Avaya Expands Virtualization Capabilities to Drive the Collaborative Cloud

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Aug 27, 2012) -  VMWORLD 2012

• Avaya highlights Collaborative Cloud solutions at VMworld® Booth #1823, including the new Avaya Collaboration Pods
  
  
• Integrates VXLAN with Avaya VENA Fabric Connect for scaling, simplicity, and performance improvements
  
  
• Distributed Top-of-Rack (ToR) solution revolutionizes effectiveness of ToR networking; optimizes performance of next-generation applications
  
  

Avaya, a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions and services, today announced new virtualization solutions and enhancements to its portfolio that build on the Avaya Collaborative Cloud™, the company's strategic framework for public, private and hybrid cloud solutions.

Among the enhancements on display at VMworld 2012 is integrated support for VXLAN with Avaya VENA Fabric Connect, a foundational component of Avaya VENA that is based on the Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) standard. Fabric Connect makes network deployments more efficient and less prone to error by enabling changes only at the edge of the network, rather than on every device and every link. While VXLAN can help businesses maximize the effectiveness of their server virtualization activities, integration with Avaya's Fabric Connect will deliver scaling, simplification, and performance improvements compared to deploying VXLAN in traditional networks. The carrier-class attributes of Fabric Connect will also help enterprises scale their VXLAN deployments in a dynamic data center environment.

Avaya Fabric Connect solutions are already delivering better time-to-service, reduced downtime, and enhanced operational efficiency to customers. Fabric Connect is unique amongst next-generation network technologies in offering an end-to-end, network-wide solution that goes well beyond basic multi-pathing to deliver transparent Layer 2 connectivity, flexible Layer 3 interconnectivity, and simple, scalable multicast support.

Avaya Fabric Connect incorporates multiple technologies, products, and deployment options that allow it to easily adapt to a wide variety of real-world networking challenges. An example of this agility is the Avaya VENA Distributed ToR (dToR) solution, which Avaya is delivering today on the Avaya Virtual Services Platform (VSP) 7000. Avaya dToR creates a faster, flatter virtual backplane by interconnecting multiple Avaya VSP 7000 switches. This can result in as much as 25 times less latency than with traditional networks¹ -- crucial for next-generation application performance. Avaya dToR enables solutions that seamlessly scale to hundreds of nodes, supporting thousands of virtual machines as a single autonomic, high-performance network.

Avaya Collaborative Cloud solutions, including a new portfolio of cloud-ready, turnkey solutions announced separately today, codenamed Avaya Collaboration Pods, will be on display in Avaya Booth #1823 at VMWorld 2012 from August 26-30. Avaya will also demonstrate a broad range of virtualized, cloud-based solutions, including Avaya Customer Experience Management applications, AvayaLive Engage immersive web collaboration and Hosted Avaya Notification Solution, as well as interoperability with VXLAN on the new Avaya Collaboration Pods.

Quotes
"Compute virtualization delivers undoubted operational efficiencies, however the very nature of modern, composite-architecture applications is driving east-west traffic higher and multi-hop latency is impacting ultimate productivity. Avaya is addressing this challenge with the Distributed Top-of-Rack solution for their Virtual Services Platform 7000, creating a low-latency, application-optimized interconnect that seamlessly scales to support hundreds of nodes and thousands of virtual machines, all as a single autonomic, high-performance network."
-- Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst, ZK Research

"Cobalt is focused on delivering outstanding service to customers of our secure and hardened co-location and disaster recovery services. Our Avaya-based network with Shortest Path Bridging technology lets us be more responsive to customer demands -- we can quickly and simply turn up and make changes to services, while keeping operational costs low and our engineering department efficient. SPB enables us to securely isolate different customers and support both L2 and L3 services, making it a perfect fit for our hosted business model. And it helps make our network very reliable, allowing us to guarantee 24x7 network availability for our customers."
-- Mike Ballard, CEO, Cobalt Data Centers

 "As a long-term customer, ProMedica gets opportunities to preview some of Avaya's pioneering new developments, including the new Distributed Top-of-Rack capability. The VSP 7000 platform is class-leading in its own right, and the latency savings offered by the Distributed ToR solution promise to make this a very powerful tool in optimizing the performance and high availability of our 24x365 healthcare systems."
-- Bruce Meyer, technical coordinator (voice and data), ProMedica

Additional Resources

• Learn more about the Avaya VSP 7000 and Avaya Collaborative Cloud
• Read about Avaya VENA Distributed Top-of-Rack, Avaya VENA Fabric Connect and integrating VXLAN with Avaya VENA Fabric Connect
• Visit Avaya's VMworld 2012 microsite

Tags
Avaya, VENA, VSP 7000, VXLAN, SPB, VMworld, distributed, top-of-rack, switches, virtualization, collaboration, cloud

About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should" or "will" or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya's filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

¹ According to findings by Avaya, 2012

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