Avaya Enhances Business Collaboration and Unified Communications

Avaya made a few announcements coinciding with its international user group (IAUG) conference, including introducing enhancements to its unified communications soft client portfolio and detailing Johnson Controls' plan to upgrade to Avaya Aura.

In the first announcement, Avaya introduced enhancements for unified communications solutions for mobile employees. With the enhancements provided by Avaya one-X, flexibility is expanded, collaboration is made more efficient, and the cost of supporting a growing mobile workforce is reduced. The Avaya one-X soft client solution delivers Avaya Aura unified communications applications to a wide range of mobile devices.

Among the enhancements are support for new devices such as Android devices, Apple MAC OS and iPhone, and RIM/Blackberry devices, as well as Symbian and Windows-based operating systems. There's also a new SIP client for Apple iOS that enables unified communications and voice over WiFi or cellular networks; presence status of team members made available across Avaya endpoints, soft clients, and mobile devices; unified call logs, contact lists, and voice messages; and the consolidation of mobile UC client applications, management, and administration into a single, virtualized server.

According to Blair Pleasant of UCStrategies, “Consumerization of IT is a reality, and we’re seeing workers ‘bring their own devices’ more frequently. This means that companies like Avaya need to ensure that their unified communications applications and capabilities work seamlessly with a variety of mobile devices, enabling workers to be productive regardless of their location or device. As a Mac user, I was glad to see Avaya’s one-X client now supporting the Mac OS, and this is becoming more important as workers, rather than IT departments, determine which computers and mobiles devices they’ll use.” She adds, “Another important part of this announcement is the ability for presence federation, providing enterprise-wide status, federated with Microsoft and IBM. Federation is increasingly important as companies need to interact with customers, suppliers, and partners who are likely to be on different UC platforms.”

For more information, visit www.avaya.com.