Avaya Brings UC, Video Collaboration to the Cloud

The networking vendor's Collaborative Cloud framework is designed to make it easier for businesses to access unified communications technology over the Internet.

Avaya officials are pushing a cloud strategy for communications that will let enterprises, service providers and others build and use Avaya-based collaboration solutions in public, private and hybrid clouds.

The Avaya Collaborative Cloud framework was a central part of the keynote speech at the Enterprise Connect 2012 show in Orlando, Fla., given March 27 by Brett Shockley, senior vice president and general manager of applications and emerging technologies at the networking company.

Shockley also introduced a suite of cloud-based solutions, called AvayaLive. That includes the new AvayaLive Connect, an integrated unified communications (UC) offering for smaller businesses that includes everything from voice and voice conferencing to messaging, video and mobility.

The announcements out of Enterprise Connect are just the beginning of what Avaya wants to achieve in the cloud, according to Shockley.

"The Collaborative Cloud formalizes Avaya's cloud strategy,€ he said in a statement. €œIt expands our current portfolio of cloud-based solutions to encompass new [offerings] from the public cloud. Over the year, we will continue building new cloud-based solutions in a variety of highly flexible delivery models, enabling our customers and partners to access, utilize and extend the value of Avaya's applications, platforms and infrastructure."

Avaya has been aggressive over the past couple of years in building up its communications portfolio. Earlier this month, company officials announced it was buying video collaboration vendor Radvision for $230 million, a move that will bring video capabilities in-house and enable Avaya to expand its UC portfolio. It also will help boost Avaya€™s networking business, according to company officials.

With Radvision, Avaya can €œnow provide customers with a single, total solution from Avaya,€ Nick Francis, vice president of sales for Avaya€™s Video Collaboration group, said in a March 15 conference call at the time the Radvision deal was announced.

Avaya has been partnering with other vendors for video conferencing capabilities.

Avaya€™s Collaborative Cloud platform will give businesses, service providers, channel partners and developers a new way to access the company€™s UC, video conferencing and contact center technologies, officials said.

For smaller businesses, AvayaLive Connect will give them a complete, integrated package of communications products that can be accessed via the Web, according to company officials. The mobility support will enable SMBs to handle the growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend of employees wanting to use their own personal devices€”particularly tablets and smartphones€”to access the corporate network and data.

AvayaLive Connect supports PCs and Apple€™s Mac systems, as well as Apple€™s iOS operating system for the iPhone and Google€™s Android mobile OS. It also supports multiple offices, remote workers and mobile employees. Avaya currently is running trials of AvayaLive Connect, which is expected to be generally available in the United States by mid-2012.

Businesses and service providers looking to create enterprise-class private or hybrid clouds can use Avaya€™s Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture€”for deploying private clouds that can be extended from the data center to the desktop€”and Avaya€™s Aura foundational communications platform, according to company officials.

Enterprises also can leverage Avaya€™s Communications Outsourcing Solutions as a private, managed cloud, they said.

In addition, AvayaLive also includes AvayaLive Engage, an immersive platform that lets participants use personalized avatars in a three-dimensional environment for collaborative events like meetings and HR training. AvayaLive Engage had been known as web.alive since it was introduced in February 2011.

The new features of the solution include support for Apple€™s Mac OSX operating systems and Safari Web browsers, video conferencing capabilities, video streaming, sharing and playback, and upgraded collaboration tools.