Avaya Delivers Open, Mobile Collaboration on Virtualized Architecture

BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - Dec 5, 2012) -

• 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%
  

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 Research¹. 

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 continuity of UC.
  
  
• 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.²

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 Aura Session Manager provides a SIP based core communications architecture for on-demand access to collaboration services and applications.
• Avaya Aura Application Enablement Services provides developer interfaces for both off-the-shelf and custom integrations with communications 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.

For more information on these Avaya Aura products visit here; For Avaya Aura Call Center Elite, visit here.

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

"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

"Driven by a desire to reduce costs, improve flexibility, and enhance resiliency, more than 70 percent of companies are planning to virtualize their UC applications, leveraging the same infrastructure that supports other business-critical applications. But before IT architects adopt UC virtualization, they must ensure that available solutions can meet the performance, management, and high availability requirements associated with UC platforms."
--Irwin Lazar, vice president and service director, UC and Collaboration, Nemertes Research

"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

Additional Facts & Information:

• According to IDC, 75 percent of organizations said virtualization is considered for the default build of new server hardware.³
• The top concern preventing companies from increasing virtualization is reliability, according to V-Index, a virtualization industry quarterly survey.⁴
• Avaya Aura VE will be included in Avaya's current Triple 7 Promotion, which helps customers of the Avaya CS1000 platform move to an Avaya Aura solution.

VMware, VMware vCenter and VMware Ready are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

All trademarks identified by ®, TM, or SM are registered marks, trademarks, and service marks, respectively, of Avaya Inc. Avaya and other parties may also have trademark rights in other terms used herein.

Tags: Avaya, Avaya Aura, virtualization, VMware, collaboration, mobility, unified communications, mobile collaboration, contact center

About Avaya:
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should" or "will" or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya's filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Follow Avaya: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn 

¹ Nemertes Research 2012-13 Communications and Computing Benchmark.

² Avaya Collaboration Pods begin trials later this year.

³ IDC Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Enterprise Virtualization Software, 2011, doc #232074, December 2011.

⁴ V-Index: Virtualization Penetration Rate in the Enterprise report, Q3 and Q2 2011, by Vanson Bourne market research.