Westcon Group Extends Its Avaya UC Portfolio

The Scopia portfolio is intended to provide enterprise-grade unified communications capabilities over a wide variety of networks, including 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi. Products range from high-end telepresence solutions to room-based, desktop and mobile video conferencing products, as well as much of the underlying infrastructure, management tools and developer kits.

"It's a great fit for our portfolio and expertise in unified communications and collaboration," said Westcon Senior Vice President Lynn Murphy. "It's also a perfect fit for what's happening in the market. The way we communicate is constantly evolving. This solution is more than a phone system; it provides session border controllers, instant messaging, voice and Web conferencing, power-over-Ethernet and video. And, as the workforce becomes more distributed than ever, the end user can now start looking at this solution as a collaboration solution strategy rather than looking at it as a piecemeal offering."

[Related: Westcon Extends HP, Microsoft Relationships ]

New solutions being offered by the Tarrytown, N.Y.-based distributor include the Scopia mobile and desktop versions, which accommodate HD videoconferencing, data collaboration with review capabilities, conference call control, moderation, and administration. Westcon will also offer the Scopia Elite Series MCUs and telepresence systems featuring full HD 1080p video, 48 kHz full-band audio and 1080p 60fps PC data sharing.

In addition, Westcon is offering the GoldSeal support program, which is a white-label Level 1 and Level 2 service offering that also includes free end-user training or free reseller training for the life of the contract.

"We're seeing strong growth in the sale of video systems by unified communications resellers," said Steve Bernard, vice president of Westcon North America. "Obviously a lot of the sales are made by audiovisual integrators, but specialized partners are seeing greater uptake of their video portfolios and gaining greater stickiness and customer control. At the same time, they can also drive additional opportunities in terms of optimizing the network to better accommodate latency sensitive video."

PUBLISHED FEB. 4, 2013