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Cloud Expo: Article

Avaya and Cloud Collaboration

Avaya announces flexible Collaborative Cloud UC offerings for cloud service providers, channel, enterprises

Avaya has announced a set of Collaborative Cloud offerings designed to make it easier for more types of organizations to deploy unified communications (UC), contact center (CC) and video conferencing -- all as on-demand services.

The adoption of UC and CC as a service (UCaaS and CCaaS) brings utility-based pricing to cloud-service providers (CSPs) so they can offer varied and flexible packages to many types of clients. This creates new revenue streams for CSPs by allowing them to deliver app integrations, mobile collaboration and multichannel customer service for their customers. And it allows buyers to only pay for the IP-based communications services they want and need.

This makes the burgeoning bring you own device (BYOD) trend easier for enterprises to manage because they can off-load more of the complexities of mobile and BYOD environments to their cloud and service providers, said Bruce MacVarish, Director of Cloud Solutions at Avaya. The offerings enable CSPs to evolve and augment enterprise communications with cloud-based solutions, as well as provide greater interoperability across vendors, domains and protocols, he said.

Think of it as video conferencing as a service on demand, integratable into more mobile devices and therefore business processes.

Santa Clara-based Avaya is carving out four delivery and distribution models for UCaaS and CCaaS: private cloud/on-premises stacks, managed services for service providers, hosted multi-tenancy services for channel players, and a full software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud capability powered by Avaya focused on the mid-market and smaller organization users.

The video services are more geared toward synchronous video interactions, and not hosted, asynchronous video serving, although Avaya offers both. Think of it as video conferencing as a service on demand, integratable into more mobile devices and therefore business processes.

Avaya's move, like with many evolving cloud models, forms a transition from CapEx to OpEx, utility-based pricing and consumption. It also offers ease and speed in adoption, and a single point of integration for value-added SPs and developers.

I expect to see more SaaS business apps providers and cloud-savvy enterprises integrate Avaya's and other UC services into their web, mobile and cloud offerings. These would include such benefits as click-to-call, customer support interception points, and embedded video conferencing brought directly into more business apps, services and processes.

Hybrid deployments

It will be curious to see how the hybrid deployments of UCaaS and CCaaS are assimilated into other business cloud services as the market matures. Will enterprises and SPs alike seek to embed more UC functions, while themselves controlling the UC stack? Or will communications, like many other business services, be something they expect in any cloud stack? Or what combo of hosting will they prefer in which apps?

A lot of the noise around hybrid cloud fails to take the communications feature and their integration into account. Same for big data: Shouldn't all the unstructured data in communications by part of any analytics mix? How to manage that?

Avaya is now in a controlled release of the solutions, and expects general availability in three to six months, said MacVarish.

Earlier this month, Avaya announced new security enhancements for enterprise collaboration.

A lot of the noise around hybrid cloud fails to take the communications feature and their integration into account.

In more detail, the new and expanded Avaya offerings for CSPs are:

  • Avaya Cloud Enablement for Unified Communications and Customer Experience Management. Based on Avaya Aura, it allows flexible, utility-based, OpEx pricing for CSPs so they pay on actual customer usage. Avaya Control Manager enables centrally managed multi-tenancy.
  • Avaya Cloud Enablement for Video provides CSPs with a scalable platform and multi-tenancy that delivers interoperable, multi-vendor mobile video collaboration. Enhancements to the Elite Series MCUs, Scopia Mobile and Scopia Desktop extend BYOD videoconferencing across most endpoints.
  • Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions (COS) Express, a private cloud offering for up to 500-seat contact centers, can be hosted by Avaya, a CSP or channel partners -- either as Avaya or co-branded services.

Avaya Collaborative Cloud solutions also include Avaya Collaboration Pods, a portfolio of cloud-ready, turnkey solutions designed to simplify installation and operations of real-time applications; and the AvayaLive suite of public-cloud based communications and collaboration services.

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At Interarbor Solutions, we create the analysis and in-depth podcasts on enterprise software and cloud trends that help fuel the social media revolution. As a veteran IT analyst, Dana Gardner moderates discussions and interviews get to the meat of the hottest technology topics. We define and forecast the business productivity effects of enterprise infrastructure, SOA and cloud advances. Our social media vehicles become conversational platforms, powerfully distributed via the BriefingsDirect Network of online media partners like ZDNet and IT-Director.com. As founder and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, Dana Gardner created BriefingsDirect to give online readers and listeners in-depth and direct access to the brightest thought leaders on IT. Our twice-monthly BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition podcasts examine the latest IT news with a panel of analysts and guests. Our sponsored discussions provide a unique, deep-dive focus on specific industry problems and the latest solutions. This podcast equivalent of an analyst briefing session -- made available as a podcast/transcript/blog to any interested viewer and search engine seeker -- breaks the mold on closed knowledge. These informational podcasts jump-start conversational evangelism, drive traffic to lead generation campaigns, and produce strong SEO returns. Interarbor Solutions provides fresh and creative thinking on IT, SOA, cloud and social media strategies based on the power of thoughtful content, made freely and easily available to proactive seekers of insights and information. As a result, marketers and branding professionals can communicate inexpensively with self-qualifiying readers/listeners in discreet market segments. BriefingsDirect podcasts hosted by Dana Gardner: Full turnkey planning, moderatiing, producing, hosting, and distribution via blogs and IT media partners of essential IT knowledge and understanding.

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