Avaya acquires Nortel Enterprise Solutions

Communications firm Avaya has acquired Nortel Enterprise Solutions for $900 million with a further $15 million set aside for an employee retention programme, reports Computing.co.uk.

Canadian telecommunications vendor Nortel has been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and attracted bids from Avaya and Siemens Enterprise Communications.

The announcement follows completion of the auction for Nortel's corporate network systems business, although the final transaction is subject to court and customary regulatory approvals in both Canada and the US.

NEC and Juniper are investing in Blade Network Technologies, which specialises in data centre networking, states eWeek.

The investments, along with one by an unnamed tech company, bring the value of Blade Networks to $230 million. The move comes a day after Juniper and Nokia Siemens announced a joint venture to offer a carrier ethernet solution.

Networking vendors are looking for ways to gain traction at a time when market leader Cisco Systems is being hit by the global recession and is also expanding its reach in the data centre.

As predicted last month, the IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n high-throughput wireless LAN standard, says CNET News.

Finalisation of the new wireless networking standard, which is capable of delivering throughput speeds up to 300Mbps (and even higher), took exactly seven years from the day it was conceived, or six years from the first draft version. The standard has been through a dozen or so draft versions.

It's likely, however, that final approval of the standard will be publicly announced on 15 September, the date when Meru Networks puts on a public Webcast to provide answers about the ratification.