth are all over the map. Nevertheless, RIM’s QNX mobile-operating system could look compelling to Amazon. With QNX and with RIM’s patents, Amazon would have something more than a contingency plan against any strategic machinations by Google or any potential litigiousness by Apple (or others).  The foregoing case, of course, rests on the assumption that QNX, rechristened BlackBerry 10, is as far along as RIM claims. It also rests on the assumption that Amazon wants a mobile platform all its own.

It was last summer when Amazon reportedly made its informal approach to RIM. It would not be surprising to learn that a reprise of discussions occurred this summer. RIM might be more disposed to consider a formal offer this time around.

Between What Is and What Will Be

I have refrained from writing about recent developments in software-defined networking (SDN) and in the larger realm of what VMware, now hosting VMworld in San Francisco, calls the  “software-defined data center” (SDDC).

My reticence hasn’t resulted from indifference or from hype fatigue — in fact, these technologies do not possess the jaundiced connotations of “hype” — but from a realization that we’ve entered a period of confusion, deception, misdirection, and murk.  Amidst the tumult, my single, independent voice — though resplendent in its dulcet tones — would be overwhelmed or forgotten.

Choppy Transition

We’re in the midst of a choppy transitional period. Where we’ve been is behind us, where we’re going is ahead of us, and where we find ourselves today is between the two. So-called legacy vendors, in both networking and compute hardware, are trying to slow progress toward the future, which will involve the primacy of software and services and related business models. There will be virtualized infrastructure, but not necessarily converged infrastructure, which is predicated on the development and sale of proprietary hardware by a single vendor or by an exclusive club of vendors.

Obviously, there still will be hardware. You can’t run software without server hardware, and you can’t run a network without physical infrastructure. But the purpose and role of that hardware will change. The closed box will be replaced by an open one, not because of any idealism or panglossian optimism, but because of economic, operational, and technological imperatives that first are remaking the largest of public-cloud data centers and soon will stretch into private clouds at large enterprises.

No Wishful Thinking

After all, the driving purpose of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) involved shifting the balance of power into the hands of customers, who had their own business and operational priorities to address. Where legacy networking failed them, SDN provided a way forward, saving money on capital expenditures and operational costs while also providing flexibility and responsiveness to changing business and technology requirements.

The same is true for the software-defined data center, where SDN will play a role in creating a fluid pool of virtualized infrastructure that can be utilized to optimal business benefit. What’s important to note is that this development will not be restricted to the public cloud-service providers, including all the big names at the top of the ONF power structure. VMware, which coined software-defined data center, is aiming directly for the private cloud, as Greg Ferro mentioned in his analysis of VMware’s acquisition of Nicira Networks.

Fighting Inevitability

Still, it hasn’t happened yet, even though it will happen. Senior staff and executives at the incumbent vendors know what’s happening, they know that they’re fighting against an inevitability, but fight it they must. Their organizations aren’t built to go with this flow, so they will resist it.

That’s where we find ourselves. The signal-to-noise ratio isn’t great. It’s a time marked by disruption and turmoil. The dust and smoke will clear, though. We can see which way the wind is blowing.

Chinese Merchant-Silicon Vendor Joins ONF, Enters SDN Picture

Switching-silicon ODM/OEM Centec Networks last week became the latest company to join the Open Networking Foundation (ONF).

According to a press release, Centec is “committed to contributing to SDN development as a merchant silicon vendor and to pioneering in the promotion of SDN adoption in China.” From the ONF’s standpoint, the more merchant silicon on the market for OpenFlow switches, the better.  Expansion in China doubtless is a welcome prospect, too.

Established in 2005, Centec has been financed by China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park Venture Capital, Delta Venture Enterprise, Infinity I-China Investments (Israel), and Suzhou Rongda. A little more than a year ago, Centec announced a $10.7-million “C” round of financing, in which Delta Venture Enterprise, Infinity I-China Investments (Israel), and SuZhou Rongda participated.

Acquisition Rumor

Before that round was announced, Centec’s CEO James Sun, formerly of Cisco and of Fore Systems, told Light Reading’s Craig Matsumoto that the company aspired to become an alternative supplier to Broadcom in the Ethernet merchant-silicon market. As a Chinese company, Centec not surprisingly has cultivated relationships with Chinese carriers and network-gear vendors. In his Light Reading article, in fact, Matsumoto cited a rumor that Centec had declined an acquisition offer from HiSilicon Technologies Co. Ltd., the semiconductor subsidiary of Huawei Technologies, China’s largest network-equipment vendor.

Huawei has been working not only to bolster its enterprise-networking presence, but also to figure out how best to utilize SDN and OpenFlow (and OpenStack, too).  Like Centec, Huawei is a member of the ONF, and it also has been active in IETF and IRTF discourse relating to SDN. What’s more, Huawei has been hiring SDN-savvy engineers in China and in the U.S.

As for Centec, the company made its debut on the SDN stage early this year at the Ethernet Technology Summit, where CEO James Sun gave a silicon vendor’s perspective on OpenFlow and spoke about the company’s plans to release a reference design based on Centec’s TransWarp switching silicon and an SDK with support for Open vSwitch 1.2. That reference design subsequently was showcased at the Open Networking Summit in April.

It will be interesting to see how Centec develops, both in competitive relation to Broadcom and within the context of the SDN ecosystem.

Network-Virtualization Startup PLUMgrid Announces Funding, Reveals Little

Admit it, you thought I’d lost interest in software-defined networking (SDN), didn’t you?

But you know that couldn’t be true. I’m still interested in SDN and how it facilitates network virtualization, network programmability, and what the empire-building folks at EMC/VMware are billing as the software-defined data center, which obviously encompasses more than just networking.

Game On

Apparently I’m not the only one who retains an abiding interest in SDN. In the immediate wake of VMware’s headline-grabbing acquisition of network-virtualization startup Nicira Networks, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists want us to know that the game has just begun.

Last week, for example, we learned that PLUMgrid, a network-virtualization startup in the irritatingly opaque state of development known as stealth mode, has raised $10.7 million in first-round funding led by moneybags VCs U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. USVP’s Chris Rust and Hummer Winblad’s Lars Leckie have joined PLUMgrid’s board of directors. You can learn more about the individual board members and the company’s executive team, which includes former Cisco employees who were involved in the networking giant’s early dalliance with OpenFlow a few years ago, by perusing the biographies on the PLUMgrid website.

Looking for Clues 

But don’t expect the website to provide a helpful description of the products and technologies that PLUMgrid is developing, apparently in consultation with prospective early customers. We’ll have to wait until the end of this year, or early next year, for PLUMgrid to disclose and discuss its products.

For now, what we get is a game of technology charades, in which PLUMgrid executives, including CEO Awais Nemat, drop hints about what the company might be doing and their media interlocutors then guess at what it all means. It’s amusing at times, but it’s not illuminating.

At SDNCentral, Matt Palmer surmises that PLUMgrid might be playing in “the service orchestration arena for both physical and virtual networks.” In an article written by Jim Duffy at Network World, we learn that PLUMgrid sees its technology as having applicability beyond the parameters of network virtualization. In the same article, PLUMgrid’s Nemat expresses reservations about OpenFlow. To wit:

 “It is a great concept (of decoupling the control plane for the data plane) but it is a demonstration of a concept. Is OpenFlow the right architecture for that separation? That remains to be seen.”

More to Come

That observation is somewhat reminiscent of what Scott Schenker, Nicira co-founder and chief scientist and a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of California at Berkeley, had to say about OpenFlow last year. (Shenker also is a co-founder and officer of the Open Networking Foundation, a champion and leading proponent of OpenFlow.)

What we know for certain about PLUMgrid is that it is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and plans to sell its network-virtualization software to businesses that manage physical, virtual, and cloud data centers. In a few months, perhaps before the end of the year, we’ll know more.

Avaya Questions Mount

Those of you following the tortuous (some might call it torturous) saga of Avaya Inc. might wish to visit the investor-relations section of Avaya’s website or peruse Avaya’s latest Form-10Q filing on the SEC website.

Yes, Avaya’s numbers for its third fiscal quarter of 2012, which ended on June 30, are available for review. I have given the results a cursory look, and I’ve concluded that the story hasn’t changed appreciably since I last wrote about Avaya’s travails. There’s still no prospect of significant revenue growth, quarterly losses continue to accrue, channel sales are edging lower across the company’s product portfolio, and the long-term debt overhang remains formidable.

Goodwill Impairment? 

And there’s something else, which I neglected to mention previously: a persistently high amount of goodwill on the asset side of the ledger, at least some of which might have to be written down before long. The company’s goodwill assumptions seem willfully optimistic, and even Avaya concedes that “it may be necessary to record impairment charges in the future” if “market conditions continue to deteriorate, or if the company is unable to execute on its cost-reduction efforts.” While I believe the company will persist with its cost-reduction efforts, I don’t see a meaningful near-term turnaround in macroeconomic conditions or in the growth profile of the company’s product portfolio. Ergo, impairment charges seem inevitable.

In this regard, what you need to know is that Avaya is carrying goodwill of about $4.2 billion on its books as of June 30, up from nearly $4.1 billion as of September 30, 2011. The company’s total assets are about $8.24 billion, which means goodwill accounts for more than half that total.

For those desirous of a quick summary of revenue and net loss for the year, I can report that total revenue, including sales of products and services, amounted to $1.25 billion in the quarter, down from $1.37 billion in the corresponding quarter last year, a year-on-year decrease of $122 million or about 9 percent. Product sales were down across the board, except in networking, where sales edged up modestly to $74 million in the quarter this year from $71 million last year. Service revenue also was down. For the nine-month period ended on June 30, revenues also were down compared to the same period the previous year, dropping from $4.13 billion last year to about $3.9 billion this year.

Mulling the Options

Avaya’s net loss in the quarter was $166 million, up from $152 million last year.

The critical challenge for Avaya will be growth. The books show that the company is maintaining level spending on research and development, but one wonders whether its acquisition strategy or its R&D efforts will be sufficient to identify a new source of meaningful revenue growth, especially as it finds itself under mounting pressure to contain costs and expunge ongoing losses. Meanwhile, a foreboding long-term debt looms, kicked down the road but still a notable concern.

With the road to IPO effectively blocked — I really can’t see a way for Avaya to get back on that track now — Avaya’s private-equity sponsors, Silver Lake Partners and TPG Capital, must consider their options. Is there a potential strategic acquirer out there? Can the company be sold in whole, or will it have to be sold in parts? Or will the sponsors just hang on, hoping continued cost cutting and a strategic overhaul, perhaps including a change in executive leadership, might get the company back on course?