Avaya Fills In Aura Collaboration Products

Unifided communications (IUC) provider Avaya, has added some products to the Aura “virtual” platform it launched last year, along with a new contact centre product, in its biggest set of announcements since swallowing Nortel in 2009

The products build on Aura which was announced in October 2009, in particular using Avaya Aura Contact Center. The new products include increased security, scalability and flexibility, and common management, while increasing the use of virtualisation across the whole set of products.

The details in the fog

Like all UC vendors, Avaya faces a problem in bringing new products to market. Previous products claimed to do everything users might need, so adding new features always sounds superfluous, especially as most organisations use a tiny fraction of the functions of their communications systems. As a result, specifics tend to dissolve into a fog of marketing terms, and repetitive product details.

Aura’s big pitch is to virtualise servers which previously required their own hardware, so medium-sized companies can deploy a full range of UC features on less hardware. It also includes integration with major communications products, and is based on international standards such as IP and the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Avaya points out several new products, including Avaya Agile Communications Environment (ACE) 2.2, wihch  includes Event Response Manager, a packaged application that automatically notifies the right department or person to respond to and manage unexpected events, such as inventory shortages, security breaches.

Avaya Aura Conferencing, now available in Standard Edition, provides audio, video and Web conferencing features on a single server, while Aura Messaging provides multimedia messaging with choices for accessing and storing messages.

Aura Presence Services offers an open standards-based, native instant messaging solution providing federated presence for IBM Lotus Sametime, and IM and Presence across Microsoft, IBM, Avaya one-X Communicator and Avaya one-X Agent and Avaya 9600 SIP phones, the company promises.

Aura Session Manager scales bigger

Among other announcements, the company highlighted Aura Session Manager 6.0, which now scales to over 100,000 users, including 50,000 SIP phones and video capable endpoints and Aura Communication Manager 6.0, which can now be deployed as an Evolution server for migration of mixed H.323/TDM endpoints to SIP environments or a full SIP-based voice and video feature server. Aura Session Border Controller (SBC) helps allow enterprises to securely connect real time, SIP-based unified communications to the rapidly growing number of IP-based devices, smart phones and applications both within and external to a company.

The Avaya 9600 family of desk phones now offer larger, color touch screen displays at a lower price point, function on lower power, while a new value-priced SIP model, the Avaya 1603SW-I, offers small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) a low-cost option. The company also issued a release of Avaya Communications Server 1000 (CS1000), which it said increases scalability, enhances SIP support and connectivity.

The Aura Contact Center is a multimedia work assignment application for mid-size contact centres that connects customers and their information to the right agent or expert via any communications mode, such as voice, video, e-mail, or Web chat. It uses the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based collaborative session model of Aura and complements the large enterprise solutions of Aura Call Center Elite, and will serve as its multimedia extension, the company said.

Other solutions include Aura Workforce Optimization (WFO), which includes recording and quality monitoring capabilities, a workforce management application that collects information and historical trends from a contact center, and Proactive Outreach Manager, designed to work with Avaya Voice Portal to reach out to customers via self-service. Other contact centre introductions include a new version of Avaya IQ 5.1, a reporting and analytics solution, and Aura Call Center Elite 6.0, Avaya’s call routing software for large enterprises.