Avaya unveils industry's most affordable Unified Communications solutions

The new Avaya Unified Communications solutions provide essential tools for the way employees work today, with proven, interoperable software, hardware and services from Avaya and its partner ecosystem. The solutions enable employees to become more productive and collaborative wherever they are located, and allow businesses to extend customer service beyond the contact center to include employees in branch and remote locations.

"Avaya is introducing unified communications solutions that solve real-business problems and drive customer loyalty," said Roger El Tawil, channel and marketing director - Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey, Avaya.

"These highly-affordable solutions allow companies to match a business need with a complete solutions set of unified communications services, software and hardware that quickly deliver significant improvements and ROI."

The solutions are focused on role-based communications needs for teleworkers, home agents, enterprise and small business mobile workers, branch office integration, retail stores and branch banking.

The new solutions are:
• Unified Communications Solutions for teleworkers and for mobile workers provide a headquarters communication experience to employees working from home or while mobile, helping to lowering costs and enabling a more productive workforce.
• Home Agent Solution allows contact center operators to attract and retain qualified agents, deliver a consistently high level of service while lowering costs.
• Unified Communications for Small Business provides all employees of a small business with a means to work remotely when needed and be instantly accessible while outside the office.

Intelligent Branch Solutions allow companies to integrate branch offices with headquarters, contact centers and other company locations and quickly bring new locations online, using the most effective deployment model.

The Avaya Unified Communications solutions enable businesses to take a targeted, yet systematic approach to accommodating a broad range of worker profiles that delivers greater consistency and cost control. Designed to simplify purchasing, implementation and management, the unified communications solutions have been tested and assembled for maximum effectiveness and ease of deployment, and help increase security, regulatory compliance, business continuity and carbon reduction or "green" initiatives.

"Across the industry, we are seeing companies seeking composite solutions, designed for specific customer scenarios, that include hardware, software, middleware and services," said Robert Mahowald, principal analyst, IDC.

"We believe those that can provide a 'shrink-wrapped' unified communications package that solves specific business problems, has credibility in VoIP, a large developer community and uses open standards that will be in the position to really help businesses and organizations cut through the complexity and clutter."

one-X Communicator Provides Enriched Experience For Unified Communications

The initial release of one-X Communicator combines telephony presence from Avaya Communication Manager with Instant Messaging presence from Microsoft Office Communications Server; future releases will integrate additional presence sources. In addition, an Avaya one-X Communicator tab within Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 provides direct access to advanced telephony capabilities including mobility, call recording, transfer, and many more.

The Avaya one-X Communicator continues Avaya's tradition of making video conferencing as practical and as easy as a phone call, and enables embedded desktop video with features such as transfer, forward, conference, hold and call coverage.

Avaya one-X Communicator will be globally available in June and is included in the new Avaya Unified Communications for Teleworkers and for Mobile Workers solutions, and as part of the Avaya Unified Communications Standard Edition.