Avaya plans for a future dominated by "Voice 2.0." So what exactly does that mean? In a preview of next week's opening keynote, we spoke with one of the top Avaya execs driving that vision.
I got a chance to talk last night with Dr. Alan Baratz, Senior Vice President and President, Global Communication Solutions at Avaya, about his upcoming VoiceCon San Francisco keynote. As you'll see if you click on the link, Baratz is going to talk about something he calls "Voice 2.0," so the obvious place to start was: "What exactly do you mean by 'Voice 2.0?'"Baratz started with some context. Before email came along, voice had approximately 100% of the business communications market. Then you got email, and in rapid succession, media such as IM, social networking, etc. So if there's a perception that voice is in decline, Baratz said, you have to see that in the context of the position it formerly held, and the rapidity with which the new communications media are taking market share away, not just from voice, but from each other.
So where we stand now in business communications is that the need for communications falls into what Baratz described as "two big buckets:"
* "Short, immediate communications," which are the various IM, social networking type of media; and
* "Longer or rich, lasting communications," which is primarily voice and video (Baratz tended to talk about voice and video together).
Baratz went on to suggest that email is the odd medium out here: "It's neither short nor immediate, nor is it rich and lasting." What it is, he contended, is "a good envelope for sharing documents, and presentations and spreadsheets."
"Voice 2.0," Baratz told me, "is all about looking at the control mechanisms embodied in email and asking, What would the world of voice and video look like if you could fuse those mechanisms into those media [i.e., voice/video]?" More specifically, he said, what would it mean to manage connectivity for directory, presence and calendar functions without email as the wrapper for all of this?
I thought that concept sounded similar to Google Wave, but Baratz said the idea of Google Waves is at best a subset of what Avaya is working toward. He stressed the idea of real-time communications at scale as a differentiator for Avaya here: "Real-time communications are really the powerful communications forms," Baratz said. "They are the forms that business runs on and needs to run on."
Baratz said this expanded view of realtime communications control has been the driving force in Avaya's Aura development, but there are other pieces that need to be in place to really have a full solution. For one thing, "Endpoints need to be much richer than traditional desktop phones;" they need to take into account mobility and PC-based communications. Baratz said Avaya is working on a device strategy and roadmap that would bring "some very surprising and compelling capabilities"--though he wouldn't elaborate.
Finally, on the software side, Baratz gave a strong indication of where Avaya is looking for inspiration. He said consumer IM clients from the likes of Yahoo and Skype are a model: "If you could take one of those and enterprise-harden it, and layer on top of it the kinds of control mechanisms I talked about," you'd have something close to where he thinks Avaya needs to go.
So how do all of these visions translate into something Avaya can sell in a time of economic and industry turmoil? Baratz said many of the early developments supported by Aura include "early deliverables that are very expense-reduction oriented." He cited centralized trunking and centralized dial-plan administration as features that promise strong, relatively short-term ROI.
Keynotes are supposed to be visionary, rather than focused on the nuts and bolts. And with Aura, Avaya has a platform that's been well-received as a first step in turning some of Avaya's vision into next-gen reality. I'm hoping that, when you put those two together, we'll hear a talk from Alan Baratz in San Francisco that leaves all of us with a clear idea of how the now-undisputed leader in the voice market plans to stand toe to toe (to toe?) with Cisco and Microsoft.Avaya plans for a future dominated by "Voice 2.0." So what exactly does that mean? In a preview of next week's opening keynote, we spoke with one of the top Avaya execs driving that vision.
