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The consumerization of IT is helping to drive a shift towards collaborative applications convergence. Employees want to plug their consumer technology experiences into their daily work lives. Particularly, IDC believes the industry is on a trend to combine key technologies, such as email, instant messaging (IM), team workspaces, video, voice, Web conferencing and social features into a single “superset” user environment. This Technology Spotlight discusses collaborative applications and explores the role that Avaya plays in this increasingly important market.
With a broad series of new Unified Communications (UC) and collaboration offerings by Avaya and Microsoft, IT organizations have been prompted to evaluate their UC strategy. Microsoft promises to lower the overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a UC platform by leveraging an all-encompassing software powered communications environment integrated with its Microsoft Office™ suite through the release of Microsoft Lync, while Avaya introduces its newly released UC platform through Avaya Aura.
The purpose of this whitepaper is to clearly identify the comparisons between both provider’s UC offerings through a process of evaluating value that matter to IT organizations in selecting the right UC platform.
Although line shipments for IP telephony have outstripped TDM for some time, many organizations have not yet fully replaced their TDM phones. In fact, only 17% of companies have fully deployed the technology, and the bulk of those are small and midsize businesses. Larger organizations have rolled out the technology in a spotty manner where the TDM system is end-of-life, or other tactical reasons. IT organizations are evaluating the economics, plus desktop IP phones investment when people increasingly rely on mobile devices and soft clients.
Many others are re-evaluating the market as they solidify unified-communications plans and once again contemplate go-forward strategy for IPT. Will they use the same vendor(s)? Will they shift to a hosted- or managed-services model? And what is the true business case? Understanding the true costs is crucial to a successful business case—and a cost-effective implementation.
To create a seamless collaboration environment for mobile and remote workers, Avaya has fully embraced mobile computing by integrating Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile endpoints plus Windows and Mac computing into its Aura core infrastructure. In this podcast Avaya’s VP of Unified Communications Product Marketing, Nancy Maluso, discusses Avaya’s UC mobile collaboration strategy and how IT business leaders can put this technology to work in their corporation.
Camp Dress McKee (CDM) is a consulting, engineering, construction and operations firm delivering exceptional service to public and private clients worldwide. CDM’s traditional areas of expertise include water and the environment. In this podcast, I talk with Peter Palmisano, CIO of CDM, about how CDM is using HD videoconferencing to speed business processes and reduce operational cost.
Camp Dress McKee or CDM is a consulting, engineering, construction and operations firm delivering exceptional service to public and private clients worldwide. CDM’s traditional areas of expertise include water and the environment. In this podcast, I talk with Peter Palmisano, CIO, CDM, about how CDM is using HD videoconferencing to speed business processes and reduce operational cost.
The UC market is rapidly moving toward a cloud service for the small to medium business (SMB) market, thanks to Siemens Enterprise Communications and others offering powerful communications and office productivity software delivered as a service. Cloud services offer the SMB market with some of the same IT services that large enterprises enjoy, but without the complexity and cost. For example, Siemens has been working with Google to offer its OpenScape Cloud Service that integrates features into Google applications, like click to call/conference, etc. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, about the SMB market and how its OpenScape Cloud Services is offering new, innovative solutions that allows these firms to be more competitive and agile.
Over the next few years Wi-Fi networks will transition to 802.11n technology. During this time, many networks will support a mix of 802.11a/g and 802.11n clients. Because they operate at lower data rates, the older clients can reduce the capacity of the entire network. ClientLink technology can help solve problems related to adoption of 802.11n in mixed-client networks by making sure that 802.11a/g clients operate at the best possible rates, especially when they are near cell boundaries.
For as long as I have been following Avaya—and it’s been a decade since it was spun out of Lucent back in October of 2000—it has undergone three fundamental transitions. First, Don Peterson, Avaya’s first CEO, managed to fix Avaya’s balance sheet after Lucent saddled it with heavy debt. He also pointed the way toward IP telephony in his six years at the helm. Then came Louis D’Ambrosio, with high energy and confidence, to point Avaya in the direction of unified communications, and a software and services business model, while bringing the company private in 2007 through TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners. In 2008, Charlie Giancarlo became chairman, while Kevin Kennedy took the helm, ushering in a new wave of innovation and nimbleness while re-engineering sales and channels plus absorbing the Nortel enterprise business. Yes, what a long, strange trip it’s been, but Avaya is now the most innovative in its history and well positioned for the post-recession business cycle. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we examine Avaya’s prospects and challenges.
For those who have not reviewed or seen the Avaya Flare experience, this on-demand video provides you with a view of its easy to use video conferencing environment. It’s short so press start and get ready to be wowed.
In the U.S., a Pacific Northwest state is saving almost $2 million per year by deploying IP Least Cost Routing. A New York-based insurance company has shifted 70,000 calls per week onto its new internal SIP network, saving about 13,000 hours per month of voice traffic which previously had gone to a PSTN carrier. Meanwhile, in Europe, a large manufacturing company is saving 35% of its inter-site communication costs by moving to SIP Trunking.
SIP Trunking is a well-proven technology, with many carriers offering the service, both domestically and internationally. Typical savings from using SIP Trunking can range from 25% to 50%.
Find out how to use SIP and save by downloading this paper
Avaya has developed a unique approach to branch office networking with the introduction of its Advanced Gateway 2330. Previous to Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions business, its branch office solution was focused on communications, but now it has computer-networking capabilities that is manifesting into a powerful branch office portfolio offering. I talk with Michael Fitzgerald, Portfolio Leader of the Unified Branch at Avaya, about Avaya’s investment in branch office networking with particular focus on network designs its approach affords.
This paper focuses on FAX within Microsoft environments, specifically Exchange UM—a key application within the larger sphere of UC. We clarify how faxing is implemented in environments where Microsoft infrastructure solutions including Exchange, UM and OCS are involved. Although Microsoft OCS provides users with a rich set of UC functions such as presence, chat, e-mail, voice mail and other capabilities, the sending and receiving of faxes using T.38 is currently not supported. This document provides guidelines to circumvent this known limitation.
The UC market is rapidly moving toward a cloud service for the small to medium business (SMB) market, thanks to Siemens Enterprise Communications and others offering powerful communications and office productivity software delivered as a service. Cloud services offer the SMB market with some of the same IT services that large enterprises enjoy, but without the complexity and cost. For example, Siemens has been working with Google to offer its OpenScape Cloud Service that integrates features into Google applications, like click to call/conference, etc. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, about the SMB market and how its OpenScape Cloud Services is offering new, innovative solutions that allows these firms to be more competitive and agile.
