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Avaya officials are bulking up the company’s Avaya-one X solutions to offer greater communications capabilities to mobile workers.
At its International Avaya User Group event in Las Vegas May 23, Avaya announced the new enhancements to Avaya-one X, which include support for a wide range of mobile devices-including Apple iPhones and smartphones running Google’s Android mobile OS-consolidation of mobile UC (unified communications) client applications and management onto a single, virtualized server and a more wireless options for devices running Apple iOS.
The moves are in response to demands from customers who are looking for easier and better ways to communicate with an increasingly mobile workforce, Nancy Maluso, vice president for UC product and solutions marketing, said during a conference call with analysts and journalists.
“Mobility is now going mainstream,” Maluso said, adding that such trends as the consumerization of IT in the workplace is putting greater pressure on businesses to find ways to improve communications with workers and partners.
Other vendors in the increasingly competitive UC space also are pushing solutions to deal with the issues of the growing numbers of mobile workers and the introduction of consumer devices-such as iPhones and tablet-into the workplace. In April, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled its OpenTouch suite of communications solutions that are designed to enable users to move seamlessly between the myriad communications devices and modes and to address the flood of consumer devices into the business world.
Craig Walker, director of product marketing of communications solutions for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises, said at the time that OpenTouch will enable users to seamlessly move between all these devices and all of these modes of communications.
Avaya’s Maluso said her company is aggressively pushing broad device support, which includes not only the Apple and Android-based devices, but also BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion, devices from Nokia and Windows-based operating systems.
“We support … the widest variety of devices in the marketplace,” she said.
The enhancements to Avaya one-X include not only the wider support, but also a new SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) client for Apple iOS on the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone, which enables UC and voice over WiFi or cellular networks. In addition, Avaya one-X offers presence status of everyone involved in the communications session, including those participating via mobile devices, Maluso said.
The enhancements also include unified data-include call logs, contact lists and voice messages-across all endpoints, and the consolidation of mobile UC client applications, management and administration onto the single, virtualized server, a move that reduce IT support requirements and operating costs.
Avaya has been aggressively growing its UC capabilities over the past few years, not only through Avaya one-X but also with its ACE (Agile Communications Environment) platform and Avaya Flare Experience, which is designed to give users faster access to everything from desktop voice and video to social media, instant messaging and conferencing. Avaya’s ACE is designed to create a single multimedia communications middleware platform that enables greater collaboration among a business’ employees.
Maluso said Avaya will continue to more tightly integrate Avaya one-X with ACE services, and to leverage the Avaya Flare Experience to bring the company’s communications solutions to the widest range of devices as possible.