Avaya Expands Consulting and Systems Integration Services to Help Businesses Gain the Benefits of Intelligent Communications

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., March 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Avaya Inc. is expanding its professional services offerings to help companies design, implement, support and optimize advanced communications solutions. These solutions connect communications and business processes so that businesses can improve efficiency, effectiveness and faster customer response time. Avaya is a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

A new Software and Custom Application Practice addresses the market movement toward Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), a software architecture that can make it easier to disaggregate and rearrange pieces of software for more flexible access to applications in a Web Services model. This team of specialists is dedicated to software development for communications solutions that leverage SOA, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and other industry standards to link communications applications and business processes more flexibly. In collaboration with Avaya consultants and Avaya alliance partners, the Software and Custom Applications Practice extends Avaya's capacity to design and develop custom software across complex solutions that enable companies to use Intelligent Communications to meet their need to serve customers effectively and solve business problems quickly.

To help customers achieve their communications goals, Avaya Global Services has also established practices for Contact Center and Enterprise Communications that apply consistent consulting practices and methodologies and take advantage of collective Avaya knowledge bases and competencies for customer care, Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and enterprise mobility solutions.

"Companies are in 'growth mode' again and they see the competitive advantages that can be achieved with advanced communications," said Eric Goodness, Research vice president, Gartner. "Our research shows that using an external services provider greatly improves the success of the new communications solutions delivering targeted benefits for businesses and their customers."

A recent project with Vail Resorts, Inc., one of the leading resort operators in North America illustrates the value Avaya Global Services delivers in partnership with customers. Vail Resorts selected Avaya to help design and implement a contact center solution to help its service agents handle inquiries more effectively and increase communications options for customers.

"Avaya professional consultants helped optimize our contact center. Now our agents can handle blended contacts more efficiently which enhances the customer experience," said Jennifer Pierson, IS Telecom Manager Vail Resorts. "Incorporating Avaya Interaction Center's web chat capability gives agents another mode to help close sales, and the solution delivers cost efficiencies by using a consolidated server configuration. It's a well-designed solution that is working well for us and our customers."

The Avaya Consulting and Systems Integration organization brings together more than 2,300 skilled associates under the leadership of Ken Kaisen, who joined Avaya in July 2005 as vice president of Consulting and Systems Integration for Avaya Global Services. Prior to joining Avaya, Kaisen was at the forefront of Xerox's transition to a services-led company for the last 8 years, serving most recently as vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Document Services Business Team for Xerox Global Services.

"Linking communications with business processes helps companies delight customers and improve operations by making information readily available at the time and place it's needed," said Kaisen. "Taking intelligent communications from the planning phase to full implementation requires expertise, experience and consistent methodologies. As customers move toward Web Services for more flexible access to communications applications, professional services and support will play an increasingly important role in creating new capabilities that leverage open standards and work across heterogeneous network environments."

As part of a complete end-to-end IP telephony solution, Avaya also continues to build managed services capabilities. The company's award-winning Proactive IP Support and Remote Managed Services for IP telephony provides holistic monitoring and management capabilities across voice, data and applications -- required and critical to ensuring reliability and availability within the communications domain.

Customers rely on Avaya's service expertise to integrate intelligent communications into their operations. One of the world's largest retailers is standardizing more than 2000 stores on Avaya IP Telephony applications, systems and devices to help lay the foundation for better customer service, collaboration among employees in different stores and areas of the business and making operations more efficient and effective. Avaya Global Services led the design, project management, installation and implementation.

About Avaya Consulting and Systems Integration Practices

The Contact Center Practice provides expertise across the overall customer contact center space, including process reengineering and business communications consulting.

The Enterprise Communications Practice focuses on overall enterprise communications, including tradition and IP telephony, IP migration and mobility solutions.

The Software and Custom Applications Practice is responsible for building, delivering and supporting software-based solutions, best practices, libraries of reusable software modules and Web services, and intellectual property. This team can be engaged by the other Avaya Consulting and Systems integration practices globally and is aligned with Avaya's systems and software product division and partner programs to maximize all Avaya software efforts across the company and around the world.

The Program Management Practice focuses on management of large, complex, often multi-site, IP telephony migrations and contact center solution projects. The global practice sets standards, mechanisms and methodologies across all regions in order to deliver a consistent client experience globally.

The Implementation Practice is responsible for staging and asset management throughout the implementation process.

To learn more about how more than 100 forward-thinking companies from all over the world are already working with Avaya to use Intelligent Communications to gain a distinct competitive advantage, visit our world of possibilities at Inside Intelligence, http://www.avaya.com/intelligence .

Avaya solutions will be on display at Avaya Booth #601 at VoiceCon 2006 in Kissimmee, FL, March 6 -- 9. For all information on Avaya's strategy, product and services announcements at the show, look at our virtual press kit at http://www.avaya.com/media .

About Avaya

Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than 1 million businesses worldwide, including over 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500(R). Focused on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable Internet Protocol (IP) telephony systems and communications software applications and services.

Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications -- and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services -- Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to achieve superior business results. For more information visit the Avaya website: http://www.avaya.com/ .