MENA region sees increase in demand for advanced business class IP telephony

Following the partnership with Avaya in the US, NETGEAR, a worldwide provider of technologically advanced, branded networking products, has expressed its intention to support the communication vendor's advanced business-class internet telephony solution targeting the SMB market in the Middle East.

The company has also participated at the recently concluded MENA Business Partner Conference 2008, an event organised by Avaya, which introduced the 'Avaya Quick Edition' to more than 300 Avaya authorized business partners from the MENA region.

Avaya Quick Edition is an innovative peer-to-peer phone system for locations with 40 users or less.

According to recent statistics, the annual shipment for IP phones reached the 10 million unit mark in 2006, and the global market for IP telephony shows a promising future with expectations of further growth up to 164 million units by 2010 and $15bn worth of IT services related to IP telephony migration within the next five years.

Reflecting the international scenario in IP technologies adoption, Avaya's survey, which was administered during a recent 14-city road show in the region, further revealed that 71% of the 1,000 decision makers-respondents are ready to deploy IP telephony solutions.

Khalid Khan, SME Channel Manager - MENA, Avaya said:

"IP telephony is steadily gaining popularity within the ever-growing SMB sector as the technology promotes efficiency and professional interaction with customers and callers while holding down administrative and financial costs. Through the convergence of our intelligent communications applications with NETGEAR's experience in business-class networking, regional customers can benefit from an end-to-end solution and an effective communication tool, which facilitates operational efficiency".

Avaya Quick Edition is an IP telephony solution with system intelligence built into each Quick Edition IP phone.

It is a professional phone system tailored to the needs of small businesses or branches of large enterprises supporting the most commonly used telephony applications including voicemail, conferencing and auto-attendant.

All the intelligence is built into the phones themselves, simplifying set-up and ongoing management.

"Peer-to-peer" technology (in which all the phones connect into each other rather than into a central PBX server) eliminates the single point of failure of traditional systems and simplifies set up for quick and easy installation. Further, each Quick Edition phone backs up the others' features, so if one phone fails the others continue to work.

NETGEAR and Avaya previously announced a partnership to deliver a joint-marketed solution in the US, which features NETGEAR Smart Switches with power over Ethernet (PoE) capability to remotely power Avaya Quick Edition phones and VPN firewalls to enable remote teleworkers.

Providing robust data protection in cases of power interruptions, the PoE switches ensure power continuity with the support of a UPS system, while built-in quality of service capabilities and a virtual local area network (VLAN) maintains good call quality even during times of data traffic congestion.

Companies that have remote workers or small, remote locations will appreciate the Avaya-NETGEAR solutions' teleworker feature, which is enabled by NETGEAR's VPN firewall.

"We have recognised the unique needs of small and medium enterprises for IP telephony solutions, which go beyond providing the functions of a basic phone system. With the success of our partnership with Avaya in the US, we are looking forward to delivering an easy to deploy, cost efficient and reliable IP telephony solution in the Middle East. We are excited to introduce the Avaya Quick Edition Bundle to the region as it provides a unique, innovative and powerful solution for businesses with less than 40 phones," concluded Ahmed Zeidan, Channel Sales Manager, NETGEAR Middle East.

NETGEAR is a platinum-level member of the Avaya Dev Connect program, which is an initiative to develop, market, and sell innovative third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology.

By promoting the development, compliance testing and co-marketing of products that are compatible with standards-based by Avaya technologies, companies are able to capitalize on their network investment while opening opportunities for business development.

The Avaya DevConnect program currently includes thousands of software and hardware developer companies, integrators, service providers and customers from around the world.