Avaya

SIP Communications for Dummies- 2nd Edition

Avaya has sponsored the free eBooklet- SIP Communications for Dummies-2nd edition. The book is written by Lawrence Miller and Peter Gregory, with a foreword by Alan Johnston and covers a range of topics to introduce you to the basic concepts of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Chapters include:

1. SIP at a Glance
2. The Case for SIP
3. How SIP Transforms Communications
4. SIP Interoperability
5. SIP in the Contact Center
6. SIP and Intelligent Communications
7. Ten Reason to Use SIP-Enabled Solutions by Avaya

In the Foreword, Johnston says “So what is SIP and why is the industry buzzing about it? This book will tell you. What can you use SIP for? This book will tell you that too. Why is SIP so important? You’ll find that here too.”

The last chapter is obviously a little self-serving, but it is sponsored by Avaya. Overall the booklet is a good primer on SIP and is a solid resource. The price is right, so you can’t fault Avaya for plugging its products in the process.

It is definitely worth a read. Check out SIP Communications for Dummies - 2nd Edition.

Nortel UC For Sale

Unified communications is still a young, emerging industry. In its short lifespan the number of players has quickly grown. One of the biggest companies in unified communications has been Nortel. The Canadian network hardware giant had a solid relationship with Microsoft and visions of grandeur of taking on Avaya and Cisco.

After filing for bankruptcy protection though, Nortel is apparently taking a look in the mirror and trying to return to a simpler time with a more aggressive focus on their core business- networking. So, they sold their wireless communications infrastructure business to Nokia-Siemens. Now they are apparently considering selling off their unified communications division with Avaya and Siemens-Enterasys being suggested as the leading contenders.

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A Recipe for Success

Remember when Cisco was a network hardware company? Cisco and networking were virtually synonymous and you knew who to call if you needed a router or a switch. Once upon a time, Avaya was a provider of enterprise communications equipment. If you needed phones or maybe an IP PBX, you could call Avaya. In days gone by Microsoft focused on server and desktop operating systems and developing software applications to help businesses be more productive. Ah, the good ole days.

To be fair, each of those companies still does what it used to. But, now the waters are muddy as they all try to be all things to all customers. As Joe Schurman, CEO of Evangelyze Communications and author of Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications, points out in his musings from Voicecon 2009, nobody was content with their piece of the pie and now they all want to be the whole pie.

The thing is, none of them really have ALL of the ingredients necessary to make the best pie. If I could only buy a pie from one company I would get my pie from Microsoft because they have the most complete list of ingredients. I might need to top it off with some additional ingredients like SmartSIP, but the Microsoft Unified Communications platform offers the most comprehensive and innovative features in the most cost effective and flexible solution of the major players.

That said, these vendors and the customers both benefit when they stop competing to be the whole pie and instead focus on how to integrate their ingredients to cooperate to make the best pie possible. A Microsoft Unified Communications platform using Avaya or Nortel communications equipment connected to a Cisco network infrastructure seems like a recipe for success.

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Avaya Muddies the UC Waters

Unified communications is a hot technology. It is all the rage and businesses around the world are scrambling to understand what it is and what it means for them. Will unified communications deliver value? I suppose that could depend on how you define unified communications. As of yet, there is no agreed upon standard per se for what components make up unified communications.

It is generally agreed upon that unified communications should ‘unify’ different types of communications. Ultimately, a single client with a single inbox that can be reached from any communications source would seem to be the goal. Unified communications may mean combining email and voicemail, establishing presence, instant messaging, online audio/video conferencing, and more.

Avaya is one of the big players in the UC market. Their marketing use of the term ‘unified communications’ for their Unified Communications for Small Business product line may be confusing to businesses trying to understand UC though. The product line does integrate some unified communications functionality, but is primarily unified telephony- delivering a converged method of making and receiving phone calls combining office phones, mobile phones, and PC based softphones.

The communications bundles offered by Avaya are solid products and certainly have the potential to provide value for customers. I’m just not sure that the term ‘unified communications’ applies to all of them and think it is unwise of Avaya to muddy the waters and confuse customers about what unified communications really is.

Report: Unified Communications in the Call Center

The Aberdeen Group conducted a survey earlier this year regarding the use of unified communications technologies in the call center. According to this Marketwatch.com article, one of the authors of the report said “Unified communications is as much about the business, finding the right business process to UC-enable, and finding the right return on investment for the right departments. A small number — 23% — have some form of unified communications implemented, but an astounding 50% of customers surveyed are or will be evaluating unified communications in the next eighteen months.” Aberdeen reports usually cost money, but Aspect Software and Avaya have sponsored this report so that you can download it for free (until September 26).

NBC Olympics Leverages Avaya UC

The Olympics occur every four years. However, because the Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics are staggered, there is actually an Olympics every 2 years. Since NBC TV has the contract to televise the Olympics here in the United States for the foreseeable future, that means that every 2 years they need to implement a resilient, robust, high-availability communications network in a new location. They need to deploy the network quickly, ramp it up to functionality, then tear it all down a month or two later and pack it away in storage until the next Olympics. NBC Olympics has chosen Avaya as their unified communication solution. Going with a UC solution rather than traditional communications provides them with a number of benefits in terms of being able to communicate more efficiently across voice, email, instant messaging seamlessly and help the NBC Olympics team to stay in touch.

Integrating Avaya with Microsoft UC

One of the promises of unified communications, particularly Microsoft Unified Communications, is the ability to leverage the existing telecommunications infrastructure. Selling UC to upper management and proving the ROI is significantly more difficult if it means ripping out and disposing of the entire existing communications infrastructure to replace it with a new UC infrastructure. Avaya wants to make that integration and incremental adoption that much easier by providing detailed guidance for making it happen with Extend the Value of Microsoft Office Applications with Avaya Unified Communications.

Avaya Adds Speech Recognition to One-X

Avaya’s flagship unified communications platform, One-X Communicator, now has speech recognition as well. One-X offers a flexible and versatile interface for unified communications, providing access to telephony, desktop video, email, instant messaging, presence information, contacts, and more. Mobile users can now use speech recognition to give verbal commands to the One-X Communicator, enabling them to look up contacts and communicate efficiently while keeping their eyes on the road. This speech functionality is now included from Avaya with no additional licensing costs.

Microsoft and Nortel Strengthen UC Partnership

Officially, Microsoft and Nortel have been buddies on the Unified Communications front for over a year and a half. Prior to now, however, the partnership was more rhetoric and lip service than actual solutions and products. Now, the partnership is resulting in a flurry of joint products designed to play together for an even more unified Unified Communications. Nortel released Nortel Converged Office, which integrates Nortel’s Communication Server 1000 IP-PBX with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Microsoft has also certified the Nortel Secure Router 4134 to run Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. The combination of Microsoft and Nortel is a formidable team capable of going to head to head with other network and telephony communications providers in the UC arena such as Avaya and Cisco. Read Nortel, Microsoft Expand Unified Communications at InternetNews.com for more details about the Microsoft / Nortel partnership and the new products and services that have resulted from it.