Avaya moved to launch a $1 billion IPO last week, inspiring industry experts to call for the IP telephony manufacturer to beef up its investment in product development, reports Robert Mullins at InformationWeek. 

Avaya has successfully rivaled Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) in the IP telephony market, but it could use a boost in the area of unified communications, where it competes with the likes of IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), said Richard Costello, a senior analyst in the Enterprise Communications Infrastructure research unit of IDC.

The Basking Ridge, N.J.-based vendor has been touting its UC solutions as user-friendly and interoperable with other suppliers' offerings, reports Network World's Tim Greene. It recently released a complete desktop UC system, called the Aura UC platform. 

Avaya--which was spun off as a public company from Lucent in 2000 only to become private again in 2007 after being purchased by Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group--is expected to acquire new technologies via acquisitions as well as licensing, partnering and development contracts.

For more:
- see Robert Mullins's article at InformationWeek
- see Tim Greene's article at Network World

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