Avaya Unveils "Collaborative Cloud" Strategy and Solutions

28 Mar 2012

On March 27 Avaya unveiled the Collaborative Cloud, a strategic framework for delivering communications and collaboration applications and services to businesses through public, private and hybrid cloud models. The company also announced the AvayaLive™ suite of unique, public-cloud delivered solutions, including the new AvayaLive Connect solution and the enhanced AvayaLive Engage.

Avaya Collaborative Cloud framework enables customers, channel partners, service providers and developers to use, build, deliver and enhance cloud collaboration solutions based on Avaya applications, platforms and infrastructure. The framework allows a wide range of flexible, cloud-based deployment and utilization options to accommodate diverse market segments and needs. Using Avaya's collaboration and Contact Center (CC) applications and network architecture in Collaborative Cloud models, enterprises, service providers and small businesses can drive efficiency, productivity and revenue growth.

As part of the Collaborative Cloud, the new AvayaLive suite of solutions focuses on unique, public cloud-based communications and collaboration services. Today, the suite includes:

AvayaLive Connect - a new, fully-integrated, unified communications solution for small businesses that includes voice, voice conferencing, messaging, video, mobility, presence and more. The solution supports PC, Apple Mac, iOS and Android devices; multiple offices and remote and mobile employees. The entire solution can be easily ordered, downloaded and accessed through the Web. AvayaLive Connect is currently in trials and is planned for general availability in the U.S. market by mid-2012.

AvayaLive Engage - formerly known as web.alive, the Web-based, immersive collaboration environment that Avaya acquired with Nortel adds new features and capabilities. The solution enables participants to use personalized avatars in a 3D environment to engage in collaboration activities such as meetings and creative sessions, sales and customer service, HR training and recruiting. The new features of AvayaLive Engage include:

  • Support for Apple Mac OSX operating systems and Safari browsers
  • Video collaboration and conferencing
  • Video streaming, sharing, and synchronized playback
  • Enhanced collaboration tools

Avaya has quickly followed up the acquisition of Radvision with its Collaboration Cloud, which, upon completion of its development roadmap, closes a significant gap in its overall business model and positions Avaya to compete against its closest competitors in the UCC space which has become mobile, social, video-focused and cloud-based.

For enterprise-grade private or hybrid clouds, businesses and cloud service providers can use Avaya Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA) and Avaya Aura® as the foundation. Avaya VENA enables enterprises or hosting companies to deploy a standards-based private cloud infrastructure that can be extended enterprise-wide from the data center all the way to the desktop. Avaya's session-based Collaborative Cloud architecture framework includes Avaya's open, scalable architecture from the networking layer to the applications layer encouraging rapid application innovation and supports the full breadth of UC and CC services. It is open to third-party SIP innovations and is VMware-ready.

Today, AvayaLive Connect is currently supported on the backend by the Software Communication System (SCS). SCS is part of the intellectual property acquired with the Nortel acquisition. It's a full SIP architecture that will be integrated with Aura Session Management long term for a converged complete holistic enterprise solution.

Avaya Live Connect offers SMB customers a simple self-provisioning process in which a small business can download a client, get a virtual machine spun up in Avaya's cloud, and get its phone numbers assigned and be up and running, all within five minutes. The AvayaLive Connect solution offers a full PBX replacement in the cloud enabling businesses to reduce costs and complexity in collaboration, be up and running quickly while substituting Opex for Capex in this rough economy. You immediately have chat, video, voice and voice conferencing, IM/presence, etc. AvayaLive Connect has multiparty video up to six users and there is unlimited long distance in North America (i.e., no toll charges). Currently only Avaya desktop phones are certified with AvayaLive Connect. In addition, AvayaLive Connect does not integrate with Microsoft Office whereas most competitive solutions do. Web conferencing is on the "to do" roadmap. However, through AvayaLive Engage you can collaborate through video/web conferencing and document sharing.

The partner value proposition for the Collaborative Cloud is a work in progress. In terms of AvayaLive Connect the company will be partnering with service providers like Level 3. The intent of that type of partnership is to permit service provider partners to fully white label, sell and deliver the solution as an integrated element of their portfolio, say for instance, leveraging their local services. This, however, does not preclude Avaya from hosting AvayaLive Connect in its own data centers.

Avaya is also developing the Avaya Application Marketplace, a storefront of device-agnostic applications for interaction with Avaya cloud-based applications and platforms. The Application Marketplace will extend the value of Avaya development partners while creating new revenue opportunities for their offerings. Initially this marketplace will focus on AvayaLive Connect and Engage applications, but expect this to be available to the broader global community for Avaya UCC solutions. Think of it as a consumer-like model for enterprise consumption.

Avaya development partners will have resources, technical support, and marketing programs to accelerate the successful creation and development of highly differentiated business applications. The Application Marketplace will showcase and actively market partners' products and applications to Avaya account teams, customers, and channel partners. The Avaya Application Marketplace and supporting partner program will be introduced later this year.

In the context of the larger cloud strategy Avaya is still working on the different levels of partnership and engagement that will be available. Announcement is also expected later this year. The intent of the program is to enable the channel not compete with it.

In summary, Avaya's Collaborative Cloud framework lets organizations use, build, deliver, and enhance cloud communication services and applications to transform how people work together.

  • Use it: Access services through public and hybrid clouds.
  • Build it: Build a cloud-grade network.
  • Deliver it: For service providers, deliver cloud services.
  • Enhance it: For developers and ecosystem partners, integrate your business applications

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