Avaya Makes New Announcements Concerning Solutions, Partnerships and Research

New Avaya Solutions Keep Small Branch Offices Connected

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Avaya Inc. released new solutions that deliver communications capabilities to the smallest of branch office locations. These new solutions-part of the Avaya Branch Connect Solutions suite-enable large enterprises to seamlessly extend Internet protocol (IP)-based business communications applications to branch locations as small as two to 12 people.

The new Avaya Branch Connect Solutions are backed by two new products, the Avaya G250 Media Gateway and the Avaya G150 Media Gateway. Both enable connectivity with Avaya Communication Manager - the company's IP telephony software platform - while offering different levels of survivability and feature functionality.

The Avaya G250 Media Gateway is for small branch offices that want to support enterprise telephony capabilities and contact center applications with the option to add greater survivability. Embedded capabilities of the G250 include Power over Ethernet (PoE) to enable phones to have "plug and play" capabilities, dual wide area network (WAN) connections and dial-up back-up, as well as a survivability mode to provide basic communications in the event that connection to a centralized server is lost. For critical operations, the G250 offers an additional layer of defense with local survivable processing incorporating an Avaya S8300 Media Server to deliver communications to a branch if headquarters communications fails. The G150 supports standard IP telephony capabilities and survivability.

These gateways support the Avaya MultiVantage™ Communication Applications suite - the company's IP-based applications for telephony, contact centers, messaging and unified communications - and optimize these applications for small branch offices. This suite includes Avaya Communication Manager 3.0, the new version of the company's industry-leading IP telephony software, which was announced yesterday. The gateways work with Communication Manager and the software's integrated management solutions. The G250 can also benefit from Communication Manager's Enterprise Survivable Server feature, which enables another level of enterprise-wide survivability.

One customer who will be using the new version of Communication Manager for its distributed architecture is Winterthur U.S. Holdings Inc., a provider of property and casualty insurance. Winterthur U.S. Holdings currently uses Avaya Communication Manager to deliver communications applications to the desktops of its 2,200 people in 22 nationwide offices. The software runs on Avaya Media Servers and Gateways, which are part of an end-to-end IP telephony network supplied to Winterthur by ATandT.

"Branch offices are a critical extension of global enterprises, which are increasingly turning to IP-based business communications applications to support a globally distributed architecture," said Nick Lippis, president, Lippis Consulting. "Avaya's new branch solutions recognize that in order to take full advantage of communications applications, organizations must deliver cost-effective, continuous and secure communications to even the smallest of branches, where daily business decisions and customer contact create greater competitive advantage."

Avaya to Participate in Development of Industry Standards for Integration of Intelligent Communications and Business Processes

Avaya Inc. has expanded its membership in the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Consortium by becoming a member of the OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language Technical Committee (WSBPEL). OASIS is developing industry standards for business process Web services; WSBPEL is a business process language.

As a member of the technical committee, Avaya will collaborate with other members to enhance WSBPEL to enable real-time communications to be easily embedded in business applications and processes. By joining this Technical Committee, Avaya will be collaborating with over 40 other companies actively working the BPEL specification.

"IT does not matter - it is what you do with technology that matters," said Jim Metzler, vice president, Ashton Metzler Associates. "BPEL represents the first time that key industry leaders have come together to focus on enhancing business processes. Avaya is uniquely positioned to ensure that PEL adequately accommodates voice and related technologies and hence guarantee that BPEL does indeed enable business agility."

New Avaya Investments in Research and Development Support Intelligent Communications Through a Service-Oriented Architecture

Avaya Labs is committing 90 percent of its research and development investments to ongoing software development.

Some examples under development at Avaya Labs include:

• A Session Initiation Protocol-enabled virtual personal assistant that lets workers choose how they prefer to be reached (i.e. voice, IM, e-mail), along with who is allowed to reach them and when. Automated voice-driven "communications assistants" can alert workers to priority callers with a high level of specificity. Workers who answer a phone call at a particular time can use the assistant to provide call-back times that synchronize with the worker's business calendar.
• Expanded agent support that enriches the experience of an online customer who wants to talk to a live agent. When the customer hits a "click-to-talk" button, the agent will receive, along with the call, information about products the customer has viewed online or purchased in the past. Then, SIP-enabled presence can let the agent see the availability of experts in any location, find the right one to serve a customer's specialized needs, and quickly connect the expert to the customer in real-time.

Avaya also is working with the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business to build on previous collaborative research to extend communications in radio frequency identification (RFID) sensor networks into supply chain management and healthcare scenarios, and in event-triggered conferencing for crisis situations.

Juniper Networks and Avaya Announce Intent to Expand Partnership to Deliver Converged Communications

SUNNYVALE, Calif., and BASKING RIDGE, N.J., US - Juniper Networks, Inc. and Avaya, Inc. intend to enter a strategic relationship to deliver converged communication solutions to enterprise customers worldwide. Building on their existing partnership, the new alliance would include joint development of converged solutions combining Avaya's enterprise communications and Juniper's security and routing strengths. The expanded relationship would also include agreements to allow the companies to resell each other's products and services, as well as a global services component to deliver services capabilities, including program management, remote network management and managed services.

"As a company that relies on voice over IP (VoIP) for its global call centers, Rawlings Sporting Goods has already benefited from the collaboration between Avaya and Juniper," said Jack Matthews, director of  information technology, Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, Inc. "Today we are able to provide seamless customer service from multiple call centers, securely and cost-effectively, while taking advantage of the capability and flexibility to expand our business. The partnership between Avaya and Juniper Networks gives us the knowledge, expertise and experience we rely on to ensure reliable communications and customer satisfaction."

The development relationship will focus on converged campus and branch solutions for enterprise markets. The companies will also work to more cohesively integrate Avaya's communication applications and endpoint devices with Juniper's routing and security solutions.

This transaction is subject to the parties signing definitive agreements.