HP and Avaya target SMEs

Partnership designed to kick-start SME adoption of IP voice and data products

Avaya and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have collaborated to kick-start the adoption of IP voice and data products among SMEs.

The companies will create a common channel, initially in the US, to distribute Avaya's IP Office applications on HP servers. They plan to replicate the offering in Europe later this year.

"The whole idea of the HP Centres of Excellence is to bring solutions to the SME market," said Shaune Parsons, managing director of HP Centre of Excellence ComputerWorld Wales.

"HP has not been too good at this. Centres that are switched on to the idea of convergence probably already have a route to market for this sort of thing. But it is excellent that HP and Avaya are addressing the SME market with a one-stop solution."

David Spiby, Avaya's product strategy and technology management director for SME business systems, said: "One of the key things in this market is that we need to bring together skill sets, both in channels and products.

"This is about HP and Avaya deploying applications, such as customer relationship management [CRM] and Contact Centre. We all sell to SMEs and hope to make a difference there."

HP will adopt Avaya IP Office applications, including Contact Centre software and Microsoft's SME CRM applications. Avaya has certified and recommended HP ProLiant ML310, ML330 and DL320 servers.

"It's an excellent relationship," said Keith Humphreys, analyst at EuroLAN Research. "I did ask whether this would fit into HP's ProCurve networking business, but I'm not sure that it will.

"The more you can demystify contact and call centres the better. Every firm should be a contact centre, especially if it is too small to have a receptionist."

John Toal, managing director of HP distributor OpenPSL, said: "This sounds remarkably sensible. I'm not sure it will take off immediately, but converged distribution channels are something we have been looking at for a while."