Avaya picks up Defence switching work

Tuesday, 15 March 2011 13:29

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The deal, according to a statement issued by Avaya this morning, involves the upgrade of mission-critical networking equipment and associated services, in order to improve the distribution of information within the department and its bases across the nation, while allowing Defence to be ready for new workforce demands such as video applications.

Avaya's local managing director, Rob Wells, said the company had a long-standing relationship with Defence and that its networking solutions were a perfect match for mission-critical operations. 'Avaya solutions deliver the no-compromise resiliency, security and reliability that are table stakes for an organisation like Defence, and do so at a total cost of ownership that is among the lowest in the industry,' he said. 'Defence has a robust network, and Australians don't have to pay over the odds to achieve it.'

The company added Defence's ICT environment had to face demanding communication needs '” including those of military personnel in the field, in addition to the standard requirements of its 90,000 corporate users '” and that therefore its design was 'highly complex'.

In this environment, Avaya will deploy its Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 8000 series products, alongside its ERS 5000 and ERS 4500. These solutions will ensure the Defence will have high-density Ethernet connectivity as well as 'always-on' networking for its critical sites. 'The switching equipment's ability to provide scale and sub-second failover across the entire network allows the utilisation of all of the network resources to their maximum potential,' Avaya said.

The Avaya ERS 8600 device scales up to 240 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 24 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, while enabling LAN connectivity and Wave Division Multiplexing technologies. Avaya said the ERS 8600 would create the basis of a Resilient Terabit Cluster solution. On the other hand, the Avaya ERS 5600 series is a set of switches with Layer 3 routing, equipped with security and unified communications features which make it suitable for wiring closet, data center aggregation and network core applications.

Financial details of the deal and contract terms were not disclosed.

Image credit: Jorge Vicente, royalty free