Quite the legacy Mike Zafirovski has left behind. Granted, he arrived into an already disheveled mostly broken Nortel, but, he took the job on with some major promises.
“I’ll fix it – trust me.” Three years and a Six Sigma later, he’s made a mess. He leaves with a crappy legacy and many many many millions of dollars in his pocket. People make mistakes. Zafirovski made many. His first mistake was getting on the sinking ship thinking he could save it. The reality is, he tried to fix the business, but the culture still prevailed.
Nortel was destined for failure before Mike Zafirovski stepped in – he was too love struck to see it.
It’s a culture of arrogance. The “we’re the best” culture of arrogance was so pervasive it actually continues even until today. The fact is – and I’m speaking from an enterprise perspective – Nortel’s products are poor. Granted, they did at one time build an amazing product. The Norstar and Option 11 were the best pieces of telecom equipment during their time. That changed, at least from my perspective, with their BCM, Succession, and Passport products.
I know many people will disagree with what I’m saying, but, most of those people have never seen the other side. For those who have, they’ll probably agree.
When Mike Zafirovski arrived, he believed the arrogance. I’m sure he didn’t arrive with the attitude – it probably took some time for him to start believing what he was told. The fact is just because Nortel made it doesn’t mean it worked well. In fact, it didn’t. BCM, Succession, Passport. Those are the products I’ve seen. They don’t work very well. Overpromise and under deliver.
I could go on and on about system trays, bad MSC cards, hardware and software issues, and a PATCH PATCH PATCH “there’s a patch for that” – patched attitude that prevails. Customers bought into the mess, and Nortel continued selling it.
The culture of arrogance was so pervasive that the people that worked there didn’t see it – at least not until they left. And then, and only then, did they see the other side. The WE ARE NORTEL and WE CAN”T DO WRONG because we’re Nortel attitude – that’s hard to fix.
Now, I’m trying to figure out why anybody would want to buy the enterprise business. What on earth do they think they’re going to get ? It will be MANY millions to buy. That’s a lot of money. How will somebody make that back?
Maybe somebody will buy Nortel and keep the products intact – and try and fix it. The BCM, Succession – it doesn’t need fixing, it needs gutting. The name “NORTEL” is damaged from the last six months of their public relations nightmare. But there are existing customers who would be looking for upgrades, software support, maintenance … maybe there’s some value in that.
Avaya has been rumored to be interested in purchasing Nortel’s enterprise business. What could they possibly see in it? It’s certainly not for the engineering – that they’ll gut. Rip and replace. While there are many issues Avaya would need to consider when looking at Nortel’s enterprise business, it should be noted that Avaya had
been doing well in the enterprise market, and been successful in convincing a growing number of Nortel customers to switch suppliers.
Is there enough maintenance and upgrade dollars available to make back heavy price tag ? Most good dealers have taken on a secondary, and now alternate primary product line. Does it mean that much to keep this out of Cisco’s hands? Can they make their money back? Are there that many customers left?
It’s possible, with the right attitude!
More: Rich Tehrani shares some of his thoughts on this subject:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/4g/can-we-learn-from-the-nortel-fire-sale.html
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You must be an Avaya employee that has lost many bids to the Nortel BCM and CS1000 if you are this bitter.
Spot on !
I have to agree with this post – Sad to say, but this is so true to the point!
There’s quite a bit of truth to this. There are plenty of problems with Nortel products that go years without being fixed, with a “It’s a feature, not a bug” attitude. They’re notoriously difficult to do business with, their online presence is a joke compared to their competitors, and the internal tools are downright malevolent.
Yup, I’m a former employee. There are a lot of wonderfully engineered products (ERS, BCM 4.0, BCM50, and Secure Router come to mind). There are also a lot of products that are more like tech demos than products (Anything on the IP side of the CS1000, the CS2100, and any of the routers developed in-house – Contivity and Flounder, I’m looking at you)
I’m a dealer and can only attest the truth of this post.
one example i bumped into this week on a newly installed bcm50, F986 doesn’t work in conjunction with SWCA auto invoke park by pressing hold, as the call is being parked and F986 can’t pull it out from PARK.
go figure. the next thing I have to do is call tech support to speak to an Indian who has ZERO experience in the product he is supporting, all of his experience comes from a boring training where he went through the feature set ‘on paper’….
EX NT EMPL says Nortel was tthe cream of the crop until thh greed management came on board and hoodwinked the shareholders around the 1990’s from then on it was the Canadian ENRON story and many have the bank accounts to prove it
Damn, that sound’s so easy if you think about it.