Avaya Advances Real-time Business Communications; Launches Next-Generation Customer Service and Collaboration Applications

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-- AvayaAvaya Aura™ Communications Platform Powers New Applications and Redefines the Economics of Businesses Communications and Collaboration
Dubai, UAE. - AvayaAvaya, a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, today announced a suite of new and enhanced product innovations and services based on AvayaAvaya Aura™ that redefine the economics and effectiveness of real-time, multi-media enterprise communications. The company also introduced its next generation of contact center solutions to meet the real-time demands of a rapidly evolving customer service environment.

The new Avaya Aura tools and services announced today make it possible to simultaneously accelerate decision-making and achieve meaningful financial impact, while moving enterprises towards a more people-centric approach to collaboration. The next generation contact center solutions--which include innovations in multimedia work assignment, workforce optimization and outbound self-service--help improve customer experiences. A central component of these contact center introductions is Avaya Aura Contact Center, which introduces a unique approach to enhancing customer satisfaction and agent productivity through Experience Management.

"In today's evolving business communications environment, companies demand the right technology approach to ensure superior experiences for employees and the customers they serve," said Kevin Kennedy, president and CEO of AvayaAvaya. "AvayaAvaya's latest series of innovations accomplishes this through faster, more efficient orchestration of people and information. Making smart business decisions quickly can be difficult, but connecting the right people to solve issues in real-time should be both simple and cost-effective."

New and enhanced capabilities in AvayaAvaya's suite of Contact Center and Unified Communications (UC) applications drive improvement in the quality of customer service and employee collaboration for mid- to large-sized businesses while lowering the total cost of ownership. In addition, Avaya Aura 6.0 now features increased security, scalability and flexibility, plus common management and expanded use of virtualization across the entire platform. Avaya Aura can save large enterprises approximately 23 percent in capital expenditures and another 33 percent in operating expenditures, according to a recent survey conducted by AvayaAvaya. Mid-sized enterprises typically save even more[1].

· AvayaAvaya Agile Communications Environment (ACE) facilitates the development of communications-enabled business applications to speed business workflow. AvayaAvaya ACE 2.2 includes Event Response Manager, a new packaged application that reduces downtime and increases efficiency by automatically notifying the right people with the right skills to respond to and manage unexpected events, such as inventory shortages, security breaches, etc. With AvayaAvaya ACE, enterprises can communications-enable their business applications up to 80% faster than by using traditional methods.

· Avaya Aura Messaging provides rich multimedia messaging with choices for accessing and storing messages. The first release of this Linux-based solution is specifically designed to enable Octel users to easily migrate to the new platform by maintaining the familiar user interface while delivering new features such as speech-to-text and speech-based virtual assistants.

· Avaya Aura Presence Services offers an open standards-based, native instant messaging solution with federated presence and IM across Microsoft, IBM, AvayaAvaya one-X® Communicator and AvayaAvaya one-X Agent and AvayaAvaya 9600 SIP phones.

· Avaya Aura Session Manager 6.0 now scales to over 100,000 users, including 50,000 SIP phones and video capable endpoints.

· Avaya Aura Session Border Controller (SBC) allows enterprises to securely connect real time, SIP-based unified communications to the rapidly growing number of IP-based devices, smart phones and applications both within and external to a company. The SBC protects a customer's network and connected devices from attacks such as denial of service, spoofing attacks, "man in the middle," or access through unused VoIP ports.

· Avaya Aura System Manager 6.0 provides for a common management system across Avaya Aura that now extends to Presence Services, Conferencing and Messaging, making it easier to administer and manage Avaya Aura components from one central location.

· Avaya Aura System Platform 6.0, AvayaAvaya's virtualization technology, now encompasses all elements of the Avaya Aura architecture and applications portfolio, eliminating up to 80 percent of hardware compared to competitive solutions.

· AvayaAvaya 9600 family of desk phones now offer larger, color touch screen displays at a lower price point, function on lower power and provide a low total cost of ownership. A new value-priced SIP model, the AvayaAvaya 1603SW-I, provides a low-cost option for small- to large sized businesses.

The company also issues a new release of AvayaAvaya Communications Server 1000 (CS1000), which increases scalability, enhances SIP support and connectivity. The continued investment in AvayaAvaya CS1000 provides installed customers with a smooth migration path into Avaya Aura and supports many of the applications announced today.

Avaya Aura has already enabled more than 400 enterprises to improve business efficiency and increase responsiveness since its introduction last year. Anchored by the open standards, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based, Avaya Aura Session Manager, Avaya Aura instantly reduces complexity and provides the foundation for rich, contextual applications.

AvayaAvaya Aura™ Contact Center

Customer experiences are critical, yet most businesses are not aware of the disconnect they have with their own customers. In fact, a study by Webtorials shows that 80% of companies believe they provide a good or superior customer experience, while only 20% of consumers agree. With 82% of consumers saying their experience with the contact center is 'important' or 'very important' in their opinion about a company's image, companies cannot afford this disconnect.[2]

AvayaAvaya Aura™ Contact Center, is a new multimedia work assignment application for mid-size contact centers that connects customers and their information to the right agent or expert via any communications mode (i.e. voice, video, e-mail, web chat). It uses the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based collaborative session model of Avaya™ Aura to enhance the efficiency and quality of customer service. Avaya Aura Contact Center complements the large enterprise solutions of Avaya Aura Call Center Elite, and will serve as its multimedia extension.

Avaya Aura Contact Center's collaborative capabilities help a business understand the full context of a customer interaction - including the customer's mode of communications, history and needs. The solution also introduces collaborative sessions into customer care, which eliminates the process of having customers repeat information to several people as they progress through a call. By bringing the customer, agent and expert together in a single session to share information and complete transactions in real time, a company can reduce customer frustrations and increase first-contact resolutions.

New Solutions Deliver End-to-End Experience Management

Businesses using AvayaAvaya technology report an average customer service ratings increase of 28% after deploying AvayaAvaya Contact Center Solutions[3]. Today's introductions aim to continue this trend by offering a foundation for end-to-end Experience Management. Experience Management uses open communications to lets businesses orchestrate people and information, learn customer data, bring full context to sessions, and immerse agents and customers in a collaborative session

In addition to Avaya Aura Contact Center, other new solutions unveiled today include:

· Avaya Aura™ Workforce Optimization (WFO): AvayaAvaya introduces its first integrated offer in workforce optimization, enabling companies to make more informed decisions about customer service. WFO includes recording and quality monitoring capabilities that let supervisors see the full scope of agent interactions. Insight gained through quality monitoring has been forecast to reduce agent training time by 30%[4]. The solution also includes a workforce management application that collects information and historical trends from a contact center, such as call volumes for a given time, to determine ideal staffing requirements, thus reducing excess costs and accelerating return on investment. More effective workforce scheduling can lead to a 20% cost-reduction[5].

· AvayaAvaya Proactive Outreach Manager: Designed to work with AvayaAvaya Voice Portal to reach out to customers via self-service, Proactive Outreach Manager now places all multimedia interactions on a single platform. This enables businesses to go beyond outbound calling to more effectively use outbound notification campaigns incorporating several modes of communications. Hotels, for example, can use it to send room availability notices and promotions, while manufacturers can more effectively provide real-time updates on shipments.

Other contact center introductions include a new version of AvayaAvaya IQ 5.1, a powerful reporting and analytics solution, and Avaya Aura Call Center Elite 6.0, AvayaAvaya's call routing software for large enterprises.

More than 200 individual beta trials and or full implementations of AvayaAvaya solutions announced today are already underway. All AvayaAvaya solutions announced today are available now or will be available during the third quarter of 2010 through AvayaAvaya or authorized AvayaAvaya Connect Channel Partners.

This wide range of new and enhanced enterprise communications products and applications announced today are supported by AvayaAvaya Advisory Services, which provide consulting expertise for multi-vendor communications infrastructures and AvayaAvaya's broad ecosystem of developer and channel partners. New to the AvayaAvaya Advisory Services is a Self-Funded Roadmap to help companies transform cost savings from prior technology deployments into process improvements to fund future technology investments.

Avaya Aura applications and architecture are complemented by AvayaAvaya's recently announced data networking solutions and network management products, which offer up to 50 percent less total cost of ownership (TCO) than the leading competitor, and are specifically built to handle the demands of real-time communications. Designed from the ground up to optimize video, mobile and voice interactions, AvayaAvaya's fit-for-purpose, enterprise communications and data solutions deliver peak performance, efficiency and resiliency with a smaller footprint that reduces the cost and energy requirements of converging communications networks.

JOIN AVAYA FOR THE LAUNCH: AvayaAvaya will host a 1-hour webcast discussing today's announcements and supporting information for customers, channel partners, media, analysts and those interested. Start times for the webcast are: 1:00 pm EDT for North America; 2:30 EDT for Caribbean, Latin and South America; and 5:00 am EDT, Wednesday, July 21 for Europe, Middle East and Africa. To register for the webcast or watch the replay in North America, please visit: http://bit.ly/9vFKxi

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About Avaya
AvayaAvaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, data solutions, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on AvayaAvaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.

© Press Release 2010