Avaya Snaps Up SBC Specialist Sipera

Financial terms of the deal, which was announced Tuesday, were not disclosed. Sipera will become a fully integrated part of Avaya and keep its offices in Richardson, Texas.

According to an Avaya spokesperson, the Sipera team will report into Anthony Bartolo, vice president and general manager of Avaya's UC unit. Avaya channel partners will continue to be able to offer Sipera-branded products in the short term, according to the spokesperson, and Avaya expects Avaya-branded products to be available in the first half of 2012. Sipera's channel partners who aren't already Avaya solution providers will be invited to join Avaya Connect, the spokesperson added.

Alan Baratz, senior vice president and president, Global Communications Solutions, at Avaya, said adding Sipera to Avaya's UC and CC suites will mean simplified deployment for customers.

"Sipera's broad portfolio of open, enterprise-focused security technologies strongly align with our own Avaya Aura unified communications architecture," Baratz said in a statement.

Sipera has been a partner of Avaya's for years and is a Platinum member of Avaya DevConnect, the program Avaya has in place to develop, market and sell third-party products that integrate well with Avaya's own. Sipera's products are also compatible with the legacy Nortel products that Avaya acquired through its 2009 acquisition of Nortel's former enterprise unit.

"Integration of our solutions with Avaya Aura is a significant milestone in the evolution of unified communications," said Jim Timmer, COO of Sipera, in a statement. "With the combined offerings, users enjoy rich, responsive communication experience that spans multiple channels, applications, devices and networks."

SBCs have become a hot technology thanks to the growth of UC and the continued adoption of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based communications by enterprises. According to Infonetics Research, enterprise SBC revenue grew 70 percent in 2010, and will grow five-fold between 2010 and 2015. Several companies, including Avaya competitor Siemens Enterprise Communications, have brought development of SBC technology in-house, while Acme Packet and Cisco continue to lead the SBC market, together accounting for more than half of worldwide SBC sales last year.

Avaya has used Acme Packet products for SBC for some time, and a spokesperson told CRN that relationship will not end. Avaya will continue to rely on Acme Packet for carrier-class and large enterprise SBC needs, the spokesperson said.