Avaya and Polycom to Jointly Develop and Market Video and Voice Communications Systems

Agreement reflects companies’ shared commitment to open, standards-based unified communications

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. and PLEASANTON, Calif. - Avaya and Polycom, Inc. [Nasdaq: PLCM], are expanding their existing relationship and will jointly develop and market integrated video, voice and collaboration solutions. The companies plan to deliver fully integrated, end-to-end unified communications (UC) solutions that use the Avaya Aura™ Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based platform and the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy.

The planned joint solutions will provide Polycom’s full range of voice and video systems integrated with Avaya Aura delivering real-time collaboration to customers. Avaya Aura will enable companies to administer, schedule and manage the joint solutions in a single, consistent manner, and control bandwidth to support a superior user experience and optimal deployment of network resources.

The expanded partnership supports Avaya Aura as a fundamental control point for managing and delivering communications across organizations.

“Companies are the real winners in the unified communications market because UC can save time, money and other valuable resources,” said Roopam Jain, principal analyst, Frost & Sullivan. “As more and more companies flesh out and execute on their UC strategies, interoperability and standards such as SIP are critical.”

Jain added, “Because every UC deployment has unique requirements, standards-based solutions are key. It’s encouraging to see Avaya and Polycom team to enable this type of open collaboration and feature-rich, purpose-built solutions.”

“The Avaya Aura platform enables our customers to integrate, manage and use communications in new ways to improve business performance,” said Alan Baratz, senior vice president and president, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya. “By adopting the Avaya Aura platform, Polycom products will benefit from the seamless interoperability it offers. Together we’ll offer customers a choice of collaboration solutions with the flexibility and functionality they require.”

“We continue to deliver on the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy, and Avaya is leading the charge in adopting open standards as the core for its business communications platform,” said Andy Miller, Polycom executive vice president of Global Field Operations. “Avaya is a significant global presence across multiple industries. These existing relationships give us an excellent opportunity to introduce customers to our new UC solutions.”

The Avaya Aura platform simplifies existing voice and video communica­tions architectures, including the ability to integrate communications across multi-vendor networks, to deliver business communi­cations with more capabilities, fewer costs and less complexity. The combined Avaya and Polycom offers will support customers who want to maintain their existing communications investments as they adopt new capabilities and solutions.

About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com. For more information on the Avaya DevConnect program, visit www.avaya.com/devconnect.

About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Polycom’s integration efforts with Avaya support Polycom’s Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with Avaya and other leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.

About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.