Avaya Collaborates with LifeSize Communications to Enable HD Video Conferencing for Avaya Unified Communications

Solution will enable more employees to easily collaborate via video over multiple locations in businesses with mixed communications environments

Avaya today announced an agreement with LifeSize Communications to establish interoperability between the Avaya Aura™ unified communications (UC) platform and LifeSize HD video conferencing systems. The combined solutions will enable broad-scale deployment of HD video conferencing with the high-quality and flexibility of LifeSize video systems and the centralized management and control capabilities of Avaya Aura.

Using the SIP-based Avaya Aura, enterprises will be able to distribute video conferencing capabilities over multiple locations in businesses with multi-vendor environments. Employees will be able to easily collaborate with each other by video -- regardless of the communications system which serves their specific location. IT will enjoy low bandwidth utilization, streamlined management, and lower costs by routing video over their internal network.

"As working environments become increasingly distributed, video communications provide an outstanding ability to draw teams together and enable effective collaboration as part of a cohesive unified communication experience," said Alan Baratz, senior vice president and president, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya. "Avaya's work with LifeSize Communications and others will help make it easier and more cost-effective for companies to deploy video to employees at all levels of their organization."

"Avaya's leadership in the enterprise and LifeSize's proven HD video solutions are an ideal combination for organizations seeking to easily and broadly deploy high quality video communications to fundamentally improve their business," said Craig Malloy, chief executive officer of LifeSize Communications. "Interoperability with Avaya is yet another step forward to delivering on the promise of video communications for anyone, everywhere."

Organizations that want a choice of video anywhere will benefit from the resulting solution. LifeSize high definition video can be easily deployed, and is a cost-effective solution delivering superior HD quality for small or large group video conferencing. Avaya Aura enables the centralized deployment of audio, video and web applications over multiple locations, as well as the creation of "application profiles" based on employee needs.

Companies will be able to more broadly extend access to video conferencing to those individual workers or teams that are moderately to highly collaborative, thus increasing their productivity and benefiting from a low total cost of ownership. In addition, with Avaya Aura, organizations can realize network savings and increased control by combining audio and video onto a single network, and establishing network-aware bandwidth management policies to control usage and deliver a high quality user-experience.

LifeSize is a Platinum member of the Avaya DevConnect program - an initiative to develop, market and sell innovative third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology and extend the value of a company’s investment in its network. Through the program, products undergo rigorous compatibility testing by a team of Avaya engineers. Doing so ensures businesses can confidently add best-in-class capabilities to their network without having to replace their existing infrastructure—speeding deployment of new applications and reducing both network complexity and implementation cost.

According to the 2010 Frost and Sullivan World Videoconferencing Endpoints Market Report, the total revenues for the worldwide videoconferencing endpoints market reached an estimated $1.25 billion in 2009.* "As video gets increasingly incorporated into larger enterprise communications suites, it is largely shifting from a point solution to integrated collaboration," said Roopam Jain, principal analyst, Frost and Sullivan. "Moreover, mass adoption of video will largely happen through integrated applications and unified communications solutions."

*Source: 2010 Frost and Sullivan World Videoconferencing Endpoint Market Report*