There has been much discussion about the business value of UC. Across the space users are beginning to experience significant business value from implementing UC solutions either as extensions or upgrades to their voice and/or desktop infrastructures. And the benefits can be substantial and returns significant as can be observed in the many case studies found on vendor websites.
Avaya, with its ACE program, is demonstrating considerable business value in various applications ranging from desktop client interoperability with Microsoft and IBM desktops to several vertical applications integration using 3rd party software. In fact, next week at IAUG, Avaya will introduce a new program called Ace Your Apps, designed to help extend Avaya’s transformational people-centric collaboration experiences while providing users with maximum flexibility and choice of desktop and business application software.
At the heart of this program is a compelling offer for enterprises with Avaya Aura or Avaya Communication Server 1000 and Microsoft or IBM instant messaging and presence clients. Enterprises having current Avaya solutions get one free desktop integration user license for each UC-entitled user (up to $140/user in value). This can result in significant savings – up to 87% for 5,000 deployed users – plus the ability to establish a communications-enabled business process (CEBP) platform that can further drive innovation and workflow efficiency by integrating critical business processes in order to grow competitive advantage through both the extension of productivity growth within the enterprise to desk-bound and mobile workers and across the supply chain.
Avaya ACE and Aura implement CEPB 2.0 – Application agility across communications domains. This is both multi-vendor and multi-modal integration. Applications are abstracted from separate and standalone PBX domains and made scalable and continuous across enterprise. They are no longer gated by PBX changes. Avaya Aura is the central point of aggregation at the network level while ACE is the central point of aggregation at the application level providing a unified application view. Enterprises no longer need to be tied to a particular vendor because ACE and Aura are multi-vendor – and not just in the voice-centric world. The integration of ACE and Aura extends CEBP into the multi-modal communications environment including mobility, video, speech, text, chat, presence and other communication services. . You can inject the intelligence onto the session manager to route the call to specific endpoints based on preconfigured policies or some intelligence in the network. This is where ACE and its Foundation Toolkit come into play. Applications are automatically invoked during call setup and can remain in the call until tear down based on a pre-defined set of rules without user intervention.
The Microsoft Communicator Add-in integrates Avaya Aura with OCS R2 using client-side OCS/Lync integration on-prem and in the cloud with BPOS (and Office 365 in 3Q11). Only the OCS/Lync Standard CAL is required, which results in substantial cost savings to the customer in reduced need for Microsoft licenses. Worker productivity is enhanced with click-to-call and telephony presence from Avaya Aura handsets, as well as additional savings from eliminating the need to purchase OCS/Lync devices. The user experience with Microsoft Office Communicator (OC) is preserved with single sign-on and support for phone and computer modes supporting G.711, 722, 729 codecs. Moreover, users can leverage Avaya Aura’s rich feature set directly within OC client including a conversation window allowing mid call control (release, hold and retrieve, DTMF), click-to-video and CRM integration.
IBM Lotus Sametime integration also includes Hot Desking to manage phone and video devices. Workers can use their desk phones or preferred devices to click-to-call or click-to-video and to see presence and presence status changes during PSTN or video calls from within Sametime. Workers may call any PSTN number via integrated dial pad as well as click-to-call from contacts and e-mail within Lotus.
Avaya ACE is coupled with Avaya’s DevConnect Program, which supports third parties in making their applications work with Avaya telephony. DevConnect constitutes a broad ecosystem for delivery of innovative solutions that address an organization’s business, end user, and infrastructure needs. They are creating mainstream communications-enabled applications designed to help organizations ride the next wave of business process improvement. Case studies abound across hospitality, healthcare, banking, business services, utility and other verticals with ACE simplifying integration of real-time communications with applications to streamline business collaboration and workflows. And this is the principal imperative of enterprises today in the rush to harness unified communications for competitive advantage.
Carefx Fusionfx Healthcare Case Study: Carefx Fusionfx is used by over 15,000 care providers in over 400 healthcare centers connecting healthcare providers to data from disparate clinical support systems. Carefx is seeking opportunities to further streamline customers’ clinical and business workflows from multi-vendor communications systems. Avaya ACE was utilized to integrate Carefx with multi-vendor voice and video systems with visibility into caregiver’s presence. Click-to-call, IM, SMS, email, clinical data sharing was embedded directly within healthcare portals. The solution demonstrated 75% improvement in clinical workflow efficiency. “With Avaya ACE, Carefx customers can not only view complete clinical information in real-time but can also act on that information in real-time through communications-enablement. This increases the impact and value of the information since clinicians can react with speed, agility and accuracy to improve patient care,” (Qi Li, M.D., Executive VP of Global Clinical Strategies, Carefx)
Net-net the ACE Your Apps global program offers a great opportunity for Avaya customers to leverage the richness of ACE platform for CEBP as well as desktop integration, and extend Avaya real-time collaboration capabilities to any environment, including desktop software and business applications for a broad array of mobile and other devices. By going with ACE client-side integration you are preserving a single dial plan and the user experience of the OCS/Lync client while allowing client choice of handsets – a clear saver. And you can click-to-call from Office apps.
The growth of Avaya’s ACE applications and DevConnect partner provided solutions demonstrates how users are benefitting from implementing UC solutions broadly in both functionally and vertically focused applications deployments. It is the right time for all businesses to avail themselves of these improved business performance tools.
This article supported by Avaya.
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