Avaya Ropes In Polycom Vet To Run Video Practice
Sigrist comes to Avaya from Polycom, where he was most recently senior vice president and general manager for video solutions, and was previously head of the Network Systems unit.
Sigrist is making the move just as Avaya plants a flag in video. Avaay's Flare Experience, announced last week, is a collaboration dashboard designed to run on both desktop and mobile host devices, including Avaya's new Android-based tablet, the Avaya Desktop Video Device.
Avaya also fattened up its video portfolio with a number of new endpoints and services offerings that, for the first time, give the vendor a true end-to-end video and UC offering. At the time of the announcement, Avaya VARs told CRN they saw it as a big step forward for Avaya, especially as UC competition with Cisco, Microsoft, Siemens and a host of other vendors heats up.
It will be up to Sigrist to keep Avaya's video momentum humming and make the video story a compelling one for those VARs that have hitched their wagons to Avaya Aura, the company's virtualized UC platform.
Sigrist will be based in Avaya's Santa Clara, Calif. office, according to a brief statement from the vendor. He's only the latest in a slew of executive changes at Avaya this year.
Polycom confirmed Sigrist's departure earlier this week, though not where he was headed, in the midst of making several new executive appointments itself.
Avaya did not respond to requests by CRN for additional comment Thursday.