VMWORLD 2012, SAN FRANCISCO (August 28, 2012) – Avaya today announced a new portfolio of cloud-ready, turnkey solutions to help customers accelerate deployments of Avaya Collaborative Cloud™ solutions. The new portfolio, codenamed Avaya Collaboration Pods, will leverage key components from Avaya, EMC and VMware to simplify and streamline the installation and ongoing operations of real-time communications and collaboration environments.

The Avaya Collaborative Cloud is an innovative framework that enables businesses, organisations and partners to use, build, deliver and enhance communication and collaboration solutions in the cloud.

Based on solutions from Avaya, EMC and VMware, the Avaya Collaboration Pods will deliver virtualised storage, computing and networking that are finely tuned for the unique performance requirements of collaboration and other real-time applications such as VDI. The solutions will include storage arrays from EMC, VMware vCenter™ and VMware View® from VMware, and networking, management, communications applications and integration from Avaya. They will also feature fully-integrated management, orchestration and technical support, enabling enterprises to use a common interface to manage all of the pod components—from the application to the network devices.

Avaya Collaboration Pods will be available in several packaged configurations to support a range of business needs. Each package will also include the Avaya Virtual Services Platform (VSP) 7000, an energy and space-efficient top-of-rack Ethernet switching platform built to support fabric-based virtualised services and lossless environments. A series of networking enhancements for the VSP 7000, announced separately today, will deliver new levels of performance for data center applications and reduce deployment time for new cloud-based applications.

Avaya Collaboration Pods will also enable faster time to revenue for smaller cloud providers that want to streamline delivery of high-value Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Communications as a Service (CaaS).

Quotes
“EMC develops industry-leading storage, data analytics, backup and security solutions that enable customers to build, maintain and manage virtual and cloud applications. By embedding EMC’s management and storage arrays in a tightly integrated portfolio of solutions, Avaya is providing enterprise customers with simple and easy-to-deploy business communications solutions no longer requiring separate set up and configuration of their SANs to store, manage, protect and analyze the valuable information found in communications, collaboration and VDI sessions.”
-Rick Froehlich, senior vice president, OEM, EMC Corporation

“Organizations of all sizes are looking to reduce complexity in their IT environments and take advantage of advanced communications and collaboration technologies. Turnkey solutions such as Avaya Collaboration Pods and VMware cloud infrastructure and management solutions help address this market need. These solutions can help enterprises quickly and easily deploy virtualized application to reduce cost and complexity.”
-Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware

“Avaya’s Virtual Services Platform 7000 is likely to be a strategic component in Leeds Metropolitan University's plans for next-generation networking solutions. We’ve already delivered impressive results utilizing other products within the Avaya Networking portfolio, and the ability for the VSP 7000 to fully integrate into our network fabric promises to make it a powerful addition.”
-Stephen Keating, communications consultant, Leeds Metropolitan University