Avaya and Skype Sign Agreement

28 Sep 2010

UCStrategies Experts Debate Avaya Skype Strategic AgreementAvaya and Skype announced a strategic agreement to deliver businesses of all sizes innovative, real-time unified communications and collaboration solutions. The agreement is a multi-phase deal, including go-to-market and an industry-first, joint technology integration, aiming to allow businesses to lower costs and expand communication and collaboration with efficiency and ease.

As the agreement commences, Avaya's U.S. customers will have access to Skype Connect, which adds Skype calling to IP-based enterprise communications systems for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) communications channels. Users of Avaya's systems, such as Avaya Aura Session Manager or Avaya IP Office, can make global calls with Skype Connect and provide enterprise-level security and features like tracking and recording.

Skype users and Avaya customers can call each other in the U.S. market for free or at low costs, with access to Avaya's capabilities and other collaboration services.

Nancy Jamison, UCStrategies UC Expert, has already commented about the agreement on her UCStrategies blog. She believes that the two companies have offerings that complement each other, noting that "Avaya, focused on communications for government and the private sector businesses, seeks to round out and expand its communications offerings. This builds on their UC and collaboration offerings, including this month's Flare Experience announcement, and it provides benefits to Avaya customers by helping reduce communication costs. Skype, built its popularity among consumers, but seeks to attract more businesses by expanding capabilities attractive to the enterprise, and this will enable them to do that." Furthermore, she believes that "this union will provide federation of some applications, including presence, voice, video and IM, between businesses and consumers. The later could produce some interesting customer service business benefits, and is something we have all been waiting for."

In the latter half of 2011, the two companies will provide integrated unified communications and collaboration solutions for U.S.-based enterprises. With the integration, Avaya and Skype users can interact through presence, instant messaging, video, and voice.

According to UCStrategies expert Blair Pleasant, "Many of us have been expecting the two companies to more formally announce a relationship. Interoperability and federation are key to the success of the unified communications market, and we're pleased to see Skype and Avaya working together in this area. The more interesting aspect of this agreement will have to wait until the second half of 2011, when the two companies will further integrate their communications platforms so that Avaya and Skype users can interact with one another via presence, instant messaging, voice and video." Pleasant also notes, "This is not an exclusive agreement, and Skype will be working with other third parties. Skype published a set of federation specs based on SIP SIMPLE RTP that other vendors will be able to write to in the second half of 2011."

For more information, visit www.avaya.com or www.skype.com.

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