Avaya works on embedded communication

Pratima Harigunani

PUNE: Avaya Global Services, a company that offers business communications applications, systems and services is working on embedded communication offerings that would be integrated with business processes directly, thus making communication automated while obviating the need for thinking about communication per se.

Pune is slated to host the largest Avaya R&D team in near future.

“Till now we have heard about convergence between communication technologies. Now we are going a step ahead by linking communication tools with business processes so that communication doesn’t originate on thought but on process need,” shared Vivek Tulijapurkar, managing director, Development Centre, here.

He added that with a current headcount of 600 people, that has been growing at 50 per cent for the past few years, Pune as a development center is contributing not only to support of existing products and new features but also incubating new products.

“We are on track to become the largest R&D center for Avaya,” he said. Avaya contributes 15 per cent of its product revenues and eight per cent of its topline to R&D.

Illustrating the Embedded offering, Eileen Rudden, vice president, GM, Unified Communications Group said, “If the transformer of a utility company goes down, an embedded solution will be capable of triggering an alert conference call for the rectification team without the need of waiting for someone to spot the problem first. In the same way, one of our customers in Australia who operate in bottling can have automated alerts on EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) in inventory and logistics snags.”

The trials of these products are already in progress and Avaya would be shipping the first SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) versions in February as a notification tool.

Rudden and Martin S McKendry, vice president, R&D, Enterprise Communications Applications Division, were here to announce the rollout of Unified Communications offering in India.

The category is on a 50 per cent growth trajectory globally and new products like an integration offering with Microsoft (February 2007) and a unified support portal on Web2.0 (June) is ready in the pipeline too.

Rudden estimates Unified Communications category to grow at a 50 per cent clip for the next seven years. She also added that Avaya would be looking to enhance and complete its product basket organically and inorganically. “We are actively looking for opportunities in two focus areas – customer service and unified communication.”

She revealed that video and implementation of convergence tools would be the next big things on Avaya’s platter for the coming years. The company has formal agreements with IBM and Microsoft for technological interfaces and go-to-market collaboration.

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