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Radvision's management team is intact, Avaya's McCullen said, and former Radvision CEO Boaz Raviv is now vice president and global head, Avaya Video Portfolio, Radvision, an Avaya company.
Both Radvision's technical business unit, which is its original core of engineers, and its video business unit, which includes the engineering and personnel Radvision acquired with assets from Aethra in 2010, have been preserved.
The Radvision unit reports up to Jim Chirico, Avaya executive vice president, business operations, who is based at Avaya's office in Research Triangle Park, N.C.
Avaya has a detailed roadmap for the Radvision integration, according to McCullen, who shared some details of the dates and milestones with CRN.
As of the acquisition's closing, for example, Avaya and Radvision can offer interoperability between Radvision Scopia, Avaya Aura, Avaya Flare Experience, Avaya 1000 series and one-X communicator products, with integration for Avaya IP Office coming soon. Avaya non-video clients will also be able to meet on Radvision bridges, Avaya said.
Next steps will include tying the existing Radvision and Avaya hardware and software MCUs together as the two companies integrate their infrastructure. Within a month, Avaya expects to be able to offer Radvision Scopia video on Avaya Aura Communication Manager 5.2.1, and within three months, it expects to be able to extend Scopia to Avaya's SME and midmarket products, including IP Office, its flagship offering for customers with fewer than 1,000 users. Even broader interoperability, to products such as Avaya's session border controller AE and other aspects of Aura, is expected within 120 days.
Avaya, which is preparing for a much-delayed IPO and is also wrestling with ongoing executive turnover, is also beginning to train its own sales force on the Radvision portfolio, and it has already rolled out 4,000 of Radvision's Scopia desktop clients to its global sales force, McCullen said.
Radvision will go down as Avaya's most significant acquisition since it bought Nortel's former enterprise unit in 2009 and became the global leader in unified communications market share, as well as added a data networking portfolio. It's seen as a strong move for Radvision, whose video products are admired but has struggled in recent years following the loss of a lucrative OEM agreement with Cisco, which bought Tandberg for $3.3 billion in 2010.
Radvision also brings to Avaya a number of hidden assets, including a suite of voice and video developer tools called BEEHD that some partners say will fit nicely in Avaya DevConnect, Avaya's program for third-party app development.
Before the acquisition, Avaya relied largely on third-party OEM or strategic video partnerships, but now has an in-house video option to compete directly with Cisco, Polycom, LifeSize and other enterprise videoconferencing vendors. Avaya had partner agreements in place with both Polycom and LifeSize and told CRN in a previous interview that it will phase out those partnerships over time.
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