Today, Avaya announced it has finalized the acquisition of Radvision (News - Alert), a deal it announced March 15. The $230 million purchase of Radvision – which will operate as an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya under the Radvision brand ­– marries two industry leaders and will enable Avaya to make video communications more accessible to more people in more locations, according to Avaya executives.

During a press conference today about the deal, Avaya leaders spoke of moving video out of the boardroom and bringing it to the masses. They also discussed Avaya’s focus on video ease of use, and the ability to support ad hoc video communications and video in mobile environments.

While there’s already a high level of integration between Avaya Aura, Avaya Flare Experience on the Avaya Desktop Video Device, and Avaya UC 1000 series video endpoints, and Radvision’s SCOPIA endpoints and infrastructure, Avaya executives said deeper levels of integration were expected soon. They added that these solutions can also work in multivendor scenarios and that the company will continue to support users on existing solutions.

Bob Romano (News - Alert), who is now vice president of global marketing at Radvision, an Avaya Company, in an interview at the turn of the year with TMCnet, said, “Overall, 2011 was a big year for Radvision. We successfully expanded our product portfolio to enhance our network solutions with a full line of videoconferencing clients including desktop, room and immersive telepresence systems. But one of our most exciting milestones was being the first company to publicly launch a standards-based enterprise-grade HD videoconferencing application for mobile devices – SCOPIA Mobile v3.

“Mobile video is really heating up, and our mobile app is the most feature-rich in the market,” he added. “SCOPIA Mobile is unique because it is fully interoperable with standards-based videoconferencing, allowing voice, video and data collaboration with telepresence and room systems. It also has unique capabilities like our slider feature, which allows each user to review previously presented content without interrupting the call. And it is simple to use with one-touch click-to-join capabilities, full moderation capabilities, and great use of Apple’s (News - Alert) Multi-touch platform.”

And this spring at the Avaya Tech on Tap event, which was co-located with TMC’s (News - Alert) ITEXPO, Mark Kolar, who has been involved with the universal video collaboration effort at Avaya, said that a lot of people have been confused about why Avaya is getting into video, given companies like Polycom (News - Alert) are already established players in this space. But, Kolar noted, things are changing so fast, given the consumerization of devices and proliferation of video, that it makes perfect sense for Avaya to extend its unified communications strategy to include video. In the past, he added, video was a place to go, and required special-purpose tools and technologies; now, of course, video is moving to the devices and apps that people use daily.

“Video is becoming less and less about the device, about the room,” he said. Now “it’s becoming a window that we just happen to have on the device.”