Busy week in the announcements space this week with Avaya and Mitel

Avaya announces 2^nd quarter financial results which has some interesting highlights

·         Sales of products grew 8 percent year over year, led by a 15 percent increase in sales of converged voice applications

·         Avaya added to its Unified Communications portfolio to make it easier for users of Microsoft Corp. products to communicate and collaborate from the application, location and device that works best for them. Avaya Unified Communications Solutions for Microsoft users integrate Avaya's sophisticated telephony, conferencing and messaging applications with Microsoft Office Communicator, Office Outlook, Office SharePoint, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Live Meeting applications and Windows Mobile 5.0 to provide new value for users at the desktop or on a mobile device.

·         Avaya joined the Google Enterprise Professional™ program to develop new capabilities for small businesses around Google's enterprise products. As part on this program, Avaya will develop, market and support offers that integrate Avaya's advanced communications solutions for small businesses with the Google Apps™ Premier Edition, a subscription services solution for email, instant messaging, calendar and Web publishing services.

·         The company made significant additions to its suite of Unified Communications solutions for the IBM Lotus® platform. The solutions represent integration with the most current versions of Lotus solutions in addition to extending Avaya's voice communications deeper into the Lotus collaborative environment.

Mitel Announces US$723 Million Agreement to Acquire Inter-Tel

Once completed, the merger creates a market leader in the US and UK SMB IP communications industry, the fastest growing sector of the IP communications market. The private company will have two trusted, customer focused brands and anticipated revenues of over US$800 million, twice those of Mitel today.

I found out about this yesterday at lunch when I bumped into with Gwilym Funnell General Manager - South Pacific at Mitel