Westcon welcomes Avaya’s Sipera move
Avaya’s acquisition of Sipera, a provider of Unified Communications security, has been welcomed by long-time Avaya distributor, Westcon.
The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, will add Sipera’s monitoring appliance which works with any SIP-based Avaya product as well as systems from rivals such as Cisco, Siemens and Microsoft’s Lync platform.
Sipera currently has Westcon and Wick Hill as its primary distributors in the UK. Commenting on the acquisition, David Grant, senior VP Europe, Westcon Group says, “For Avaya partners, this means reduced time-to-value for those selling advanced Aura-based solutions. The acquisition will also dramatically lower the OPEX costs for those interested in managing and provisioning secure remote working.”
Details of Sipera future distribution strategy have yet to be disclosed. However, Westcon has been an Avaya global distributor for more than 20 years while Wick Hill currently offers rival telephony solutions from Panasonic and Samsung – making it unlikely that the relationship with Sipera will continue after the deal closes with Avaya.
The Sipera system protects against toll fraud as well as breaches using malformed SIP packets to gain unauthorised access to the data network to potentially steal sensitive information. Avaya has stated it will combine the solution with its with Avaya Aura platform to enhance security for VoIP, SIP trunks, videoconferencing, cloud-based communications, instant messaging, and collaboration tools.
