Report sees Avaya's upside, risks

That's a typical Avaya Network Configuration Manager installation. Network Configuration Manager is a key component of Avaya's increasingly competitive profile in the enterprise space. 

Avaya has just gotten a mostly positive report from Piper Jaffray analyst Troy Jensen.

"Demand for VoIP technology is on the rise and we believe Avaya represents one of the best ways to play this migration in the enterprise," Jensen wrote in a research report cited by Forbes.com today. "Avaya has historically been one of the leading suppliers of legacy phone systems and applications and we believe the company's incumbent status and razor-sharp focus on telephony applications makes them the vendor of choice for enterprise accounts."

Jensen adds that Avaya represented 24% of the VoIP market in 2004, which was up from 22% in 2003 and up from 16% in 2002.

Avaya, though, is not seen as being without risks. There's big bad Cisco with its innards into enterprise IT spending, the cyclicality of that spending, pressure on them to discount, as well as the risks involved in executing technology now under their wing as a result of acquisitions.