A key player in the global scene of enterprise communications systems, Avaya created a new Avaya (News - Alert) Aura branch, along with the introduction of midsize enterprise solutions. It also announced the addition of new Avaya conferencing phones to Avaya's Unified Communications portfolio.

In a press release, this world leading provider of unified communications, contact centers, data solutions, and related services explained that new conference call solutions will enable employees in the enterprises of different sizes to easily collaborate via voice, video and data. With the new offerings, Avaya takes another step in overcoming the challenge of enabling highly productive collaboration among employees irrespective of their location or size of the enterprise.

The conferencing phones have been introduced following the acquisition of Konftel (News - Alert) earlier this year. The suite includes three new options for enterprise customers. Avaya claimed that the phones will deliver high-performance, rich features and simplicity at a highly cost-effective price for enterprise customers.

In a press release, Avaya claimed that the new conference call solutions come with enhanced features and greater flexibility. Any group of mobile workers irrespective of their location can use these solutions to start multi-modal collaboration. According to the communication giant, the newly introduced solutions not only make collaboration among groups of employees based in branch or remote locations simpler, they also dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership.

The Avaya Software Investment Protection Policy provides Avaya customers with existing unified communications and contact center licenses who are upgrading to Avaya Aura solutions, including the new branch and midsize enterprise solutions. It will help the customers save in two ways. First, under existing software subscription contracts, customers are allowed to upgrade to current solutions, like-for-like licenses at no charge.

Second, customers who do not have subscription contracts can also save as much as 25 to 80 percent on standard Avaya Aura upgrade pricing.

“There's real market opportunity to provide midsize enterprises with functional, less complex, and easier to manage UC solutions. Likewise, branch office environments require flexible configuration options and things like local PBX (News - Alert) and collaboration features for end users, along with access to centralized UC applications. The new Avaya Aura Solution for Midsize Enterprises and Avaya Aura Branch Solution address their targeted segments appropriately, nicely leveraging Avaya Aura communications features and functionality with effective pricing options for smaller locations,” said senior research analyst, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC, Rich Costello, in a statement.

In the release, Avaya announced that its B5800 Branch Gateway (News - Alert) will be globally available right from this month; Avaya Aura Solution for Midsize Enterprises 6.1 will be globally available in April. Conferencing endpoints will be generally available in April and May.

In a separate media release, Avaya announced that NACR, the largest Avaya channel partner worldwide and the leading independent integrator of best-in-class communications, collaboration, and customer interaction solutions, will be a Silver Sponsor of the 22nd annual conference of the Wisconsin Avaya User Group (WAUG), to be held between March 31 and April 1 in Kohler (News - Alert), WI. The NACR booth will feature live demonstrations of two industry-leading next-generation solutions: the Avaya Flare Experience and Avaya Aura(TM) Contact Center.