PALO ALTO, Calif., and BASKING RIDGE, N.J. — HP and Avaya announced the delivery of flexible, cost-effective solutions that enable clients to extend advanced business communications into their networks and systems.

As part of a three-year strategic agreement, the companies are adding elements of Avaya’s Unified Communications and Contact Center products to the HP Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) services portfolio for enterprises. This solution set is to be sold and delivered by HP.

“Organisations face constant change and the decisions they make must be flexible enough to meet future needs – such as unification of real-time communication with Web 2.0 and social media applications,” said Gary M. Budzinski, senior vice president and general manager, Technology Services, HP. “With HP and Avaya, clients can increase the agility of their existing communication architectures and realise the aspiration of unified communications for multivendor interoperability and ultimately save organisational costs.”

“HP and Avaya have highly complementary portfolios that deliver extraordinary benefits to customers, especially when combined with HP’s consulting and IT outsourcing expertise,” said Joel Hackney, senior vice president, Global Sales and Marketing, and president, Field Operations & Avaya Government Solutions, Avaya. “The HP and Avaya relationship enables customers to take out costs and transform their business via the strategic application of communications tools and services in the procurement and management model that best suits a company’s objectives.”

HP and Avaya Unified Communication Solutions

· Clients experience a full life cycle of services and support that spans planning, design, implementation, ongoing management and training. HP is offering Avaya Aura™ Unified Communications architecture and applications, Avaya Contact Center applications and Avaya’s range of end-user client applications and endpoints as part of HP UC&C Lifecycle Services.

· Organisations with multivendor environments can outsource the ongoing operations of their Unified Communications applications and infrastructure with the HP Managed Service offering for Avaya Aura™.

· Clients in the healthcare, life sciences and financial services industries will have access to vertical solutions designed specifically to address their unique business requirements.

· HP Networking and Avaya have tested and certified products and solutions targeted to address the needs of enterprise, midsize and small businesses.

“Underwriters Laboratories was able to protect our existing multivendor investments and enable greater interoperability between business and desktop applications,” said Christian Anschuetz, chief information officer of Underwriters Laboratories, a global independent product safety testing and certification organisation. “With HP and Avaya, our organization is making greater use of technologies we have today and increasing the productivity of our workforce through richer, easier-to-use collaboration capabilities.”

These offerings, built on HP’s UC&C consulting services, take a comprehensive approach to enterprise communications from strategy and planning through implementation, design and education.

HP helps clients develop a business case, long-term vision and current gap analysis based on their unique requirements. The result is that clients have a complete life cycle of services to ensure their technology is mapped to deliver organisational value.

Avaya Aura is certified for interoperability with HP Networking products as part of the HP AllianceONE Program. HP also is a Platinum- or Gold-certified Avaya Connect channel partner in countries worldwide as well as a Platinum member of the Avaya DevConnect developer program.

About Avaya

Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.