BANGALORE, INDIA:  Avaya Aura, the first of its kind Unified Communication (UC) Platform,  has become the latest buzz word  in the UC market ever since its launch a few weeks ago. The new platform, which enables integration of multi-vendor hardware and software to communicate across the enterprise network, thereby, drastically reduces operation costs.

Ritesh Jayswal, director – Industry Solutions, Avaya India, discusses the the advantage the new technology brings in for enterprises in an interaction with CIOL. Excerpts:

CIOL: What is driving enterprises towards UC products despite the downward economic conditions ?

Ritesh Jayswal: In this downturn every enterprise is looking at cutting down costs so that they can make the same profits at lower revenues.

In the Indian context, companies can't retrench too many employees. As a huge chunk of expenditure goes towards employee travels, enterprises are definitely looking forward to cut them by making use of UC products that allow audio, video collaboration, but still give them the experience of having a real-time meeting.

With Avaya Aura we have essentially enabled enterprises to reduce travel and yet create collaboration without allowing the effectiveness of the interaction go down.

CIOL: What has been the concept behind creating the new platform?

RJ: In times like this enterprises are accessing Avaya to find out  how we can help them to cut costs even when deploying new technologies. There is no chance of winning new customers if we say deploy our technology and remove all the existing technologies in their organization.

A few months back we went back to our R&D and started thinking on how we can help enterprise cut costs while deploying new technologies. In any organization, big or small, we can see very complicated architecture right now. A company with one headquarters and five branches would have separate PBX boxes because vendors had been giving boxes to fulfill the need of the a particular branch.

Nobody taught that we will have to integrate all communication devices together at some time. Imagine if all this can come on one platform, and as an enterprise I can call anybody within the enterprise using the extension.
 
CIOL: What are the advantage that an enterprise can think of by adopting the new Avaya Aura platform?

RJ: Aura simplifies complex communications networks, reduces infrastructure costs and quickly delivers voice, video, messaging, presence, web applications and more to employees anywhere.

It adds powerful new capabilities to Communication Manager, including session management that enables multi-vendor hardware and software to communicate across the enterprise network. Avaya Aura orchestrates a wide array of communications applications and systems by decoupling applications from the network. As a result, services can be deployed to users depending on what they need rather than by where they work or the capabilities of the system to which they are connected.

Avaya Aura supports single cross-enterprise dial plans and centralized administration, reducing operating costs and speeding up roll outs of new applications. New aggregated presence features and the inclusion of Avaya one-X Unified Communications interfaces allow businesses to take full advantage of unified communications application and solutions.

CIOL: How easy is it to integrate existing equipment or new services on the platform?

RJ: The new architecture is anchored by the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based, open standards Aura Session Manager, which centralizes communications control and application integration. Session Manager orchestrates a wide array of communications applications and systems by decoupling applications from the network.

As a result, services can be deployed to users depending on what they need rather than by where they work or the capabilities of the system to which they are connected. Session Manager instantly reduces complexity and provides the foundation for broader unified communications strategies.