Avaya has announced its next major wave of Unified Communications initiatives they say will further shape the market and change how businesses deliver strategic communications and collaboration tools to workers wherever they are, on any device.
These initiatives are led by the introductions of a Unified Communications product family, as well as the acquisition of enterprise mobility innovator Traverse Networks. (See seperate item this site today)
The new family of Avaya Unified Communications editions include:
- Unified Communications, Essential Edition for office-based users who need advanced IP telephony and messaging support and basic conferencing functionality;
- Unified Communications, Standard Edition for mainstream users who benefit from advanced mobility tools including unified office and mobile communications tools across all major mobile platforms;
- Unified Communications, Advanced Edition for users who gain a competitive advantage by collaborating with large teams using integrated voice and “whiteboard” sessions;
- Unified Communications, Professional Edition for strategic communicators who take advantage of video communications and speech recognition, including high-definition video conferences and voice-driven access to messages and other personal applications.
Today’s business communications systems are diverse, global and fragmented. The Avaya Unified Communications family is based on open industry standards and cross-platform protocols that make it easy and inexpensive to integrate communications tools between disparate networks, applications, devices, and most importantly, user segments.
Avaya say they are the first company to execute a broad, open Unified Communications strategy and as a result, the only company able to integrate the fragmented and diverse standards, protocols and platforms and deliver a truly unified end-user experience for Unified Communications. The four new editions in the Avaya Unified Communications product family will be available in the first half of 2007, and pricing will vary based on deployment and license terms.
“Avaya’s Unified Communications strategy has consistently emphasised streamlined integration of our solutions with existing networks and applications,” said Eileen Rudden, who is the vice president and general manager of Avaya’s recently formed Unified Communications Division. “For instance, our flagship telephony messaging and conferencing products provide integration of communications with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, as well as IBM Lotus Domino, Notes and Sametime, the most popular desktop interfaces. We will ship Microsoft Office Communicator integration next quarter. Likewise we have partnered with industry leaders including Nokia and RIM Blackberry to extend mobile enterprise communications to these familiar personal productivity devices.”