Re: Sympathy? Not a lot here
This is sadly still the case. I've enjoyed working with their voice products for the past 20 years and witnessed the transition of the core architecture across a number of platforms, with increasingly elaborate "glue" included to maintain integration with newer components. The core product has not been updated to keep up with the times, and there's now as much glue as there is actual product.
In terms of simple traditional models, their reputation for scalability and reliability is well earned and they do deserve credit there, but that's unfortunately one of the few remaining positives. The current product stack is a mishmash of Avaya and Nortel technologies, licensing is a mess, you're bound to expensive old school annual maintenance contracts and from a corporate perspective there doesn't seem to be much interest in making a change. There's marketing hoopla, but when push comes to shove it's always the same old stuff that's been polished up or given a new name.
A complete re-write from the bottom up is required in order to be able to offer the modular, integrated architecture which competitors are able to provide, and I don't think they've got the remaining capability to undertake such a mammoth task + nobody would buy a .0 release of a full rebuild anyway.
They make a lot of noise about their networking division, but the most unstable network switched I ever worked with was an elaborate Avaya Cajun P882, I would never consider them for networking ever again. The commodity 3COM's I replaced the Avaya with were a fraction of the cost, faster, more reliable and didn't require extravagant support charges in order to be entitled for firmware upgrades.
So yeah, this is quite probably the beginning of the end - their products are deeply entrenched within my employer's global environment, but the writing is on the wall and I'm actively looking for another specialty to put on my CV...