Avaya acquires Swedish vendor Konftel in an effort to expand the audio capabilities of its unified communications and collaboration solutions.
Avaya
is bulking up its audio collaboration capabilities with the $15 million
acquisition of Swedish company Konftel.
Through
the deal announced Jan. 4, Avaya gains Konftel's portfolio of conferencing
solutions, in particular its OmniSound technology, which optimizes the audio in
conferencing sessions. Avaya executives said they plan to bring Konftel's
technology, including OmniSound, into their Avaya
Flare Experience UC (unified communications) initiative unveiled in
September 2010.
"The
acquisition of Konftel represents a logical step in Avaya's drive to lead in
business collaboration," Alan Baratz, senior vice president and president
for Avaya's Global Communications Solutions business, said in a statement. "Konftel's
audio conferencing product portfolio and its OmniSound technology will be key
elements of our continued innovation in audio and video solutions, including
our recently announced Avaya Flare Experience."
Konftel's
OmniSound conference phones offer special speakers for high-quality sound,
microphones that direct sound, other microphones that can expand the reach of
the phones and equalizers for controlling the sound settings. In addition,
among the standards that OmniSound works with is SIP (Session Initiation
Protocol), which is also the key standard used by Avaya in its UC and
collaboration technologies, including Flare Experience.
Konftel
will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya.
The
Konftel acquisition is the latest move by Avaya to build up its unified
communications and collaboration capabilities. The company in 2009 rolled out
its SIP-based Aura 6.0 UC platform, and has been building upon it since. Later
that year, Avaya bought bankrupt Nortel Networks' enterprise business, greatly
expanding its VOIP (voice over IP) capabilities. Officials worked quickly to
take advantage of the Nortel technologies, launching networking and UC products
in April 2010 and new and enhanced UC and contact center solutions in July
2010.
With
Flare Experience, Avaya expanded its reach into the video collaboration space,
bringing it into closer competition with Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and
other vendors. Included in the offering is Avaya's Collaboration Server, which
puts all of the Aura 6.0 core functions onto a single server, giving businesses
easier access to video conferencing solutions and the company's Desktop Video
Device, an Android-based touch-screen communications tablet similar to Cisco's
Cius device.
Avaya
officials said the rollout of the Flare Experience was a significant step
forward for the company.
"We're
trying to reinvent how we do communications today," Lawrence Byrd,
director of UC architecture at Avaya, told eWEEK at the time of the Flare
Experience's unveiling.
Email
Print
