Avaya Channel Program

Avaya Connect, a global program to drive greater profitability and growth for channel partners, represents a major overhaul of the company's existing channel programs into a globally consistent framework that streamlines processes, pricing, training and certification requirements.

It will enable channel partners to grow their businesses by expanding financial benefits, enhancing technical, marketing and sales support and providing an effective, simplified training and certification program. The global framework also recognizes the needs of different types of partners, from system integrators and services providers to small and mid-size business resellers, and addresses them appropriately.

"The idea is simple. By building stronger connections with our partners and enabling them to be successful, we can reach farther to better serve customers," said Jeremy Butt, vice president, Worldwide Channels. "Avaya Connect helps drive consideration and closure of Avaya solutions, enables our partners to engage more customers with our products and services portfolio, and provides customers better choices to move their businesses forward."

The program includes a number of financial enhancements and benefits for channel partners including tiered global discounts, incentive programs to help drive growth, and funding to help improve vendor and partner consideration, market coverage and closure rates.

New Avaya Application

Avaya unveiled two new applications that use unified communications and customer service technologies to address urgent business and customer needs. Enabled by Aura, the company's platform supporting enterprise communications, they drive customized solutions that help improve workplace productivity and customer assistance in a more efficient way.

Avaya Notification Solution (ANS) is a SIP-based application that helps streamline communications for an urgent business or emergency situation. When a critical event occurs, the solution can reach out to, inform, and get responses. For further collaboration it can bring the notified parties into a conference call. By enabling processes with communications, the solution accelerates responsiveness and reduces communications breakdowns.

Proactive Outreach for Financial Services adds new enhancements to help companies better manage a key segment of the loss and collections process, mortgage modifications. By combining outbound contact and self-service, the solution calls customers and uses voice automation to determine one's eligibility for a modification. It can also pre-qualify customers and inform them where they are in the application process.

The applications were developed by Avaya Global Services' professional services practice and can use Aura to extend communications across a multi-vendor, multi-location organization while reducing operating costs.

"Avaya's notification and proactive outreach applications are ready-to-use solutions that demonstrate innovation and bring value to industries," said Joe Outlaw, Frost & Sullivan principal analyst. "ANS delivers on the promise of communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) to reduce latency in enterprise decision-making with a combination of reduced operational costs and enhanced customer experiences."

When a critical event occurs, ANS facilitates the flow of urgent information by notifying a pre-determined group of people and accelerating collaboration. It can be triggered by an administrator or third-party application and alert first-line response members using any communications mode. If it can't reach one's first contact preference, it tries the next preferred mode or party.

It can be used for many purposes including business issues, healthcare communications and environmental threats such as hurricane alerts. In a business setting, for example, a retailer can integrate the solution with an inventory management system to assist during the holiday season. ANS can automatically detect if a popular product is on backorder, alert the right department representatives, and bring them onto a conference call to determine a plan of action.

"These applications bring the power of Aura to the forefront of business communications needs," said Greg Billings, vice president, Avaya Global Professional Services. "ANS puts real-time communications to work, driving collaborative processes."

Proactive Outreach for Financial Services, previously introduced to manage collections, adds automated mortgage modification capabilities to help ease the process of making customers aware of their eligibility and the status of their applications. It can identify candidates and call and notify them of their eligibility under the federal government's 2009 Home Affordability Modification Program. Using self-service, it walks them through the pre-qualification process.

Avaya Security Certification

Avaya announced their Unified Communications solution has been certified for security capabilities through the Common Criteria for IT Security Evaluation. Common Criteria is a globally-recognized industry certification that sets standards for IT security and validates products according to these standards through rigorous, independent evaluation. It is the driving force for mutual recognition of secure IT products and is currently recognized in 26 countries.

"This certification provides assurance to Avaya customers around the globe that our UC solution has been extensively tested and has met rigorous industry security standards," said Michael Frendo, vice president and general manager, Unified Communications. "We are committed to delivering secure and reliable products and receiving certification stands as proof of this effort."

The solution tested includes Communication Manager 5.1, S8730 Server, G650 Gateway, SIP Enablement Server (SES) 5.1, one-X 9630 SIP and H.323 deskphones and Secure Service Gateway.

For customers, security in all IT systems is of the utmost priority. "As the internal contact center service provider for Deutsche Post DHL group, we need to assure customers that conversations are kept private and that they will be able to communicate with us at all times," said Wolfgang Rensky, Manager ITC. "Avaya helps us keep that commitment by providing systems and applications that are secure, reliabe and available."

Avaya Compliant

Empirix, Platinum DevConnect member and provider of service quality assurance solutions for new IP communications, announced its Proactive Communications Assurance solution is compliant with Avaya Aura Communication Manager on Avaya S8700 servers with MCC1 Media Gateways and Avaya Proactive Contact with PG230RM. The solution gives organizations the ability to test their outbound contact center from end-to-end, thus ensuring performance, high-quality end user experience and compliance with government regulations.

"Earning compliance accreditation is important because it gives customers a cost-effective, comprehensive approach to ensuring the performance of their Avaya solutions," said Tim Moynihan, vice president, marketing for the enterprise business unit.

More at empirix.com.

Ingate Systems, Gold DevConnect member and provider of enterprise session border controllers that enable SIP communications beyond the protected enterprise network, announced their SIParator and SIP Trunking software module are compliant with Aura Session Manager 1.1, Communication Manager 5.2 and SES 4.2. This is in addition to their existing certification with other Avaya IPT solutions.

The SIParator helps businesses connect IP-PBXs and UC solutions to Internet telephony service providers' SIP trunk offerings instead of conventional PRI trunks, giving both lower cost and more features. It also makes it possible for home workers and road warriors to use the company PBX and allows UC to be global, stretching outside the LAN.

More at ingate.com.

Datapulse, a unified communication software developer and Gold DevConnect member, announced that Precision, their hosted call management solution, is compliant with Avaya Aura Communication Manager 5.2.

"We are delighted that Precision has received the DevConnect Compliant Award from Avaya," said Trevor Crook, Product Manager. "Customers can now benefit from a web-based hosted call accounting and cost analysis solution that integrates seamlessly with Communication Manager."

More at datapulse.com.

Veramark, Gold DevConnect member, announced that VeraSmart eCaS call accounting solution is compliant with Avaya Aura Session Manager. Theapplication helps businesses gain control over their telecom activity, reduce costs and improve productivity. Compatible with TDM, IP or hybrid networks, eCas makes it easy to collect, analyze, and report on call activity and expenses, providing the data necessary to make informed business decisions.

"Veramark has been an OEM provider to Avaya since 1984, and we have been working directly with their engineers ever since to produce call accounting products with broad appeal and functionality," said Tony Mazzullo, president and chief executive officer. "Our customers appreciate the fact that VeraSmart software is fully compatible with their Avaya environment, a standard-based platform that allows them to easily incorporate new and innovative technologies."

More at veramark.com.

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