Avaya Acquires Key Contact Center and Cloud OEM PartnerAvaya Acquires Key Contact Center and Cloud OEM Partner

ITNavigator brings cloud and contact center management capabilities, with social and analytics functions acquired as well.

Avaya announced today that it will acquire some of the operations of Israel-based ITNavigator, adding it as a wholly-owned subsidiary. The company is headquartered in the tech-hub of Israel, Petah Tikva, also home to Audiocodes and Tadiran Telecom, as well as a location for tech giants such as Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Intel and Oracle. (Several of ITNavigator's executives previously held management positions at IBM.) ITNavigator's principal investor was a privately-held investment firm, Global Horizon Holding; financial details of the transaction are not being released. The Israeli press reports ITNavigator had a total of 45 employees, while not specifying the number moving to Avaya.

ITNavigator was founded in 2001 and has been associated with Avaya for much of its history. Initially it worked as a system integration partner, installing some of Israel's largest contact centers with Avaya technology. The company also developed software products, the first of which was NAV360. As an Avaya DevConnect partner, ITNavigator used NAV360 to integrate the management of multiple Avaya and third-party solutions (e.g., Nortel, Verint, Genesys, NICE and various CRM solutions).

After Avaya's acquisition of Nortel, the value of NAV360 as a platform to bring together the legacy Nortel and Avaya components of the contact center portfolio became clear. Avaya began white-labeling the ITNavigator solution as Avaya Contact Center Control Manager (ACCCM) in 2010. The slides reproduced below have been used by Avaya to describe the benefits of ACCCM: replacing the need for multiple, in some cases command-level, interfaces with a single web-based tool. As of September 2013, the company reported that 1,300 customers have deployed the solution.

As Avaya began planning its delivery of cloud-based applications, there was a need for tools to simplify administration for both service providers and end customers. ITNavigator's deep domain knowledge of not only the contact center portfolio but Avaya Aura made them a perfect partner choice. The Avaya Control Manager referred to in the company's Collaborative Cloud announcement at Enterprise Connect 2013 was developed with ITNavigator. ITNavigator has been working on additional software solutions, in the areas of social media management and analytics, which have also been acquired as part of today's deal.

While a relatively small acquisition, the purchase of ITNavigator is also a very strategic one. It lets Avaya bring in-house some software components that have become increasingly important to the vendor's strategy: expanding into the cloud and maintaining its leadership in the contact center market. The social media gateway and analytics products are the cherry on top.

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