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

Unified communications: End of the line for the phone?

By Fiona GrahamTechnology of business reporter, BBC News

Would Unified Communications generate higher productivity for this business?

You're sitting in the office with a client on the phone, ready to make the deal of your career.

They are ready to invest heavily in a shipment of your new and improved flux capacitor - a sale equivalent to the GDP of a medium sized African nation.

If you can clinch this you'll be wearing a jet pack to fly up the greasy pole.

Continue reading the main story

But the client wants to know if they can be delivered in three days - and he has to know now or he will go elsewhere. You need to find out if Bob in despatch can handle it.

But Bob isn't answering the phone and you don't know where he is, or who else may be able to help you.

Your dreams of early retirement on your yacht in the Caribbean slip away into the ether.

Is there anything that could have avoided this?

Well, if the hype is to be believed, unified communications (UC) may have saved the day.

Tech talk

Jargon like this can seem daunting to those uninitiated in the dark arts of IT and telephony.

But what it actually means is bringing together all of the communication tools you use on a daily basis - phone, email, messaging, even video conferencing and social media - and running them from a single platform.

This should allow you to see where your staff are, if they're available, if a colleague can help instead - in the office and also when they're on the move - all from one simple interface.

You can then choose how you contact staff and customers.

Dial it in

Lebara provides low-cost international telephone calls.

Lebara have seen customer retention improve since the system was put in place

At their contact centre in the City of London they expect to handle around 5m calls over the next year.

UC and a niche contact centre package is crucial to their customer services says Rodney Sheriff, Lebara's head of customer service.

"We like to think of ourselves as best in class from a customer service perspective. "

They use technology provided by UC specialists Avaya. And having an integrated service means that the customer service centre is integrated with the back office operation.

"We can route customers calls to the best person to deal with their enquiries.

"We can leave messages for common-place queries so people can get fast access to that information, and if there is a problem it becomes very visible to us.

"The suite gives us instantaneous reporting so we can easily see that marketing, for example, have sent a message that's been misunderstood by our callers, we can see a spike in calls in literally seconds, and we can respond right away."

When agents aren't busy, they can be redirected to customer courtesy calls, through a sophisticated "blended dialer" system. Customers can give feedback on the experience, and Lebara are able to analyse call data to make sure they have enough agents serving each country they operate in.

Matt Kemp is head of operations for customer services and he says that contrary to expectations, the system is easy to use.

"One of the beauties of the system is that I can probably train anyone to record a message and put it on in 10 minutes."

"If we have a major issue we can get a message on there immediately."

Nigel Moulton: "UC makes employees more productive, it makes teams more collaborative"

Avaya's Nigel Moulton says this niche use of UC is just one of many.

"If you think about the different elements of UC, and you apply it to a business scenario here at Lebara, you have a front office and back office operation that need to be tightly integrated.

"If you have elements of the business that aren't integrated, you end up with an ineffective way of dealing with customers, and perhaps a cultural set-up within the company that doesn't allow you to be as flexible as you would like."

Mr Moulton believes that the principles of UC can be applied to most businesses.

"If you think about the average day for the knowledge worker in any organisation - the things they have to process on an average day - email, voicemail, team meetings, collaboration, messaging, all of these things are now pretty prevalent on every employees desktop and they also by and large exist on mobile phones.

"If you want teams to be as productive and collaborative as they can be then you need to give them a common set of tools and applications to use on a daily basis, and these should integrate as seamlessly as possible with their telephony systems and messaging systems."

The company's latest offering is the Avaya Flare user experience that can be used with an optional desktop video device. The plan is to roll this out to other devices such as tablets and mobiles.

Choices, choices

There are no shortage of UC options - Microsoft, Cisco and IBM are just some of the big names to choose from.

BT offers its own service, and also works with a range of UC providers.

"We think of ourselves as the great integrators," says Steve Masters, head of global unified communications.

For him, collaboration is the key benefit of a UC system.

"[It's really about] bringing your organisation far closer together, the ability to then extend that externally and have greater communications and collaboration with your partners."

UC by BT showing a video conference in progress, with a window showing the availability of contacts

He acknowledges that cost can be a big consideration for smaller businesses.

"[That] market and the corporate markets are very different.

"They're diametrically opposed almost. The corporate world views UC as a way of saving money, because there will be so much cost involved in running all these disparate systems."

For a big multinational one factor is being able to move away from using the different technologies provided in different countries by telecoms providers.

"It's not unknown for organisations to have voicemail systems in the hundreds across their organisations.

"So there there's a need to move to a UC one to get better collaboration in the organisation but also to drive cost down in the business.

Mr Masters says that for a small single office operation however, the costs could be prohibitive with limited return on that investment.

He sees video as the next big growth area for the market.

"The analysts are all predicting great things for video over the next three years.

"When people are working remotely you can really enrich the dynamics of a remote meeting through having video."

Changing minds

Duncan Clark is UC specialist with analysts Canalys. He says although UC is nothing new, consumerisation - the drive from people inside companies to have technology that mirrors what they use at home - is changing perspectives.

"I guess people think of consumerisation in terms of people bringing in their own devices or going on the internet and using their own tools, I think it runs much deeper than that it's actually the whole experience that people expect from their workplace that

"I think that's what's changed, and what's really changing the focus, making UC more marketable to a wider audience."

For companies considering adopting the technology, he says that cost doesn't have to be a barrier.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The reality is UC can make a huge difference but it's something that's difficult to measure in real terms”

Duncan ClarkCanalys

"The beauty of UC is that it's not necessary that you take the whole package, and I think that's the thing that gets misunderstood.

"You don't have to implement everything, it's about saying what tools do I need to make the business work."

"The reality is UC can make a huge difference but it's something that's difficult to measure in real terms."

But he does have a few words of warning.

"The key thing for businesses is to really get the background information. I think there's a severe lack of understanding about what the different aspects of UC will actually bring to your business.

"For example, you may think that video conferencing will bring benefits, but when you actually deploy it you find people aren't using it.

"You need to look at what specific solution you choose, and how you implement it and use it in the business."

Xcel Energy Center Taps Avaya and Cross Telecom for Event Execution

BASKING RIDGE, NJ – When participants stream onto Minnesota's Xcel Energy Center floor tonight for the NHL Draft to name their picks for the future of the sport, it's unlikely that the finely tuned technology supporting the event will get a second thought – and that's a good thing. As part of the advance team, Avaya and Cross Telecom have made sure that when there are seconds to negotiate a change in pick order or execute a trade, communication moves faster than a puck on ice.

It's the moment Jim Ibister, vice president of the St. Paul RiverCentre and Xcel Energy Center, has been preparing for since last year's draft.

"We're a small team with a big business," said Ibister. "We have a very dynamic environment and a lot of sophisticated requirements to support all events coming in. Managing all pieces of the puzzle is the challenge. So picking the right pieces of the puzzle is critical."

At Xcel Energy Center, communications plays a critical role helping Ibister's team collaborate with each other and deliver service – and never more so than with the Draft. The event itself has multiple facets – including a stage show, media center, fans, draft picks and families, and the draft business itself being conducted by a dozen representatives from every team at assigned tables on the arena floor.

"The Draft is a very large IT event – we have networks that allow people at those tables to communicate via Internet, email, and telephone. They can communicate from table to table, to the outside world, to professional scouts able to answer questions about trades, and even to other people in the industry," said Ibister. "The infrastructure is critical, but for 365 days out of the year prior to the event, it doesn’t exist – having phones and a redundant and reliable network on the arena floor doesn’t exist."

Avaya and Cross Telecom helped Ibister put together a multi-disciplined plan that gave him the critical – albeit temporary – infrastructure needed and got it in place just days before the event.

"I feel really confident that the time we've spent with Avaya, Cross and others in designing this system is rock solid," said Ibister. "It's been like finding the edges of a puzzle to make the framework and then filling it in – and we are not going to fail the Draft."

Avaya Presents 'The Power of We' Branding

BASKING RIDGE, NJ - To further showcase Avaya's focus on next-generation business collaboration and communications, the company today announced its latest corporate branding initiative titled 'Avaya. The Power of We.' Initially previewed at the International Avaya User Group in late May, the new company campaign will highlight the importance of bringing the right people together with the right information in the right context as well as the role of Avaya's technology and services in making it possible.  
 
"A lot of companies are talking about collaboration, but they're short on specifics," said Kevin Kennedy, CEO, Avaya. "Avaya's vision is very clear: We help our customers bring the right people together with the information and context they need to help deliver business results in real time. Our objective is to give them the best collaboration experience, regardless of the devices, locations, or media they choose."
 
The new brand builds on Avaya's long-standing heritage of delivering mission-critical unified communications, contact center and voice and data communications solutions and will be supported by an integrated marketing campaign featuring print, broadcast, online and social media. As the company continues to enable businesses to improve their efficiency and allow employees to work together more effectively as a team or with their customers and suppliers, 'Avaya. The Power of We' is a logical evolution for the company's messaging, which not only more accurately describes Avaya's strategic focus, but also addresses changing market conditions and communications trends. 
 
"'Avaya. The Power of We' illustrates Avaya's shift from the Age of Information to today's Age of Collaboration where workers are more mobile and globally distributed and are expected to produce more with less resources at a faster pace," said Dan Murphy, vice president, Global Marketing, Avaya. "Avaya technology integrates people with the information they need to foster a deeper level of collaboration, creativity, idea generation and faster decisions. Simply put, Avaya enables customer to leverage the power of 'we' for their own business."