Guide to the TechWeb Network
Powered by Techweb

RSS FeedsSearch

IP Telephony Crosses the Chasm

Posted by Eric Krapf | Jan 31, 2008

I thought the most noteworthy thing Jorge Blanco said to me in our podcast interview was that we'd "crossed the chasm" from TDM to IP telephony. We had our interview before I received Allan Sulkin's annual Market Review article, and I was a little skeptical of Jorge. But Allan's article pretty much convinced me that this wasn't just a case of a vendor blowing smoke.

Here's the relevant figure from Allan's article:


In terms of Avaya's agenda for 2008, Jorge said customer needs are falling into four broad categories:

  • The "infrastructure-centric" level, i.e., "Getting voice, video and data not only onto the network, but with a robust set of communications applications for them, to be leveraged by the end user.”

  • "Workforce productivity," which is really the basket in which Avaya places the applications and capabilities that people are calling Unified Communications--but in the narrow UC sense that excludes bringing communications into business applications that previous weren't or couldn't be communications-enabled (more on that 2 bullets down).

    Meeting this challenge has to do with bringing together different communications functions, whether within Avaya's platform or, more likely, in an integrated way with multiple desktop and system-level components: "We’re definitely looking at how do we enable the workforce itself to be able to operate anywhere—more importantly, for a business to deploy that resource to wherever it needs to be to perform a variety of different functions, from customer service to service delivery to back-office operations.”

  • Customer service (i.e., contact center)--This remains an area where Avaya is the clear leader, and Jorge said they're building upon their existing capabilities. "We have extended the portfolio to provide, for example, an analytics component, that allow the customer to not only collect data, but in real time begin to gather intelligence as to, What are the gaps in performance, What are the natural connections that perhaps the business is not seeing and executing on, and [then] connecting it to the customer service space."

  • Communications-enabled business processes (CEBP)--This was a big push for Avaya last year, and here's how Jorge described it:

    CEBP is really where we see technologies like our VXML engine and voice portal, our application enablement services that begin to expose not only the more traditional CTI capabilities, but the Web Services componentry that is needed to connect these types of services to other types of apps. And, obviously, leveraging SIP and SIP extensions for end to end capabilities.... So it’s really taking the entire environment and making it much more available end to end to a client, so they can integrate onto the rest of the business infrastructure.

    Jorge acknowledged that this last bullet point is maybe 5-10% of the marketplace today; "Everybody else is kind of wrestling with, OK, how do I do what we are now calling basic unified communication—voice, video, conferencing, collaboration, presence, and deliver that to my end users?"

    Finally, in my interview with Jorge, I figured I'd better give him a chance to dispute Allan Sulkin's market numbers showing Cisco passing Avaya for market share leadership in station shipments. He declined to do so, saying, "I’m in no position to question Allan’s numbers. Definitely, Cisco is our number one competitor, and I think that they will remain so for the forseeable future."

    I think he's right about that.





    This is a public forum. CMP Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. CMP Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers.

    Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of CMP Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in CMP Media's Terms of Service.

    Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.