The mid-sized XT4300 room system will be a stronger channel play than most of the Scopia lineup.

Avaya Desktop Media Station

Avaya has beefed up its Engagement Solution portfolio with enhancements to the Scopia Videoconferencing platform, its flagship Scopia XT7100 room video conferencing system and the introduction of the new H175 Video Collaboration Station and E159/E169 Media Stations.

“Demand has shifted slightly from high-end room systems to more of a desktop tablet video conferencing environment,” said Ian Gould, Avaya UC Specialist. “We have seen huge increases in the number of mobile licenses we sell.” These announcements strengthen both the room systems and the mobile environment.

The Scopia line was acquired by Avaya in 2012 as part of its purchase of Radvision. Since then the high-quality video brand has been sold mainly to large enterprises, and mainly direct by Avaya, competing with top-end Cisco and Polycom offerings. However, a new room system, the Scopia XT4300, is a stronger channel product because while it has many of the high-end features for high-definition videoconferencing, it is aimed at small to midsized conference rooms, and is considerably less expensive.

“The XT4300 room system is very affordable, but is high quality,” Gould said. “Many products on the market don’t give great quality, and that really affects productivity. This has an incredibly advanced platform and is also very simple to use, to provide an excellent user experience.” It supports up to 1080P video resolution.

The enhanced Avaya Scopia XT7100 room video conferencing system, the flagship of the line, now supports H.265 video coding at video quality up to 1080P at 60fps.

“The XT7100 is our first to market with this H.265 high efficiency video coding,” Gould said. “It can actually reduce the bandwidth 50 per cent compared to current market solutions [the H.264].” The XT7100 is the second H.265 endpoint in the market, after the Cisco Sx80, but it is approximately half the price of the competitor product.

Enhancements to the Scopia Videoconferencing Platform and the introduction of the new H175 Video Collaboration Station and E159/E169 Media Stations support flexible video connectivity which now let the Scopia video conferencing systems allow users to directly share content wirelessly from their laptops.

“This means that connecting cables are no longer needed, so you have a seamless handoff from mobile to room systems, and this is something new.” Gould said. “It means you can start a video conference on a smartphone, walk up to a room-based system and wirelessly display it on that system seamlessly.”

The E159/E169 Media Stations provide access to the most often used call-handling features, and can act as standalone SIP desktop devices while also supporting and charging Apple iPhones and iPads (running iOS 6.0 or later) and Samsung Galaxy smart phones and tablets running Android KitKat and JellyBean OS versions.

All of these new systems will work with existing Scopia equipment.

“They won’t get some of the new codexes, but they completely interoperate,” Gould said. “This expands our platform so we can go from software applications all the way up to high-end systems and telepresence suites.”

Finally, the Avaya H175 Video Collaboration Station extends the reach of Avaya cloud offers, including AvayaLive Video. It features a high definition video camera, a seven inch HD touchscreen display, wifi and Bluetooth connectivity, access to Outlook calendar, contacts, and presence status of colleagues, cordless handset and speakerphone with HD voice.

“Our cloud business is still relatively small but we have seen a huge amount of traction in the last few months through partners,” Gould said.