HP, Avaya Partner On Unified CommunicationsHP, Avaya Partner On Unified Communications

A unified communications partnership has brought Hewlett-Packard and Avaya together to target enterprise business communications, with each firm bringing its respective strengths to the alliance.

Announced Tuesday, the three-year partnership calls for Avaya's UC solutions to be sold and delivered by HP, which has been rapidly beefing up its enterprise communications portfolio. HP recently acquired 3Com and the deal with Avaya adds Nortel Networks' enterprise solutions into the mix. Avaya acquired key pieces of Nortel in bankruptcy proceedings.

The HP-Avaya partnership involves Avaya's UC and Contact Center products to be added to HP's UC and Collaboration (UC&C) services.

Building also on HP's recent partnership with Alcatel-Lucent, HP is quickly presenting a powerful and united front to compete with Cisco in enterprise and data center computing.

"With HP and Avaya, clients can increase the agility of their existing communication architectures and realize the aspiration of unified communications for multivendor interoperability and ultimately save organizational costs," said HP's Gary Budzinski in a statement, who noted that real-time communication often requires Web 2.0 and social media applications. Budzinski is senior VP and general manager of HP's technology services unit.

HP and Avaya noted that they have tested and certified products useful across a broad range from small business to enterprise applications. HP offers Avaya Aura Unified Communications architecture and applications as well as Avaya Contact Center apps. Some key applications are part of HP's UC&C Lifecycle Services and, utilizing HP's UC&C consulting services, users can follow a comprehensive approach to enterprise communications from "strategy and planning through implementation, design, and education," the firms said.

"HP and Avaya have highly complementary portfolios," said Joel Hackney, Avaya's senior VP and president of global field operations. "The HP and Avaya relationship enables customers to take out costs and transform their business via the strategic application of communications tools and services."