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Avaya Launches a New Era of Business Communications

Avaya Aura Radically Simplifies Communications With New Breakthrough Architecture That Flexibly Connects Users, Applications and Systems Anywhere

Avaya today announced the launch of a new era of business communications with Avaya Aura(TM), a breakthrough architecture that easily integrates communications across multi-vendor, multi-location and multi-modal businesses. Avaya Aura radically simplifies complex communications networks, reduces infrastructure costs and quickly delivers voice, video, messaging, presence, Web applications and more to employees anywhere. Avaya Aura will be available globally in May 2009.

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.

Avaya Aura is a cost saver in these difficult economic times. Businesses can leave existing multi-vendor equipment and applications in place and bring in the benefits and simplicity of Avaya Aura's architecture to drive significant and rapid return on investment and with the promise of greater business agility in the future.

"With Avaya Aura, organizations can achieve rapid returns on their business communications investment, while simplifying the development and deployment of applications that improve operational performance," said Kevin Kennedy, president and CEO, Avaya. "We've seen some organizations use SIP routing to reduce trunking costs by 20 percent to 60 percent. With this new architecture, for the first time, the way we communicate is defined by the applications and the user, not the network."

"Each step in the migration from TDM to IP communications has to deliver operational and business benefits in the face of dealing with a hodgepodge of legacy and new infrastructure," said Abner Germanow, director of Enterprise Comms Infrastructure Research at IDC. "The recession has turned the attraction of reducing communications complexity and cost into a business imperative."

Avaya Aura offers the following benefits:

--  Ability to create new applications and quickly extend them to users
    anywhere.
--  Map applications to individual employee profiles, making the
    appropriate features globally available regardless of the location, system
    or device to which they are connected.
--  Reduce costs through centrally managed, enterprisewide dial plans and
    on-net calling, global least-cost routing and PSTN access from the most
    cost-effective location.
--  Eliminate local application servers and optimize software licensing
    across the full breadth of the enterprise rather than for a single
    location.
--  Massively scale to 250,000 business users and 25,000 locations.
    

Avaya Aura includes industry-leading unified communications capabilities:

--  Communication Manager, Avaya's flagship voice and video telephony
    software, becomes a business feature server, allowing the decades of
    customer innovation built into Avaya's PBX platform to be exposed as SIP
    features and services coordinated from Session Manager.
--  Presence Services, formerly known as Intelligent Presence Services,
    takes a more central role within the communications platform, expanding the
    ability to federate presence from multiple sources and vendors for a more
    accurate view of an employee or work group availability.
--  Application Enablement Services and Integrated Manager, which remain
    the same.
    

For companies with branch locations, Avaya Aura Branch Edition provides the capabilities of Avaya Aura as a SIP-based replacement for key systems in small locations, enabling companies to go from stand-alone stores and branches to a full, SIP-connected enterprise.

Avaya Aura is supported by Avaya's new consulting framework -- Avaya Strategic Communications Consulting, which helps businesses evolve their communications using the most advanced expertise, tools and capabilities. This new consulting practice builds on Avaya's strong record of helping companies meet business challenges using advanced communications technologies.

Avaya also has one of the broadest portfolios of SIP-based communications applications and an extensive community of independent software developers through the Avaya DevConnect program.

Avaya Aura is available in Branch, Standard and Enterprise Editions and carries forward the "all-inclusive" package pricing announced previously.

Avaya is also introducing an enhancement to its flagship portfolio for the small and medium enterprise market. The Avaya IP Office Customer Call Reporter is a new browser-based application that enables a small business to track and measure customer service and agent productivity levels.

Customer: Australian National University

Avaya is already helping more than 200 organizations globally to develop networks using its new architecture. Among the organizations is Australian National University (ANU), a leading research institution. Based in Canberra, ANU's 14,000 students, staff and faculty are spread across the country and supported by a wide range of applications, systems and vendors that had become so cumbersome that further attempts at advances were hindered.

"ANU runs a 'best of technology' shop," said Darren Coleman, senior network engineer, ANU. "We don't believe in buying everything from one vendor. Over time, we accumulated a variety of media formats and different versions in different locations. It had become very complex and difficult to add new interactive or collaboration applications broadly. We envisioned some kind of common signaling 'engine' that would bring everything together.

"Avaya Aura Session Manager is exactly what we need. We'll be able to manage everything from one place and develop and deploy tailor-made applications to students and staff. We anticipate enormous savings just from a universitywide dial-plan and being able to write our own applications."

About Avaya

Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.

The Avaya SIP Vision: Reducing Complexity, Costs and Building a New Enterprise Communications Future Backgrounder

Avaya Branch Solutions Backgrounder

Avaya Strategic Communications Consulting Backgrounder

Avaya DevConnect Backgrounder

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