Avaya to Speak Highly of Standards, Self-Service

When Avaya executives speak at two separate trade shows this week, their keynote addresses will likely resonant with the rest of the IP communications industry. That's because the Voice-over-IP leader will try to reinforce two key trends that are vital to continued success: standards-based IP PBX solutions and self-service.

And to support those trends, Avaya on Monday released its new Voice Portal software platform to aid in the development of IP-based self-service speech solutions -- capitalizing on a proven method to better improve customer service. Avaya also introduced a new speech application development tool, Avaya Dialog Designer, which aids designers in the development of self -service applications.

The moves are part of Avaya's so-called "Intelligent Communications" initiative, when the company back in May announced its foray into the Service- Oriented Architecture (SOA) software business. SOA relies on Web services software standards to develop integrated platforms that operate on disparate systems.

"We're seeing exciting, next generation applications being developed that are based on our new Application Enablement Platform," said Scott McKechnie, Director of Application Enablement Services at Avaya. "These applications, along with web services, are just the start of the era of Intelligent Communications -- where the integration of communications capabilities and business applications enable companies to rethink processes, create new business models and enhance competitive advantage."

McKechnie is slated to deliver one of the keynote addresses at the second annual VoIP Developer Conference starting on Tuesday in San Francisco. The show, which is the only conference of its kind this year that is 100-percent dedicated to educating developers building the next- generation of telecom applications, is being produced by Technology Marketing Corporation, the publishers of this Web site.

Meanwhile, Avaya's Chairman Donald K. Peterson is also scheduled to deliver a keynote address at SpeechTEK 2005 in New York. He is expected to use that opportunity to reinforce Avaya's step into self-service customer relationship management, which a recent study concluded was one of the most valuable weapons in any call centers' arsenal to improve efficiency as well as satisfaction. The study, commissioned by Genesys Labs, a leading contact center solutions provider, found that more than eight out of 10 consumers were satisfied with speech recognition,

"A growing number of businesses are adding speech applications to enhance customer experiences and contact center functionality. This coincides with the shift to service-oriented architectures that employ Web-based technologies to leverage a company's existing call processing, voice response and customer support systems," said Dan Miller, senior analyst, Opus Research.

Avaya's new Voice Portal, in fact, allows a company to re-use existing software components because the speech self-service technologies can be built on Web services in a service-oriented architecture. That in turn helps the IT staff lower its total cost of ownership (TCO). The Avaya Voice Portal also supports the standards-based Red Hat Linux Enterprise 3.0 platform.

The new Dialog Designer, meanwhile, is an application development tool based on the Eclipse framework that will enable Avaya's platform to interoperate with a broad range of standards-based development tools. Dialog Designer also features a common VoiceXML 2.0 browser for use with Avaya Voice Portal and Interactive Response.

Avaya also partnered with IBM for WebSphere Voice Server and WebSphere Application Server as the middleware platforms to support the Avaya Voice Portal. Last week, the two companies announced an agreement to integrate Avaya audio-based communication into Lotus Notes/Domino for enterprise e-mail, Web conferencing and instant messaging offerings.

In addition to Avaya, the VoIP Developers Conference will feature some of the hottest trends in the field of IP-based communications, including open source initiatives, converged solutions and hardware-based architectures. For more information, visit the official Web site of the VoIP Developer show.

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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.

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