Avaya Strengthens Business Communications Capabilities for Malaysia’s Small Businesses and the Midmarket Segment

• Empowers businesses across Malaysia with solutions to boost scalability and mobility, featuring centralized management and cost-effective collaboration capabilities

Malaysia – Thursday, 20 February, 2014 – Avaya today unveiled communications solution capabilities that will better support productivity, collaboration and mobility for small and midmarket businesses in Malaysia. These capabilities will support Malaysia’s country-wide focus on advanced infrastructure support, helping Malaysian companies to build capacity, create business advantage and achieve global competitiveness.

The flagship Avaya IP Office 9.0 platform will further streamline the way midmarket companies collaborate and communicate. Businesses will now be empowered with simplified technology and greater collaboration in a highly flexible, single-platform environment that can support from 5 to up to 2,000 users.

Avaya’s innovation in the midmarket space is a part of a $2.5B investment that Avaya has made over the past six years to transform from a telecommunications provider to a software and services-led company focused on delivering collaboration and communications solutions that are open, mobile and centered on the cloud.

With over 12 million users already supported worldwide, Avaya IP Office now provides mid-market companies with a cost-effective, powerful platform for growth that delivers nearly 30 percent lower total cost of ownership compared to other solutions . Through tightly woven integration, Avaya IP Office offers a seamless collaboration experience across voice, video, and mobility, providing end users with secure, easy access from their choice of devices.

The capabilities will now enable midmarket businesses with:
• Simplified, Increased Scale – Avaya IP Office 9.0 software easily and cost-effectively scales to 2,000 users (previously 1,000 users) at up to 32 locations, delivering exceptional value and low total cost of ownership
• Virtualization - IP Office 9.0 adds virtualized software running VMware vSphere 4.x or 5.x software. IP Office software can now run inside a virtual machine, on a dedicated server, an appliance, or a combination of these. This adds flexibility while enabling customers to match the deployment method to their infrastructure plans and objectives.
• Simplified Management - IP Office Web Manager for Server Edition provides a consolidated management view of a multi-site IP Office solution through a one-time log-in to a single URL. Web Manager allows access to a range of servers, along with solution-wide user management, and simplified management while enabling midmarket companies to reduce administrative overhead.
• Support for the Enterprise Branch - IP Office 9.0 can cost-effectively support multiple branch office deployment options: standalone, independent branch or connected to the Avaya Aura® network in distributed and centralized branch modes while being managed by Avaya Aura System Manager.

Avaya’s collaboration solutions for midmarket companies make up one of the most comprehensive portfolios in the market for this segment. Avaya IP Office can be augmented with the following:

• The Avaya Video Collaboration Solution for IP Office, which uniquely combines desktop, mobile, and HD room-based video collaboration in an affordable package.
• Avaya Ethernet switches with unique automated provisioning capabilities that provide fast, secure, network connectivity and power to Avaya’s midmarket collaboration solution at price points lower than comparable solutions from other vendors.
• Avaya Session Border Controller for comprehensive security for unified communications that also eliminate the need for mobile or remote workers to deal with VPN connections.

Avaya IP Office is available now from Avaya Connect Channel Partners across Malaysia.

Avaya Announces Software-Defined Data Center Framework and Roadmap

• Leverages OpenStack’s cloud operating system to deliver open, multi-resource service orchestration and automation
• Avaya Fabric Connect technology to be integrated into the OpenStack framework simplifying movement of Virtual Machines within and between Data Centers.    
• Will enable enterprises and service providers to turn up cloud-based services in minutes with scalability up to 16 million tenanted applications

Malaysia, August 23, 2013 —Avaya today announced its Software-Defined Data Center framework, which is designed to deliver productivity, agility and time-to-service enhancements to businesses operating highly virtualized data centers.  The Avaya Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) framework aims to break down traditional data center silos that require weeks or months to turn up an application and replace it with a simple five-step process that takes minutes.  Avaya will demonstrate this capability at VMworld 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from
August 25 – 29.

The Avaya SDDC framework includes an orchestration process that combines, customizes and commissions compute, storage and network components.  Use of the OpenStack cloud computing platform will allow data center administrations to deploy virtual machines, assign storage and configure networks through a single graphical user interface.  Avaya Fabric Connect further enhances the OpenStack environment by removing restrictions in traditional Ethernet VLAN / Spanning Tree-based networks to enable a more dynamic, flexible and scalable network services model than exists today.

The Avaya SDDC framework is based on the following components:
• Avaya Fabric Connect technology as the virtual backbone to interconnect resource pools within and between data centers with increased flexibility and scale
• An Avaya OpenStack Horizon-based Management Platform, delivering orchestration for compute (Nova), storage (Cinder/Swift) and network via Avaya Fabric Connect (Neutron)
• Open APIs into the Avaya Fabric Connect architecture for ease of integration, customization and interoperability with other Software-Defined Networking architectures

The Avaya SDDC framework can ultimately provide the following benefits to businesses:
• Reduced Time-to-Service: cloud services enabled in minutes through a five-step process
• Simplified Virtual Machine Mobility: simple end-point provisioning enabling virtual machine mobility within and between geographically dispersed data centers
• Multi-Vendor Orchestration: coordinated allocation of data center resources via a single interface to streamline the deployment of applications
• Scale-out Connectivity: services scale to more than 16 million unique services, up from the limitation of 4000 in traditional Ethernet networks
• Secure Multi-Tenancy: leveraging network, compute and storage layer abstraction and isolation
• Improved Network Flexibility: overcomes current VLAN challenges to deliver a load-balanced, loop-free network where any logical topology can be built, independent of the physical layout

Avaya’s Software-Defined Data Center framework is the first phase of Avaya’s Software-Defined Networking roadmap.  Avaya Fabric Connect is available today on a wide range of networking platforms including Virtual Service Platform 9000, Ethernet Routing Switch 8800, Virtual Services Platform 7000 and Virtual Services Platform 4000.  The Avaya Horizon-based Management Platform and open APIs will be generally available next year.  Future initiatives include the extension of Fabric Connect and Orchestration to deliver end-to-end service creation and delivery from data center to desktop.

Avaya Introduces Comprehensive and Affordable Video Collaboration Solution for Small and Midsized Enterprises

• Avaya Video Collaboration Solution for IP Office combines desktop, mobile and HD room system capabilities with rich data collaboration
• Easy to deploy and easy to use, designed for Avaya IP Office, and provides HD experiences even on low bandwidth connections 
• Provides exceptional value with an all-in-one solution that helps SMEs improve productivity and efficiency and enhance customer interactions

Malaysia, June 13, 2013 – Avaya (InfoComm13 booth no. 1859) announced the Avaya Video Collaboration Solution for IP Office, an all new video collaboration solution designed specifically for the small and midsize enterprise segment (SME).  The Avaya Video Collaboration Solution for IP Office provides simple, affordable yet comprehensive desktop, mobile and HD room-system video collaboration capabilities. Avaya IP Office is the company’s flagship unified communications solution for small and midsize enterprises.

According to research firm IDC, 30 percent of midsized firms are currently using some videoconferencing resources beyond simple webcams. Intentions are at roughly the same level, which sets the stage for significant growth – the number of small and midsized firms using video collaboration could potentially double in the next 12 months[i].

The Avaya Video Collaboration Solution is unique in its ability to deliver BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and HD room-system capabilities in a single, highly affordable and easy to deploy solution for SMEs. It delivers rich collaborative capabilities that help increase productivity, enhance customer service, and lower the overall cost of doing business.

The Avaya Video Collaboration Solution offers the following features:

• Direct integration including a common dial plan with Avaya IP Office Version 8.1.
• A “virtual conference room” for up to eight participants with click-to-join capabilities from any standards-based room system, desktop or mobile device.
• Freely distributed desktop and mobile video clients for PCs, Macs and the most popular iOS and Android devices – enabling those inside and outside an organization to easily join a video meeting.
• Low-bandwidth, HD multi-party video conferencing and rich data collaboration via native SIP/H.323.
• The collaboration solution can also be deployed in an HD video conferencing room system configuration for maximum flexibility and value.
• Automatic firewall traversal allows SMEs to engage with participants outside their network, enabling face-to-face meetings with customers and partners to help strengthen business relationships.

1         IDC Report: SMB Telephony: Current/Planned Telecom Resource Use, 2013

Avaya Unveils Turnkey Solution for Proactive Management of the Customer Experience for Mid-size Contact Centers

• Avaya Outbound Contact Express provides a pre-integrated solution with all the critical components needed for proactive customer experience management
• Supports mid-size contact centers with 25-250 agents and up to 500 trunks
• Rapid, simplified deployment reduces time to service to one day from 30+ days needed for multi-vendor solutions

Malaysia – June 7, 2013 – Avaya today announced a new solution for mid-size contact centers that streamlines adoption, implementation and management of comprehensive outbound customer communications. Avaya Outbound Contact Express is a turnkey solution with all the hardware, software and support services needed for cost-effective, proactive customer experience operations.

Easy to set-up and maintain, Outbound Contact Express builds on Avaya’s proven, outbound customer experience management capabilities in a pre-integrated, all-in-one solution for the mid-size contact center with 25-250 agents and up to 500 trunks. Compared to alternative, multi-vendor solutions, Outbound Contact Express reduces the time to service from a baseline of 30 days to one or two.

Avaya Outbound Contact Express uses industry leading call detection and advanced, patented predictive and preview dialing algorithms for more effective use of agent time and a lower cost per call to reach customers. In addition, a single contact for all maintenance and support needs significantly reduces the costs and complexity associated with day to day operations and maintenance of traditional, multi-vendor solutions.
Outbound Contact Express includes:
• Administrative web client for defining campaigns
• Full featured, market leading dialer with exceptional call detection accuracy
• Agent scripting to ensure consistent, successful customer interactions
• Reporting and call recording to ensure quality and compliance
• Avaya Speech Analytics to drive insight and improvement to agent performance and operations.
• 24x7 support and Expert ™ systems monitoring
• Software upgrade protection as well as optional parts support

Avaya Outbound Contact Express leverages key, patented elements of Avaya’s portfolio of Outbound Contact Center solutions to provide comprehensive features and capabilities packaged to fit the specific needs and requirements of mid-size contact centers. Avaya’s Outbound and Proactive Experience Management solutions provide businesses with a complete, multichannel, agent and agent-less solution to support their outbound marketing, sales, service, and collections needs. Applications like Avaya Proactive Contact and Avaya Proactive Outreach Manager simplify execution of large scale outbound campaigns while ensuring businesses meet even the most strict regulatory compliance requirements.

Avaya Outbound Contact Express will be globally available this summer.

Avaya Announces Collaborative CloudTM Offersfor Cloud Service Providers

• New Cloud Service Provider offers make it easyto deploy Unified Communications, Contact Center and Video as a Service to their customers
• UniqueUnified Communications and Contact Center as a Service (UCaaS, CCaaS) utility-based pricingallowsCSPs to pay only for what customers are using
• NewPrivate Cloud offer for contact centers up to 500 agents can behosted and branded by CSPs or Avaya

Malaysia – Wednesday, March 20, 2013 – Avaya today announced additions to the Avaya Collaborative Cloud with new offers specifically designed for cloud service providers (CSPs) that allow them to brand and deliver Avaya’s market-leading unified communications, contact center and video solutions. These comprehensive offers for CSPs feature flexible choices and pricing models, enabling them to build new revenue streams by delivering open, mobile collaboration and multichannel customer service to their enterprise customers.

The new offers add to Avaya’s rich cloud-enabling capabilities, allowing CSPs to address the requirements of enterprises worldwide looking for anoperational expense (opex) approach to communications and collaboration application and solution enablement.  By offering Avaya Collaborative Cloud solutions, CSPshelp organizations improve business agility, andoptimize budgets and resources.Enterprises can off-load the challenges of managing BYOD environments, widely dispersed workforces and the shifting demands of end-customers. The new offers enable CSPs to evolve and augment enterprise communications with cloud-based solutions as well as provide greater interoperability across vendors, domains and protocols.

The new and expanded offers for CSPs:
• Avaya Cloud Enablement for Unified Communications and Customer Experience Managementis uniquely highlighted by the flexible, utility-based, opex pricing for CSPs that allows them to pay only for customer usage, enabling them to better accommodate the dynamic needs of their customers. Avaya Control Managerenables multi-tenancy with an easy to use centralized management and administrative segmentation tool. Avaya Cloud Enablement for Unified Communications and Customer Experience Management is delivered on a single, open scalable architecture based on Avaya Aura® to lower cost and simplify service provider environments.
• Avaya Cloud Enablement for Video providesCSPswith a highly scalable open platform that delivers interoperable multi-vendor video collaboration. Recent enhancements to the Elite Series MCUs, Scopia Mobile and ScopiaDesktop bring new value to this VaaS solution by increasing scalability and extendingBYOD videoconferencing across nearly any endpoint. With fast, easy deployment, Cloud Enablement for Video delivers out of the box multi-tenancy capabilities and customization of the Scopia mobile application by tenant/organization.
• Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions (COS) Express is a standardized private cloud offerthat can be hosted by Avaya, a CSP or channel partner for the end customer. Service providers and channel partners can elect to sell the solution as an Avaya- or co-branded offer. The first edition of COS Express focuses on contact center deployments for businesses with up to 500 concurrent agents.

Avaya Collaborative Cloud includes a variety of solutions that enable customers and partners to build, manage, enable and deliver Avaya solutions through cloud-based delivery models. Avaya Collaborative Cloud solutions also include: Avaya Collaboration Pods, a portfolio of cloud-ready, turnkey solutions that simplify installation and operations of real-time applications; and the AvayaLive® suite of unique, public cloud-based communications and collaboration services.

Quotes:
“Verizon and Avaya continue to collaborate to develop communications and collaboration solutions to help federal agencies keep pace with technology advancements, reduce complexity and boost employee productivity.  By leveraging our complementary strengths to enable federal agencies to adopt flexible IT consumption models, Verizon and Avaya will deliver advanced solutions that meet the functionality and cost efficiency requirements of our federal clients”
STEVE LEFRANCOIS, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER – PUBLIC SECTOR MARKETS
VERIZON ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS

“We are excited to release the next version of Cirque Business One®, our UC-as-a-Service offer delivering what we call ‘collaboration made effortless.’ Built on Avaya technology, Business One provides all the tools and services packaged into one integrated solution where our users get rich cloud-based communications anytime, anywhere, on any device.  By working with Avaya, we can deliver reliable and market-leading unified communications for the Danish and French market.”
MADS FOSSELIUS, COO
CIRQUE

"The UC market has been waiting for the expansion of Avaya's cloud portfolio, so this announcement should be well received. The range of Avaya Collaborative Cloud features and functionality is impressive, and the new offerings add to its cloud portfolio of AvayaLive and Avaya Collaboration Pods solutions. Backed by Avaya's solid UC technology, Avaya Collaborative Cloud offerings should be especially appealing to Avaya customers making new UC deployment decisions, and to new customers considering UC cloud deployments."    
RICH COSTELLO, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS, ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE
IDC

“Cloud presents an opportunity for enterprises to reduce cost, improve time it takes to deploy business applications across networks, or to improve storage capacity whilst minimizing rack space. Our customers all have different views of the cloud, how they should approach it and what it can do for them.  Avaya’s collaborative cloud solutions offer businesses with the flexibility to work with our channels, cloud service providers or with Avaya directly on any one of these approaches to ensure they can derive the most benefit from the cloud enablement strategy most appropriate to their business.”
RAYMOND TESKE, REGIONAL DIRECTOR GLOBAL ALLIANCES
AVAYA

Additional Resources
Avaya Collaborative Cloud
Chunghwa Telecom Adopts Radvisionhttp://www.avaya.com/usa/about-avaya/newsroom/news-releases/2013/pr-130318aScopia to Providehttp://www.avaya.com/usa/about-avaya/newsroom/news-releases/2013/pr-130318aVideo as a Service to Taiwan Enterprises

Avaya Unveils NewTools for Understanding the Customer Experience and Managing Multichannel Interactions

• New speech analytics and data visualization tools provide unique insights tohelp build customer awareness and improve service

• Avaya Automated Chat and Avaya Aura® Call Center Elite Multichannel solutions provide integrated Web, social media, SMS, IM and email customer interaction options

• Avaya Customer Experience Virtualized Environment delivers market-leading routing, multichannel interaction self-service and reporting capabilities optimized for VMware® environments

Malaysia — Wednesday, March 6, 2013:Avaya today unveiled new, next generationanalytics and customer interaction solutionsthat help harness the power of big data and the growing number of ways that customers want access to companies. New Avaya Customer Experience Management solutions bring powerful new tools for mining and analyzing data, applications for expanding and synchronizing multichannel customer interactionsand deployment options for virtualized environments. The newsolutions help companies improve and streamline the customerexperience through any access point at any moment in the customer lifecycle while increasing efficiency and adaptability in business operations.

The need for multichannel and data analytic capabilities becomes more pronounced as Avaya’s Asia Pacific Customer Experience Index reveals more than 60 percent customers demand multichannel communications, and 41 percent likely to move or have already moved their business as a result of poor customer service.

Avaya’s Customer Experience Managementanalytics and multichannel solutionsempowerorganizations to proactively address the multi-facetedrequirements and expectations of customerstoday. Many current technologieslimit the ability to create an accurate picture – or contextual awareness – of the customer’s experience, their needs and behaviors. The growing number ofcustomer interaction channels generates new challenges to delivering service across channels, yet also provide organizations with more opportunity than ever to extract valuableinsights through smart analytics.

Avaya Customer Experience Management solutions enableenterprises to offer more personalized, seamless interactions that are built on agreater understandingofa customer’s situation, preferences and value.Avaya’s unique solutions help companiesdeliver an exceptional brand experience that grows net promoter scores and ultimately, drivesgreater revenue – now boosted by the following new capabilities:

• Avaya Aura® Call Center Elite Multichannellayers multichannel capabilities - including web chat, social media, SMS, IM, and email- ontothe world’s leading, most reliable call center software. Elite Multichannel makes it easier for organizations to add new access channels and manage cross-channel customer experiences. Existing Call Center Elite users can add multichannel with minimal disruption to operations or reporting systems.

• Avaya Automated Chat integrates with live chat support to deliver more responsive, personalized online service. Avaya Automated Chat can improve customer satisfaction with faster, more accurate responses delivered through an intelligent response engineand streamline the transition from self-service to live service. Agent resources can be used more effectively and lower the cost of serving customers. An optional feature, Answer Desk, allows non-chat agents to tap the automation engine to quickly get answers for their non-chat customer contacts.
• Avaya Speech Analytics integrates the actualvoice of the customer into performance management practices. Avaya Speech Analytics mines voice-based customer interactions to deliver business intelligence that might otherwise be missed in text-based or manual analyses for insights that can drive process improvements, support regulatory compliance and identify new sources of revenue.

• Avaya Contact Flow Analyticsenables organizationsto identify and remedy call flow issues through a number of visualization tools, including flow graphs, dashboards and tabular reports. Currently available through Avaya Professional Services, Contact Flow Analytics provides information about the effectiveness and efficiency of routing, agent performance and the overall customer experience.

With the addition of Avaya Aura Call Center Elite Multichannel, Avaya now delivers a complete virtualization solution for contact centers. Avaya Customer Experience Virtualized Environmentprovides organizations with Avaya contact center applications such as skills-based routing, multichannel interactions, reporting and self-service capabilities optimized VMware environments. Avaya Customer Experience Virtualized Environment enables companies to simplify and accelerate deployment of sophisticated contact center applications while maintaining world-class functionality and reliability.

To support the growing demands on organizations, Avaya Contact Center Optimizationservicesfrom Avaya Professional Services offers full customer experience management lifecycleconsulting to determine the right solution for any situation. Avaya Contact Center Optimization services draw on the skills of Avaya consultants who are specialists in business strategy, solution road mapping and operational improvement, as well as experts at building and optimizing applications that improve customer experience and integrate into anybusiness and technology environment.

Quotes
“Call Center Elite Multichannel has allowed our organization to serve customers more efficiently, The ability to blend non-voice and outbound contacts with the traditional voice channel has improved agent productivity and extended our customer service reach.Now, with Avaya Customer Experience Virtualized Environment, we’re also leveraging our existing VMware infrastructure and tools for faster deployment and streamlined management of applications in our data center.”
ARIK SHTILMAN, VICE PREISDENT, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
IT NAVIGATOR

“Avaya’s ability place speech analytics into context and identify key words and phrases helps us intelligently interpret the findings and turn them into data-driven recommendations for our client. Avaya’s Speech Analytics technology reveals the DNA of the call. It breaks down the call into its different components: the who, the what, the why. Our understanding of the client’s business, coupled with our experience as operators and consultants, allows us to then turn that information into action.”
DAVID NAYLOR, HEAD OF ANALYTICS
EMBER SERVICES

“Companies today are struggling to keep pace with the changing customer preferences. Customers want convenience,which means being served anytime, anywhere and on any device. Avaya’s customer experience management analytics tools coupled with our multichannel interaction solutions replaces guesswork with certaintyto supportstrategic decisions that enable a more personal, streamlined experience that is integrated across channels throughout the customer’s journey.”
CHONG WIN-LEE, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASEAN
AVAYA

RADVISION, AN AVAYA COMPANY, INTRODUCES THE INDUSTRY’S MOST POWERFUL MULTIPOINT CONTROL UNIT

Malaysia (January 29, 2013) – Radvision, an Avaya Company, today announced its next-generation Scopia Elite 6000 Series multipoint control unit (MCU), enabling real-time video collaboration for businesses of any size. The new Scopia Elite 6000 Series, which is the latest addition to the Elite Series MCU portfolio, reduces the cost per port for high definition video conferencing by up to 50 percent, offers double the density and performance, and requires up to 75 percent less power than traditional hardware-based MCUs.

Video conferencing is becoming more pervasive due to an increasing number of video-enabled devices. As a result, there is growing demand for higher quality video and greater ability to support more participants and conferences as well as a mixture of endpoints. The Scopia Elite 6000 Series MCU delivers that high quality through full 1080p60fps high definition video communication while minimizing the bandwidth requirements for HD video in a streamlined, easy to use and administer, cost-effective solution.

The Scopia Elite 6000 Series MCU offers:
• Revolutionary Power. The Scopia Elite 6000 harnesses revolutionary processing power, featuring dual 1080p/60fps channels for video and content, simultaneous H.264 High Profile for bandwidth efficiency and H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC), along with multi-stream immersive telepresence connectivity deliver uncompromised multi-party collaboration.
• Unmatched Density and Scale. A hybrid architecture delivers unmatched density with support for 40 full 1080p HD ports on a single 1U system, and the highest processing performance available in the market. Scopia’s “Virtual MCU” management solution provides an intelligent, distributed multi-party conferencing architecture for maximum scalability and resiliency.
• Maximum Ease of Use. Video information overlays along with easy conference creation and entry through the enhanced on-screen auto attendant make attending conferences simple. User can moderate meetings through onscreen menus compatible with any endpoint or via the Scopia Control iPad® app. They can easily mute participants, change video layouts, start or pause recording and even invite other participants.

For end users, Scopia Desktop and Scopia Mobile, both of which are supported on the Elite 6000 Series MCU, enable one-click-to-video and an intuitive interface for video conferencing on-the-go. Participants can moderate a call, share content, record and stream and even choose individual layouts featuring up to 28 on-screen participants.

IT administrators and service providers offering cloud-based video conferencing also benefit from the capabilities of the recently announced Scopia Management System, which features enhancements including Google Maps integration providing a global geographic view of the collaboration topology along with additional enhancements such as multi-tenancy, concierge services, and massive scalability of up to 400,000 users for service providers and large enterprises. Additionally, the Scopia Elite 6000 supports the industry’s broadest telepresence interoperability including support for the recently announced Scopia TIP Gateway. Scopia Elite MCUs are now fully interoperable with all standards-based telepresence systems including those from LifeSize, Polycom, and Cisco/Tandberg.

Avaya Announces New Asia Pacific Executive Appointments

• Ray Teske to drive APAC Service Provider and Global Alliances team
• Lee Chong-Win to lead South East Asian Sales as Managing Director, ASEAN

Malaysia (January 16, 2013) – Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, today announced two enhancements to its Asia Pacific Leadership Team. Ray Teske will assume leadership of a Service Provider and Global Alliances business across the Asia Pacific geography, working predominantly with APAC Service Providers on bringing to market cloud-based communication capabilities and solutions for businesses across the region. This will span Unified Communications, Contact Center, Video and Networking solutions ‘as a service’ and will ensure companies wanting to leverage cloud-based communications solutions have access to the same technology and innovation as customers with on-premises equipment.

Teske and his team will leverage Avaya’s global and APAC experience in deploying cloud-based solutions, and continue to drive innovative hosted models and solutions to reduce cost of ownership and deployment for both service providers and end users. Teske has over 20 years of experience in the communications industry across enterprise, service provider and channel focused roles and was most recently Managing Director for the ASEAN business at Avaya.

Lee Chong-Win is the new Managing Director, ASEAN for Avaya. Lee will be responsible for continuing to drive growth in this dynamic and varied market, with a focus on the core countries of Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam while growing Avaya’s business and presence in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. Lee most recently led the Customer Experience Management business in APAC, focused on delivering best in class contact center solutions to a diverse range of customers across the region. Like Teske, Lee also brings extensive communications industry experience from previous leadership roles at Nortel, EMC and Periphonics, spanning sales, professional services and engineering disciplines.

These appointments are effective immediately. Teske and Lee continue to be based in Bangkok and Singapore respectively.

Avaya Delivers Open, Mobile Collaboration on Virtualized Architecture

• Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment Debuts, Providing an Accelerated Path to Unified Communications 
• Avaya Aura Applications now VMware Ready™; Brings High Reliability, Simplicity and Flexibility to Virtualized Collaboration Applications
• Avaya customer RealPage uses new Avaya solution to Virtualize UC Core, Speed Customer Service Deployments by up to 20%

Thursday, December 6, 2012. Kuala Lumpur —Avaya today unveiled its new communications architecture for virtualized unified communications (UC) applications, Avaya Aura® Virtualized Environment (Avaya Aura VE), to help businesses accelerate mobile collaboration applications across their organization. With Avaya Aura VE, businesses maintain the high reliability, simplicity and functionality of Avaya Aura – the company’s next-generation collaboration platform – while gaining flexible new options for deploying Avaya’s UC and customer service solutions in virtual architectures.

Avaya Aura VE applications are designated as VMware Ready™, which is VMware’s highest level of endorsement for virtualization technologies. More companies are choosing virtualization to reduce the complexity, equipment and costs of their IT operations. The critical next step is the virtualization of unified communications, with 70 percent of companies planning to virtualize their UC applications, according to Nemertes Research .

Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment—combined with Avaya’s expertise in open, mobile collaboration—helps ensure that the reliability, quality and availability companies rely on in Avaya hardware-based environments get delivered into the virtualized world.  Key Avaya Aura VE features include:

• Redundancy and resiliency: All of the critical systems availability features of Avaya Aura’s server-based platform—including software duplication, redundant session controls for SIP access and a survivable core—are maintained in Avaya Aura VE, driving business continuity and reducing risk in virtualized environments. In addition, the solution integrates with VMware vCenter™ Server tools for diagnostics, provisioning and traffic management to further ensure and simplify unified communications continuity.
• A simplified, open path:  With Avaya Aura VE, businesses continue to benefit from the same open standards approach driven by Avaya Aura. In addition, virtualization allows businesses to easily expand UC functions and users without adding new equipment, and do so quickly by cutting deployment times from hours to minutes. Companies with VMware cloud infrastructure in their data centers can now easily integrate Avaya Aura applications onto their existing server environment.

• Agile customer service operations: Avaya Aura extends virtualization to its call center application, Call Center Elite. With less equipment required, companies can add contact center agents more swiftly and cost-effectively based on seasonal, sales and purchasing trends. This brings the unique ability to improve the oversight and delivery of customer service using virtualization.

With today’s announcement, businesses also have several flexible options for enhanced mobility and collaboration.  Businesses can choose full virtualization with Avaya Aura VE or continue with the dedicated hardware approach already offered by Avaya Aura. They can also combine virtualized and dedicated servers for application deployment. As another option, Avaya Collaboration Pods for Avaya Aura VE will be offered as pre-packaged, all-in-one UC solutions for virtualized storage, computing and networking.

Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment: Key Components
The Avaya Aura® platform is comprised of the following components, now available in virtualized versions:
--Avaya Aura Communication Manager is the open, highly-reliable and next-generation communications foundation for Avaya’s UC solutions.
--Avaya Session Manager provides a SIP based core communications architecture for on-demand access to collaboration services and applications.
--Avaya Application Enablement Services provides developer interfaces for both off-the-shelf and custom integrations with communica¬tions and business applications.
-- Avaya Aura Presence Services delivers scalable, high performance presence aggregation services.
--Avaya Agile Communications Environment enables application integration with business communications processes.
--Avaya Aura Call Center Elite is part of the company’s contact center suite, and the premier call-routing software for contact centers.

Quotes
“Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment helps us deliver collaboration and customer experience capabilities in a faster, more efficient way. We virtualized our core UC infrastructure, while retaining the continuity and resiliency required to keep a busy 1,400 employee company like ours operating in real-time.
“To ensure top-notch customer service, virtualized Aura lets us ramp up contact centers quickly – up to 20 percent faster. This is great for seasonal spikes, when we need to add resources on the spot. We were able to set up a temporary 70-agent contact center using no equipment, streamlining operations considerably. Avaya Aura VE is a major advancement for us and for Avaya customers, bringing Avaya’s speed, ease and reliability to the virtualized environment.”
--Joe McCorkle, director, IT UC/Voice Services, RealPage, Inc. a leading provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and services for the rental housing industry

“Avaya Aura® availability as a virtual appliance through VMware is great news for Avaya’s existing installed base, as they can now migrate to the newest version of Avaya Aura, including system redundancy, with minimal or no additional investment in hardware. Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment provides a flexible deployment model that enables a stepped roll-out of unified communications (UC) feature sets as per a customer’s specific collaboration needs and deployment plans. The solution enables businesses to deploy UC much faster than previously and supporting Avaya’s ACE™ as a virtualized application offers easy integration of business process applications across any platform.”
- Shailendra Soni, Industry Principal, APAC Enterprise Communications, Frost & Sullivan

  “As interest in virtualized solutions continues to expand, and organizations realize the benefits of the software-defined datacenter, we see the shift of real-time collaboration applications using VMware solutions as a step forward. Having completed joint testing and validation of the Avaya Aura UC applications—and now releasing them as VMware Ready™ applications—we are delivering a strong combination to customers. Avaya and VMware will continue to work to meet customer needs for performance and reliability as more real-time collaboration applications are virtualized.”
--Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware

“Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment helps us reach new levels of real-time collaboration quickly, easily and with a great deal of flexibility. In fact, using our existing virtualization infrastructure, it took no more than 1 hour to install, and we were able to make the transition seamlessly. End users remained productive, and with help from VMware’s vCenter, the solution is easier to manage, helping ensure a smooth path to virtualized UC.”
--Jayce Nguyen, Chief Information Technology Officer, Sun Ivy International Inc., Vietnam Representative Office

 “Avaya recognizes that any path to collaboration requires a platform that prioritizes high reliability, functionality and flexibility. This is why we’ve seamlessly brought these benefits from Avaya Aura into virtualized environments. With Avaya’s UC applications now VMware Ready™ for virtualization, our customers can travel a faster, more efficient route to next-generation collaboration.”
--Gary E. Barnett, senior vice president & general manager, Collaboration Platforms, Avaya

Avaya Expands Malaysian SME Focus with Flagship High-Capability Collaboration Solution

September 4, 2012

Kuala Lumpur — Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, today announced the Malaysia launch of Avaya IP Office, its flagship unified communications (UC) solution for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). This launch supports Malaysia’s growing SME base with a solution geared to enterprises from five to 1,000 users, providing them with an array of collaboration capabilities in a simple, easy-to-use solution to improve productivity, gain customer service efficiencies and compete effectively.

Avaya IP Office can be easily customised to help firms cost-effectively increase communications capacity and add enhanced capabilities as their business expands.

The Malaysian SME market, with its focus on Government-Linked Companies (GLCs), government and financial services sectors, represents a significant growth opportunity for Avaya. Avaya IP Office is set to help companies benefit from the Malaysian government’s commitment to expand the number of high growth firms and to raise labour productivity of SMEs in a bid to turn Malaysia into a high-income nation.

With the availability of Avaya IP Office, Avaya Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 3500, for SMEs and Scopia, Avaya’s interoperable and affordable video applications for desktop and mobile, Avaya offers end-to-end solutions to help growing Malaysian SMEs unleash The Power of We™ — enabling them to drive faster collaboration, smarter decision-making and better business results.

Avaya’s SME announcement follows the company’s recent move to a new, larger head office in Kuala Lumpur. Avaya’s renewed commitment in the SME segment complements its position in the contact centre and enterprise communications space. According to analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, Avaya is the clear leader in the contact centre application market in Malaysia2 with 34.7% share and dominates the Automated Call Distribution (ACD) market in Malaysia with 68.7% market share. Frost & Sullivan also ranks Avaya as the second largest provider of IP PBXs holding 16.3% of the market, and an overall 10.4% share of the Enterprise Telephony market in Malaysia3.

1 Malaysia SME Masterplan (2012 to 2020), Malaysia SMECorp, November 2011.

2 “Contact Centre Applications Market CY 2011” – Frost & Sullivan, July 2012

3 “Asia Pacific Enterprise Telephony Market CY 2011” – Frost & Sullivan, April 2012

Avaya Enhances Customer Experience Interaction Management Portfolio

Wednesday, July 18, 2012, Kuala Lumpur -- Avaya today announced the next step in the evolution of customer service technology with new and enhanced products for its Customer Experience Interaction Management portfolio. Avaya Customer Experience Interaction Management solutions enable companies to serve more customers through more channels while providing a streamlined, orchestrated experience for customers, agents and managers.

Customer Experience Interaction Management is at the heart of Avaya’s next-generation contact center strategy, extending beyond the traditional contact center to include branch, retail, remote employees and back-office environments, providing a comprehensive approach to creating a differentiated, quality customer experience. The portfolio helps companies prudently balance objectives for top line revenue and cost reduction with improving the customer experience across every interaction and every touch point – including the growing number of methods and devices available for customer interaction and consumers’ decreasing tolerance for unsatisfactory service.

Today, Avaya adds the following enhancements to its Customer Experience Interaction Management portfolio:

• Mobile: Avaya Customer Connections Mobile enables a customer to navigate dynamic smartphone menus which guide them through self driven inquiries and tasks. If further assistance is needed, the customer can make a request to be connected to an available expert. An estimated wait time is provided if no agent is immediately available; customers can choose to wait, request an immediate return call or schedule one for a more convenient time. All customer information from the start of the activity is carried throughout the entire interaction – from self service through assisted -- for a seamless service experience that eliminates the need for the customer to repeatedly provide the same information.

• Social Media: Avaya continues its focus on enabling companies to efficiently encompass social media within the contact center. Avaya Social Media Manager adds support for additional languages and integration with more social media sites, including Google Alerts, RSS and YouTube in addition to FB and Twitter.

• Web Video: Avaya One Touch Video helps enable faster, richer customer collaboration and resolution to build better relationships. A simple hyperlink embedded on web page or sent via email enables voice and video collaboration between agents, experts or other enterprise employees and end users outside of the enterprise who have access to any Internet-connected device with a browser.

• Routing Optimization: Avaya Aura Call Center Elite – the gold standard in contact center call routing and distribution -- delivers significant increases in performance, consolidates and simplifies administration and reduces hardware, upgrade and maintenance costs. Call Center Elite 6.2 can now help customers handle up to twice the calls in any given time period over previous versions of the product. In addition, new Avaya 96x1phones are tailored to contact center agent needs, enabling fast access to common agent features and embedded agent greetings. Companies can buy these new phones as SIP or as H.323 and later convert them to SIP endpoints for investment protection as their needs evolve.

Avaya Customer Experience Management solutions are enabled by Avaya Aura®, a flexible, centralized architecture from which companies can cost-effectively support multiple locations and services - including local, remote and home agents - with streamlined, simplified management. Avaya Customer Experience Interaction Management solutions are also supported by Avaya CS1000 in standalone environments or integrated with Avaya Aura.

Avaya has a full continuum of consulting, professional, support and managed services that can help customers plan, design, implement and operate their Customer Experience Interaction Management solutions. These services help customers align business goals with technology, business processes and people, enabling faster adoption and performance optimization.

Avaya Completes Radvision Acquisition

Kuala Lumpur. -- Avaya Inc. today announced that it has finalized the acquisition of Radvision, a leading provider of video conferencing technologies over IP and wireless networks. Pursuant to the terms of the merger agreement, each outstanding ordinary share of Radvision that was outstanding immediately prior to the effective time of the merger has been automatically converted into the right to receive US$11.85 in cash, without interest and less any applicable withholding taxes, for a total transaction amount of approximately US$230 million. Radvision will operate as an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Avaya under the Radvision brand.

With the close of the acquisition, Avaya is poised to deliver open, affordable, and easy-to-use video collaboration solutions suitable for businesses of any size. The combined portfolios tackle the expensive, complex, disconnected experiences that often limit broader adoption of video as a business collaboration tool today. Together, Avaya and Radvision will build on the interoperability that exists between the two portfolios today to extend video collaboration inside and outside of the enterprise – regardless of an end-user’s system, location or device.

Video for Everyone
With the combined portfolio, Avaya offers ad-hoc desktop and mobile video capabilities and connects the separate islands of video for improved B2B and B2C communications.
• The combined Avaya-Radvision solutions enable customers to embrace standards-based (H.323) video conferencing products or easily enhance video deployments that support existing H.323 environments. This approach helps enable companies to extract long-term value as they evolve toward more integrated SIP-based collaboration and unified communications (UC).
• For small-to-midsize businesses (SMB), the portfolio offers affordable video and helps enable B2B and B2C communications using the same technologies that were previously only within reach of the large enterprise.

Commitment to Interoperability
Radvision’s 20-year heritage in the video conferencing industry, combined with the commitment of both companies to open architectures and industry standards, positions Avaya to deliver pervasive video that is distinguished by simplicity, practicality and interoperability. Today, Avaya and Radvision already have established interoperability between Radvision’s SCOPIA® endpoints and infrastructure with Avaya Aura®, Avaya Flare® Experience on the Avaya Desktop Video Device, and Avaya UC 1000 series video endpoints.

The companies will be demonstrating their suite of video collaboration solutions next week at InfoComm 2012 in Las Vegas.

Quotes
"The acquisition of Radvision is an important milestone in Avaya's transformation to what we believe is the industry's first open, interoperable collaboration platform for business. As a result of the transaction, Avaya customers can reap the benefits of richer, simplified video collaboration regardless of what system they’re currently using.”
Kevin J. Kennedy, president and CEO, Avaya

“The combination of our two companies is an important industry milestone. By incorporating Radvision’s expansive, standards-based video portfolio into Avaya’s open, marketing-leading UC offering, we are transforming not only the way people use video conferencing, but also increasing video’s accessibility, affordability and ease of use. Through this merger, Radvision benefits from the Avaya name and marketing resources and Avaya augments its UC offering with an open, robust end-to-end video solution, including a highly intuitive, feature-rich and flexible mobile video application that we believe surpasses anything offered by the competition.”
Boaz Raviv, Vice President & Global Head, Avaya Video Portfolio, Radvision, an Avaya company

"The enterprise video conferencing market is experiencing robust growth, and with this growth, vendors need to address mobility as well as the isolated islands of users that characterize the current state of most video deployments. The combination of Avaya and Radvision is poised to address these enterprise demands—now and in the future—with UC&C solutions that put customers in control of how they implement advanced capabilities across their environments.”
Rob Arnold, Program Manager, Frost & Sullivan

New Ethernet Switches from Avaya Simplify Operations for Small and Midsize Enterprises and Remote Branches

SINGAPORE (April 26, 2012) – Avaya has introduced the Avaya Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 3500, a new series of compact Ethernet switches designed exclusively for small and midsize enterprises (SME), remote branches, and open environments such as classrooms and hospitality suites.

The Avaya ERS 3500 provides enterprise-class functionality and features while simplifying network operations for small locations:

• True plug and play functionality for IP phones—operational in under a minute when connected to the Avaya ERS 3500
• Automated set up with Avaya IP Office—one simple command will automatically provision the switch and enable all IP phones on an Avaya IP Office system
• Intuitive tools for managing, troubleshooting and operating devices—including web-based GUI management, comprehensive centralized management, and configuration tools for large branch office deployments

The plug and play and automation capabilities of the ERS 3500 will simplify deployments for Avaya customers and channel partners by reducing the potential for error during set up, delivering consistency across multiple locations and helping ensure that best practices are followed during installation.

The ERS 3500 Series consists of six Fast and Gigabit Ethernet switches available in 10 and 24-port configurations. Customers can choose models with enhanced Power over Ethernet (PoE+) to future-proof their networks and power advanced IP phones, wireless access points and video surveillance cameras. Fanless switches are also available for noise sensitive environments, such as classrooms or hospitality suites, where silent operation is required.

Customers can purchase the 24-port models of the Avaya ERS 3500 with an eye to the future, starting small and investing in additional capacity as their business grows. Avaya’s Stackable Chassis Architecture will be enabled on these models in a future software release, offering customers the ability to stack up to eight ERS 3500 units for enhanced network availability, simplified management and up to 80Gbps of virtual backplane capacity. Stackable Chassis will provide functionality equivalent to a modular chassis without the associated costs.

This announcement highlights Avaya's commitment to bringing The Power of We™ to every Avaya customer to help drive faster collaboration, smarter decisions and better business results.

Quotes
“Durham District School Board has over 300 portable classrooms in 134 elementary and secondary schools across the region. Most are wired for network access using an 8-port unmanaged switch, so technicians have to drive out to schools each and every time an issue arises. The Avaya ERS 3500 will change all that. It can be managed remotely, making it infinitely easier to configure and troubleshoot, and providing insight into the traffic on the switch. It can be connected to Avaya Identity Engines, allowing us to extend the endpoint security we have in each school out to the portables. And it provides Gigabit Ethernet capabilities in a port density that's ideal for the classroom.”
—Wilson Chan, manager of information systems, Durham District School Board

“Small and midsize enterprises are increasingly interested in technology that supports external communications and enhances internal collaboration. Given that many of these firms lack the IT expertise, budget, and personnel to efficiently deploy and maintain advanced solutions, ease of use remains paramount. Plug and play solutions that feature hardware and software expressly designed to work together, like Avaya IP Office and the ERS 3500, will be particularly attractive to these customers.”
—Justin Jaffe, research manager, SMB and Home Office Markets, IDC

“The Avaya ERS 3500 series is the perfect family of switches for small locations—it provides the features and capabilities that enterprises expect at a price suited for the small and midsize market. We’ve designed the ERS 3500 to work seamlessly with Avaya IP Office, simplifying deployment with our flagship collaboration solution for SMEs so that businesses can be more productive, faster.”
—Marc Randall, senior vice president and general manager, Avaya Networking

Avaya Global Services Targets Growth in Asia Pacific

MALAYSIA, Tuesday, 19 May 2009 - Avaya, the global leader in enterprise communications, recently released a number of major services initiatives aimed at growing its services business in Asia Pacific, via Avaya Global Services (AGS) and its expanding channel partner community. Avaya has significantly enhanced the suite of value added services to its customers in Asia Pacific in line with the global objectives of growing the services business. The initiatives are specifically aimed at helping customers reduce operational costs, through infrastructure centralization, mobility and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their employees.

Chris Cheng, a 24-year industry veteran who has led the growth charge as Head of AGS in Asia Pacific since October, has concentrated the regional services teams on business development, customer advocacy and business user focus. Cheng brings significant experience in the services industry including 20 years of services experience in the Asia-Pacific IT industry. Previously, Cheng worked for Nokia and IBM where he held a variety of senior leadership positions in services including application management services, outsourcing infrastructure services, hosting, and strategic outsourcing and managed operations.

On his services strategy in APAC, Chris Cheng said “We have made significant and strategic investments in APAC while aligning ourselves for growth. Fundamentally, if you want to sell business solution technology to customers today, you must substantiate the investment with measurable business returns. At AGS, we have the best people, processes and tools to analyse every aspect of our customer’s communication environment, aligning solutions to their business needs, then implement them and manage the environment in the most cost-effective manner. By providing upfront consulting, professional services and full service ongoing management of the environment across multiple countries in APAC, we are putting our ‘skin in the game’ and delivering business value with measurable returns to our customers.”

Cheng added “AGS has broad spectrum of new and exciting offers that bring immediate value to our customers – from simple IP Telephony readiness tools, easy to implement contact centre focused packaged applications, such as our AgentMap® software and desktop wallboards – to the most complex consulting and integration solutions, including Interactive Voice Recognition, Voice Portal, Interactive Customer Routing (ICR) and now Avaya Aura™.”

The new Global Services offer portfolio is built around the customer’s communications life cycle. The Planning and Design area includes the newly released Strategic Communications Consulting, a comprehensive, proactive consulting program that drives to the core of the customer’s business issues providing immediate returns on existing and potential customer technology investments through better use of the Avaya communications solutions.

AGS is involved in planning, designing, integrating, supporting and managing solutions for Avaya customers. It comprises of Avaya Professional Services, Avaya Operations Services and Global Support Services. Avaya Global Support Services has been the key valued services enjoyed by Avaya customers and channel partners in the past, but now Avaya is looking to expanding these services with existing and new partners to enhance the range of services and launch a full service offer suite.

Opening up the Market for Growth

One of the major changes Avaya made in the past year is to adopt a broad channel strategy that ensures consistency in delivering a high level of service to all its customers. In the same vein, AGS in APAC has launched a comprehensive online Partner Services Navigator designed to ensure engagement simplification and increase collaboration with its channel partners guaranteeing they have the right tools, intelligence and programs to offer to their customers delivering consistency and increased consideration. The Partner Services Navigator, combined with a focus on partner enablement aligns with the new channel strategy and sets the foundation for channel growth in the APAC region.

This initiative will also provide an opportunity for channel partners to grow their business capabilities and exposure alongside Avaya. The strategy is to work with system integrators as well as service providers to ensure that the customer gets the optimum solution.

Zeroing In on Excellence

As one of the key parameters to adding value to its customers, Avaya has established Centres of Excellence at Pune and Hyderabad in India. These centres house teams of specialist consultants that help understand the needs of business users by specific industry verticals and develop Avaya solutions using global best practice delivery. The other APAC support and development centre in Dalian, China continues to grow as Avaya adds significantly more support functions and services at the centre. Also, the Avaya Professional Services in APAC is being aligned with the Centres of Excellence. For example, for the Hospitality vertical, Avaya Global Services has tailored specific solutions that include call accounting and property management interfaces, PDA solutions for staff or the hotel contact centre system. The centres analyse best practices across industry verticals and apply these to offer cost-competitive, high-value solutions to its customers.

New Applications Development

Avaya Global Services is leveraging its industry expertise and experience to develop integrated applications that add direct value to its customers. As Cheng mentions above one application is AgentMap® which can be easily integrated to Avaya contact centre solutions. AgentMap®, provides the contact centre supervisors a customizable seat-layout view of agents’ real-time status through colour codes, icons and labels.

Industry Recognition

Avaya Global Services has been extremely successful in North America. It was awarded certification under the J.D. Power and Associates Certified Technology Service and Support (CTSS) Program (sm), one of the technology industry's highest recognitions. The certification acknowledged Avaya's excellence in delivering outstanding service and support, a distinction held currently by only three other companies.

Communications as a Service

AGS will extend its expertise to provide consulting and professional services to Avaya Aura™ and Intelligent Customer Routing (ICR) customers in Asia Pacific. Avaya Aura is a recently launched Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based communications architecture which integrates communications across multi-vendor, multi-location and multi-modal businesses on an open platform. Avaya ICR is Avaya’s revolutionary contact centre solution, which is also based on an open platform technology, designed to help businesses enhance customer experiences while improving efficiencies and cost savings in their contact centre operations.

The service offerings provided by to the customer begins with a situational assessment of the communications infrastructure on the actual design, integration and subsequent management of the revamped system. These services are designed to ensure customers that their Avaya Aura™ and Avaya ICR are designed, and implemented, in a manner that ensures alignment with key business requirements whilst minimizing risks, maximizes their return on investment (ROI) and minimising total cost of ownership (TCO).

JUNIPER NETWORKS EX-SERIES ETHERNET SWITCHES ACHIEVE AVAYA INTEROPERABILITY CERTIFICATION TO DELIVER ENTERPRISE IP TELEPHONY SOLUTIONS

Mutual Customers such as AmazingMail.com Gain IT Flexibility and Investment Protection Leveraging Converged Communications Services based on Avaya/Juniper Solutions

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, September 18, 2008 -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced certification compliance of the Juniper Networks EX-series Ethernet switches with Internet protocol (IP) telephony solutions from Avaya, a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

Juniper's EX-series Ethernet switches were successfully compliance tested by Avaya resulting in seamless interoperability with Avaya Communication Manager R5.0, Avaya 9630 IP telephones and Avaya 4610SW IP telephones.

Running on Juniper's powerful JUNOS® software, a single-source code base network operating system, the EX-series Ethernet switches deliver the operational simplicity, carrier-class reliability and integrated security that helps high-performance businesses accelerate the deployment of business-enabling applications and services across the extended enterprise.
By leveraging JUNOS software, EX-series switches offer carrier-class continuous systems availability, automated network operations and a platform for open innovation that enables customers to quickly align the network with changing business requirements.

Mutual customers including Scottsdale, AZ-based AmazingMail.com, Inc., a leading provider of advanced direct mail marketing solutions, have successfully deployed interoperable Juniper/Avaya solutions to achieve greater levels of IT flexibility and investment protection.
"AmazingMail.com relies on converged communications services from Avaya to deliver exceptional customer service while reducing IT costs," said Larry Prine, lead systems administrator for AmazingMail.com, Inc. "Avaya's interoperability certification of the EX-series switches ensures us that the investments we are making in Juniper's high-performance network infrastructure today will support the IP telephony solutions we deploy now and in the future."

Committed to delivering best-in-class IP telephony solutions, Avaya and Juniper Networks have been global strategic partners since 2005. In addition to enabling customers to support converged applications on a single network, customers benefit from joint solution and product development that leverages the innovation of two industry leaders, as well as reseller agreements that facilitate the sale of converged solutions and the global delivery of services and support for enterprise customers.

"Juniper's open, high-performance network infrastructure provides enterprises greater choice and control in quickly meeting their changing business requirements while reducing costs," said Chris Spain, vice president of product management, Ethernet Platforms Business Group at Juniper Networks.

"By achieving compatibility between EX-series Ethernet switches and Avaya's IP telephony solutions, Juniper helps enterprise customers to accelerate the deployment of carrier-class converged business communications that enhance business agility and workforce productivity."
Juniper Networks is also a member of the Avaya DevConnect program — an initiative to develop, market and sell innovative third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology and extend the value of a customers investment in Juniper's high-performance network infrastructure.

Juniper Networks is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab in Lincroft, N.J. There a team of Avaya engineers develops a comprehensive test plan for each application to verify whether it is Avaya compliant.
This ensures businesses can confidently add best-in-class capabilities to their network without having to replace existing infrastructure—speeding deployment of new applications and reducing both network complexity and implementation costs.

"By offering compliance testing to the many innovative companies including DevConnect program members such as Juniper Networks, Avaya promotes fully interoperable solutions that have been designed to help businesses unleash powerful new possibilities," said Eric Rossman, vice president, developer relations and technical alliances, Avaya.

"They are able to use Unified Communications to connect supplier, partners, employees and customers to information from wherever they are, over whatever device they have available – getting more out of their multivendor network and delivering incremental value to their bottom line."

For information regarding Juniper's Avaya interoperability certification, visit www.avaya.com/devconnect, go to "application notes" on the left navigation bar, and search Juniper Networks.

Avaya股東同意被Silver Lake與TPG收購

AVAYA ANNOUNCES STOCKHOLDER APPROVAL OF ACQUISITION OF THE COMPANY

Avaya Inc. (NYSE: AV), a leading global provider of business communications applications, software and services, today announced that, at the company’s special meeting of stockholders held Friday, September 28, 2007, in Wilmington, Delaware, the company’s stockholders voted to adopt the merger agreement providing for the acquisition of Avaya by affiliates of Silver Lake Partners and TPG, two private equity firms.

Avaya also announced that all regulatory approvals required to complete the transaction have been obtained, including the receipt of clearance from the European Commission.On June 4, 2007, Avaya entered into a definitive agreement with an entity formed by Silver Lake Partners and TPG providing for the acquisition of the company.

The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of October 2007, subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain closing conditions. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Avaya stockholders will be entitled to receive $17.50 per share in cash for each share of the company’s common stock, without interest.

Avaya預測社會網絡在商業通訊領域大放異彩

Avaya Expert Predicts the Impact of Context Awareness and Social Networking on Business Communications

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. – New computer technologies – driven by communications data and analytics -- that intelligently automate our communications will transform the way we interact with each other to conduct business, according to Avaya Labs scientist Doree Seligmann, who will speak at the first IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing.

"What people are doing in their day to day business communications helps to identify who they should be interacting with and how,"Seligmann said. "By combining context awareness and social networking, we expect to be able to establish more effective and successful interactions."
Seligmann is director of collaborative applications research for Avaya Labs.

Her group has developed algorithms and models to infer an individual's communication context that includes presence, availability, whether they can be interrupted and are willing to interact, their area of expertise and their social cohesiveness.

Her team has developed a number of inventions that leverage communication context – including a method for a calendar application to estimate the time you must leave the office in order to arrive promptly for a meeting, and a "personalized customer relationship management" application that tells you, how, when and how often a caller has tried to reach you and pops up pertinent notes for you to use during your call.

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) International Conference on Semantic Computing is an international forum for researchers to exchange information regarding advancements in the state of the art and practice of semantic computing, which is a vision of information technology based on semantics shared between people and machines, aiming at making computers more usable and useful to everybody.

During her keynote, Seligmann is sharing information on current Avaya Labs research projects that factor in information derived from users’'communications activities and conversations to make communication choices.

– "There are great benefits for businesses, improving communications within the enterprise, between the enterprise and its customers, and between different enterprises,” Seligmann said. “We can analyze conversations and collaborations to track knowledge and experience, so when a group needs to bring in a new team member to help on new problem we can identify the person with the most up-to-date information on that subject. But we can do even more. We can try to make the most suitable match by considering other factors including up-to-date information about previous interactions within the group, past experiences with similar topics, level of expertise in communication skills, duration and tone of past conversations, language, and temperament. How to best gather and use this myriad of information is the focus of our collaborative communications research."

– Since joining Avaya, Seligmann has filed more than 50 patents, most of which involve technologies designed to help people communicate more efficiently and effectively and have a higher-quality experience while doing so.

In November she will speak at CollaborateCom 2007, a collaborative computing conference in New York, N.Y.

Avaya第二季企業IP通訊市場收入增加

Avaya Widens Lead In Worldwide Enterprise IP Telephony Market in Revenues for Second Quarter of 2007

Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV) widened its lead in worldwide enterprise Internet protocol (IP) telephony revenues, according to Synergy Research Group’s 2Q 2007 Enterprise Voice Market Shares Report. With this report, Avaya marks another quarter of leadership in this market, as more businesses around the globe evolve their voice networks to IP telephony. Avaya is a global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

The report shows Avaya as the #1 vendor in IP telephony revenues (as defined by Synergy), with 25.4 percent of the global market for the second quarter of 2007. In addition, the report shows that Avaya retained its leadership position in the worldwide overall enterprise telephony market in revenue, with nearly 19 percent of the market in 2Q, more than 2 percentage points over its nearest competitor.

“IP Telephony continues to show strong global growth, with the overall market growing 22.5% in revenues year over year,” said Jeremy Duke, president and CEO, Synergy Research Group. “Businesses see IP as an essential part of their strategy to operate more efficiently and productively. Our report shows Avaya continuing to extend its leadership position in terms of market share growth.”

“Avaya customers are now experiencing the competitive edge that can only be gained through a highly reliable, flexible and open IP Telephony platform,” said Stuart Wells, senior vice president and president, Avaya Global Communications Solutions. “Avaya’s communications solutions are giving businesses the powerful tools they need to add significant value today, while providing an IP foundation that ensures business success tomorrow.”

IP telephony is software-based technology that uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to transmit voice over a data network. IP telephony enables companies to find new levels of productivity through mobility and greater efficiency through cost savings – all of which can lead to improved business results. Embedding IP communications capabilities into business applications can drive new communications models for organizations, and make a significant impact on customer service, revenue generation and business continuity.

Avaya’s portfolio of converged solutions includes the industry’s leading IP telephony software – Avaya Communication Manager – as well as a host of IP end points within the Avaya one-X family of deskphones, mobile devices and mobile applications.

Avaya為其自助軟件升級

Avaya Updates Self-Service Software To Enhance Customer Service In New Era of Intelligent Communications

KUALA LUMPUR – Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV), a leading global provider of business applications, systems and services, today debuted new versions of its industry-leading self-service software. The new enhancements make it easier and more cost-effective to improve customer service with speech automation, and provide a foundation for using self-service to create faster, more productive business processes.

Self-service applications give businesses an automated approach to customer service, enabling customers to have greater control over interactions. By speech-enabling self service, people can use spoken commands via phone to relay information to automated systems and complete transactions. Avaya Voice Portal uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Web service technologies to let businesses integrate speech self-service into customer service and business processes.

The new version of Avaya Voice Portal features expanded support for the latest Internet standards, including CCXML, programmable Web Services and VoiceXML 2.1. This creates an open, multi-vendor environment that speeds and simplifies the integration of speech self-service, while reducing its cost of deployment. Avaya Voice Portal and Dialog Designer also feature new Web Services offering a faster, more cost-effective way to use speech in outbound calling applications. ‘Outcall’ capabilities are important to businesses such as law firms or hospitals, which can use Avaya’s solution to more efficiently integrate speech into an existing appointment scheduling application, and have it automatically call clients to ask them to confirm appointments using speech.

Avaya Voice Portal also delivers scalability enhancements with a four-fold increase in the amount of simultaneous self service transactions that can be supported per system. This reduces total cost of ownership for operating self-service, and helps companies more efficiently manage self-service applications across an entire global enterprise. Also, direct integration to SIP trunk lines helps businesses further lower network costs while providing a foundation for SIP presence in multi-media applications, such as video-based self-service.

Avaya Voice Portal has been designed to work with Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) – processes that automate the human collaboration required to conduct business. Voice Portal’s enhancements will simplify the integration of speech self-service within CEBP, helping to improve the automation of processes such as supply chains. For instance, Voice Portal can help notify purchasing agents when supplies run low, and ask them to answer automated questions or provide a status using speech.

Avaya To Help eTelecare Keep Customers Satisfied With Speech Self-Service

According to recent research from Frost & Sullivan[1], Avaya is the 2007 market leader in interactive voice response systems, with its self-service solutions used by a wide range of companies. eTelecare Global Solutions (NASDAQ: ETEL), a leading provider of business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, is a company who is turning to Avaya to bring self-service to many of its clients. eTelecare is in the process of implementing Avaya Voice Portal to help clients ranging from Fortune 500® financial firms to global technology companies enhance self-service functions (such as customer satisfaction surveys, menu navigation and transaction processing) using speech.

“The value of speech in self-service is growing as it proves to be an important asset in the delivery of stellar customer service,” said Kris Weitz Rammer, Chief Information Officer. “Any time you can give a customer a human voice and a choice of options, you are adding value. We think Avaya Voice Portal will help us do this in the most advantageous and efficient way.”

As a leading outsourcer of contact center solutions, eTelecare must use the most reliable and flexible solutions. According to Weitz Rammer, Avaya’s approach lets them use a complete self-service solution that can exist on a single, integrated platform. As a result, the company expects application development to be quicker and customer transactions to be faster.

More Details on New Products

In addition to Avaya Voice Portal 4.0, Avaya today introduced these new self-service products and tools. These products are now available globally:

Avaya Interactive Response 3.0 is a TDM and IP-based speech self service application that offers businesses the ability to evolve their proven self-service architecture to take advantage of the latest Web and speech technologies, including VoiceXML 2.1, the industry standard language used to develop speech self-service applications. As a result, capabilities developed for Avaya Interactive Response are easily ported to the Avaya Voice Portal when a business is ready to evolve to IP telephony.

Avaya Dialog Designer 4.0 is an Eclipse-based application development tool that complements Avaya Voice Portal and Avaya Interactive Response by allowing businesses to accelerate development of speech self-service in traditional telephony and Web services environments. This new release adds support for interacting with SIP signaling and the latest Nuance 9.0 speech technologies. IBM® speech technologies are also supported. Dialog Designer now supports industry-standard call control extensible markup language (CCXML) and enhances computer telephony integration and contact center capabilities through advanced scaling and failover features.

[1] North American IVR Systems Market. 2007. N185-76. Frost & Sullivan.