Avaya's announcement of Avaya Aura, on the first day of VoiceCon Orlando 2009, has the potential of being a big deal for enterprise communications, and perhaps for Unified Communications, as well.Avaya Aura uses Internet Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) technology developed by the wireless standards body, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to potentially simplify communications networking within multi-site enterprises as well as possibly between SIP enabled enterprises.
In the Avaya Aura approach, Session Initiation Protocol is used for what its name implies, to set up sessions. All communication sessions begin by interacting with the Avaya Aura Session Manager, which then provides the addresses between which the signaling and media should flow. Avaya Aura will be available in May 2009 and is included in the existing Avaya communications pricing bundles.
This seems to be a smart "Triple Play" by Avaya--something different and economically justified that will appeal to their major customers. The three plays are:
1. A new form of Least Cost Routing: Using centralized SIP controls to route calls (IP or TDM) dynamically over the least cost route, to save major recurring carrier network costs. 2. A new approach to Networking: Transcend and simplify the physical layers of the network and use carrier networks (wired and wireless) as easily as enterprise networks. The implication is that this will de-couple success in communications from success in networking (doesn't take much to understand the motivation here for both Avaya and for enterprise customers). 3. A new thrust in Unified Communications, especially mobility: It is now clear throughout the industry and based on customer results, that the focus of UC is the integration of communications to optimize business processes, delivered through the user experience, desktop and mobile. Thus, it is integration software and user experiences, not the PBX, that are the center of the UC world. By adapting user-experience-based integration software already proven as scalable and flexible in the mobility networks, Avaya has an opportunity for major strides in UC.
What is the challenge? It will most likely be the adoption rate, not the attractiveness of the Avaya Aura. In the pre-announcement briefings, we heard that Avaya does not yet have a large VAR and SI community in place for Avaya Aura. Perhaps the channels will quickly "see the light" and jump on board. Available channels and professional services resources to facilitate customer adoption and deployment seem likely to be the major factor in the success of this interesting new communications layer from Avaya. Hopefully, for Avaya and for the advancement of UC, the adoption will be smooth and fairly rapid.
