As part of a three-year strategic agreement, HP will sell and deliver a set of Avaya solutions: Avaya Aura Unified Communications and Contact Center applications as part of HP Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC&C) Lifecycle Services; Outsourced unified communications with HP’s Managed Service offering for Avaya Aura; Vertical applications for healthcare, life sciences, and financial services; and HP Networking and Avaya tested and certified products and solutions. Leverage HP sales and technical account relationships to help reduce your time to quota retirement and accelerate your customers’ transformation to Avaya Aura.

With the IP Office Version 5.0 Maintenance Release (R5 MT), IP Office now supports  1600-I phones. These phones are available at the same price as the previous 1600 phones, however, they offer significant advantages, including a higher quality display for better clarity, and easy-to-readwhite backlight, that is consistent with the 1400 and 9600 phones. Customers currently using 1600 sets can continue to growwith the 1600-I phones (requires R5 MT). If your customer is currently running version 4.2, the upgrade to IP Office R5 is available at no additional cost.

Avaya first communicated the Integration Roadmap in January 2010. Now, we continue that momentum releasing the next level of detail with the AvayaIntegration Roadmap 2.0. Look for new resources that will help you guide your customers through migration paths for  Unified Communications, Contact Center, and Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) solutions.

In May 2010 Avaya announced the End of Sale (EoS) of the 5610 and 5621 telephones, effective August 7th 2010. Due to popular demand Avaya has secured additional stock and is extending the EoS period while supplies last. The revised date for EoS is November 5th 2010. However, this may be revised if demand is higher.

Avaya has already stopped selling selected Proactive Contact components and Proactive Contact Labels. See the End of Sale notices on the Avaya partner portal for information about the migration strategies.

Avaya IQ 5.1 is now generally available! Customers will now get the 3-second refresh rate they've asked for, up to 900 report users and 15,000 agents, new call profile reports and much more!

ARN has opened its 2010 Channel Choice Awards, and voting will run until 16 August 2010. So vote for your favourite distributor and vendor and the winners will be announced at the ARN IT Industry Awards on 16 September 2010.

Distribution Central has launched its Virtual Suggestion Box and we're keen to hear from you, our partners. Send us your suggestions and feedback on how we can improve our systems, tools and services. The DC Virtual Suggestion box is located on the left hand side of our online quoting configurator - log in via Central-ID on any of our business unit website homepages.

CRN magazine has announced the second annual CRN Fast50. Building on the success of last year’s inaugural list, it’s a way to recognise the hard work and entrepreneurial success of Australia’s best and brightest channel partners. The CRN Fast50 entries are open until 17 September 2010.

Partners selling heritage Avaya solutions must satisfy Sales and Design Authorization Requirements outlined our Authorization Policy Guide.  Requirement deadlines vary based on the date the partner was on-boarded.  For partners on-boarded in 2010, the deadline for Sales Authorization was recently extended from May to 1 July 2010.  All partners should meet the Design Authorization requirements by 30 September 2010.

Avaya Dialog Designer 5.0 is being updated to Dialog Designer 5.1, effective 9 August 2010, after which Avaya will no longer sell new Dialog Designer 5.0 software.