Avaya Buys Radvision, Broadens Video ReachAvaya Buys Radvision, Broadens Video Reach

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Avaya is buying Radvision, a longtime video over Internet Protocol specialist and more recent innovator in video over wireless networks.

On Wednesday, our sister publication No Jitter published analyst Zeus Kerravala's take on the rumored Radvision acquisition and why it made sense to him. Thursday, the companies made it official. Expected to close in about 90 days, the acquisition values Radvision at $11.85 per share, or about $230 million.

Gary Barnett, senior vice president and general manager for Avaya platforms, boasted of a "compelling opportunity to strengthen our market leading position in unified communications," and particularly Radvision's "ability to plug-and-play nearly every mobile device available, including the Apple iPad." As the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend accelerates in the enterprise, Avaya believes Radvision will help it deliver high-definition video to a broader variety of devices, even over relatively low-bandwidth connections.

"We have a similar vision to enable the power of video collaboration any time, any place, on any device," Radvision CEO Boaz Raviv said.

Avaya said the acquisition will allow it to provide customers with a suite of cost-effective, easy-to-use, high-definition video collaboration products, with support for multiple mobile devices, including iPad and Google Android. Radvision products are already interoperable with the Avaya Aura Unified Communications platform and will be more tightly integrated, unifying H.323 communications networks and SIP-based environments. (SIP is the Session Initiation Protocol used to set up voice and video sessions on IP networks, a standard Avaya backs.)

[ How can you use video effectively? See Training, Network Bandwidth Top Videoconferencing Concerns.]

While integrating more tightly with Avaya platforms, Radvision plans to preserve support for open standards and interoperability with other platforms, including Radvision's recently announced video gateway for Microsoft Lync.

Because Radvision has built video gateways to multiple platforms, "we can bridge to other video islands that exist in the marketplace today," Raviv said.

Nick Francis, vice president for video collaboration at Avaya, promised the video experience delivered "will be a rapid install, not a rip and replace."

Avaya has been seeking to expand the reach of video on other fronts, introducing the Avaya Flare desktop video device, followed by the Flare Communicator for iPad, and Avaya IP Office upgrades to improve support for mobility.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard and facebook.com/thebyard

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