Avaya Acquires Sipera

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Avaya today announced it has acquired Sipera, a worldwide provider of Unified Communications (UC) solutions, including Session Border Control (SBC) functionality and a range of UC security applications. Sipera will become a fully integrated part of Avaya. 
 
Sipera strengthens Avaya's UC portfolio with a set of fit-for-purpose, enterprise-class SBC capabilities for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking that offers customers and channel partners flexibility, security and value. The company's open, standards-based solutions work in both Avaya and non-Avaya networks. Combined with Avaya Aura®, Sipera's solutions will provide customers with secure VoIP, SIP trunks, videoconferencing, cloud-based communications, instant messaging, and collaboration tools for workers in any location using any business or consumer device.
 
Sipera provides application-layer security that is intuitive, easy-to-manage and can lower the total cost of ownership of UC and Contact Center deployments. Security features include a patent-pending remote worker solution that helps deploy VPN-less solutions and advanced toll fraud protection.    
 
Quotes:"Sipera's broad portfolio of open, enterprise-focused security technologies strongly align with our own Avaya Aura unified communications architecture. Together, we will help customers simplify deployment, management and maintenance of secure, multi-vendor UC and contact center environments while providing them with greater flexibility to support remote and mobile employees using the device that best suits their needs." 
Dr. Alan Baratz, Senior Vice President and President, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya
 
"Integration of our solutions with Avaya Aura is a significant milestone in the evolution of unified communications. With the combined offerings, users enjoy rich, responsive communication experiences that span multiple channels, applications, devices and networks. These communications incorporate security and compliance features that ensure mission-critical information and resources are safeguarded. Together, our solutions simplify and streamline deployment and management of enterprise UC, improving communications flexibility, accelerating user adoption, and maximizing return on investment."    
Jim Timmer, COO, Sipera
 
"Kelsey-Seybold Clinic is Houston's first and longest standing Accountable Care Organization. Kelsey-Seybold is home to more than 370 physicians providing more than 50 medical specialties throughout a network of 20 Houston-area clinics. Robust communication capabilities and security of our integrated voice and data solutions were key considerations in our selection of Sipera's technology with Avaya's contact center and unified communications solutions. We are excited that this relationship is becoming a permanent one."
Martin Littmann, Director – Information Technology, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic

Avaya Delivers Social Media Solutions to Drive Superior Customer Experiences

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. — Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration solutions and services, today introduced new services and capabilities to help businesses more effectively incorporate social media into their customer sales and service strategy. This announcement is part of Avaya's launch of new contact center solutions to help businesses drive competitively differentiated customer experiences across an array of multimedia channels, including social media.

Avaya's latest social media developments are driven by Avaya Social Media Manager, an integrated solution that allows businesses to scan social media content (such as tweets and Facebook updates) in an automated fashion; analyzes the content for relevance; and then enables customer service agents to take action(1). It can be used to enhance agent and customer experiences, improve branding and increase revenue streams via social media-driven customer service. A user of Avaya Social Media Manager is San Diego, CA.-based Motiva, a 450-agent provider of customer service solutions with contact center operations in Mexico (see quote below).

Social Media Enhancements for Customer Service:
Providing better customer service is the number one benefit that businesses seek to gain from social media customer support, followed by driving more sales(2). Tracking with this demand, Avaya today announces:
Social Media Consulting Services: These new Avaya consulting services help businesses integrate a social media channel into their customer sales and service strategy. The services follow a consistent methodology—which includes a Social Assessment, Strategy Development, Roadmap Creation, and Adoption Plan—tailored according to a business' specific requirements and that guide the company through a customer service evolution using social media.
Integration of Social Media in Agent Desktops: Avaya Social Media Manager can easily integrate with Avaya Aura® Contact Center 6.2, the new version of Avaya's agent-assisted experience solution announced today. This enables a company to incorporate social media into the single view that agents use for managing multimedia customer interactions. The result is a simpler, more productive way for workers to receive relevant social media messages, along with available customer history, and respond to it in a customer session. This differs from other solutions that require a separate interface for customer interaction via social media.
More Details on Avaya Social Media Manager:
Avaya Social Media Manager enables companies to bring social media into an agent desktop—like any other multimedia channel—to more effectively use the large amounts of content found in social media forums. Key capabilities include:
Automatic monitoring of customer feedback using key words or phrases set by a business. This helps agents avoid a ‘tweet deluge’ so they only receive the most relevant social media messages requiring attention.
Sentiment tracking by assigning a score to social media communications such as tweets (i.e. higher positive number = more positive sentiment). This can identify trends in real-time, and the users driving them, to enable fast, relevant responses.
Suggested responses can be provided to employees handling social media-driven customer inquiries, taking topic and customer history into account, while still enabling agents to personalize interactions with customers over social media.
Customer Quote:
Higinio Sanchez, Chief Executive Officer, Motiva
"There is a new generation of customers and agents that are very comfortable with social media, so having the right tools and services to maximize it are essential. Avaya enables us to effectively use social media as a service for our clients, who count on us to ensure their customers receive superior and satisfying experiences on a daily basis.

"Avaya Aura® Contact Center with Social Media Manager enables us to integrate social media right into an agent's desktop, which puts a customer's phone calls, emails, chats and social media messages all in the same view—something that not all agent desktops can effectively do. This, along with Avaya’s new social media consulting for contact centers, enables us to bring our customer service to a whole new level."

Tags: Contact center, call center, customer service, unified communications, CRM, Avaya Aura, social media

About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

(1) Customers will need to comply with all applicable laws and third party social media terms of use.

(2) Frost & Sullivan report, 2011 Planning Considerations – Multi-Channel Contact Centers, January 2011. 75% cite 'provide better customer service' as top benefit of social media customer interactions; 58% cite 'drive more sales'