Extreme & Avaya offer power-saving IP telephony

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 November 2007 09:00

Business IT - Technology

Extreme Networks and Avaya in the UK have teamed up to develop a 'Go Green' IP telephony product claimed to cut electricity usage by between 50 and 75 percent compared to the current offerings. The Go Green offering is built around Extreme Networks' ExtremeXOS Universal Port Automation technology and Avaya's Power over Ethernet (PoE) driven gigabit ethernet desk phones which power down when not in use.

Extreme Networks' regional director for the UK and Ireland, Paul Phillips, said "Through the automated power down of a block of IP phones in areas of the building not regularly used at night or weekends, companies can save money and do their bit for the environment in one go."

According to Extreme Networks, "Once the edge policies have been created and the power saving criteria chosen, the ExtremeXOS Universal Port Automation powers off the IP handsets outside of these time boundaries, resulting in power savings on both the switch ports and the phones themselves. For a typical company with 200 non-essential phones that are powered down outside of normal office hours by the Go Green solution between 17:00 each evening and restarting at 09:00 each working morning, there can be a 75 percent reduction in costs associated with running network connected IP phones."

The Extreme Networks and Avaya alliance was formed in 2003 to "offer secure and best-of-breed, converged network solutions for enterprises to optimise voice, data and video applications on an easily managed robust infrastructure." The relationship consists of providing jointly developed product and technology solutions as well as Avaya single point of accountability for complete end-to-end networks.