Avaya, Extreme form strategic alliance

Hoping to spur voice and data convergence, Avaya Networks and Extreme Networks today announced they have formed a strategic alliance and financial partnership to develop and promote Avaya’s IP telephony technology over Extreme’s enterprise data infrastructure.

The two companies have been working with one another for two years on interoperability between their products when selling to the same customers, but today’s announcement takes that relationship several steps further, officials with both companies said. In addition to setting up joint research and development facilities and sharing marketing of the converged platform, Avaya will become the single point of contact for the companies’ voice/data hybrid network sales and support.

"Together we plan to drive industry standards and new levels of interoperability," said Gordon Stitt, president and CEO of Extreme Networks. "This agreement allows us to extend our global reach and penetration into the enterprise."

Fiscally, the companies have agreed to share marketing and research costs for related product lines, but Avaya has also received a warrant to purchase as many as 2.6 million shares of Extreme common stock at a price of a cent a share. The partnership could turn into a substantial investment in data infrastructure for Avaya--itself a spin-off of Lucent Technologies.

Mike Thurk, Avaya’s group vice president for enterprise communications, said that convergence is happening globally at a rapid clip, but its fastest pace is here in the U.S. Despite the ramp up in IP Telephony, many enterprises still have concerns about the merging of two disparate infrastructures into one converged network. Avaya and Extreme’s partnership, while intended to improve the quality of and interoperability between their products, will have the added benefit of assuring the business community there will be consistency among the two technologies.

"By Avaya providing support from a single point of contact, it makes the customer more comfortable," Stitt said. "It also makes things simpler, insuring it’s easier and quicker for a customer to implement."