Business communication, if seamless, has the capacity to enable enterprises regardless of their size to grow employee productivity, reduce operational costs and increase revenue through smart collaboration. However, one of the biggest challenges faced by businesses today is to understand and incorporate the various developments and changes in digital communications. Avaya Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, has a unique value proposition to build engagement solutions in various ways and create smart communication-enabled processes that enhance the overall experience of teams and customers alike. For the past 16 years, Avaya has been repeatedly recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for contact center infrastructure. The company’s multichannel solutions power many of the world’s largest and most complex contact center operations. It is one of the few contact center technology vendors that also enable midsize companies to take advantage of many of the same capabilities as larger competitors, in an appropriately sized, manageable solution.

Fabric technology - Foundation for today's megatrends
Avaya is the only communications vendor that delivers open mobile solutions based on open standards, with a full stack of completely customizable solutions and cloud-enabled solutions. Avaya’s Fabric technology and SDN –Fx (Software Defined Networking Fabric Extended) architecture are also key differentiators that set it apart from its competitors. Instead of multiple protocols that create network complexity, Avaya provides one fabric-based protocol that forms a single virtual control layer across the entire network. With Fabric Connect architecture, Avaya has changed the paradigm on which networks will be built in the future. Fabric-enabled networking technology uses an innovative approach to network design, operation and management to avoid the bottlenecks that slow the deployment of applications and services. This approach involves deploying Avaya’s Fabric Connect solutions leveraging the only standardized IEEE Ethernet Fabric solution known as Shortest Path Bridging (SPB, IEEE 802.1aq). It is an evolutionary leap forward because it lets organizations completely virtualize their networking technology and allows seamless interworking with existing/legacy or cloud-based infrastructures, making the physical layout of the network irrelevant as you can build any logical network on top.

“At Avaya, we believe our Fabric Connect technology offers a future-proof foundation for today's megatrends – network virtualization, cloud and mobile engagement – while simplifying the network and reducing operational costs. Currently, Avaya's Fabric technology is delivering its SDN promise today. Our competitors talk about Fabric only in the Datacenter space whereas our Fabric Connect technology can be deployed right from the datacenter to the network edge. We are deploying one fabric site per day globally and currently we have 600+ fabric installations worldwide,” says Vishal Agrawal, MD, Avaya India and SAARC. The edge-only, one-touch provisioning model used by the company empowers service change without time-consuming change control because isolation of user services and separation from the network core compartmentalizes the failure domain and therefore the risk. The business benefit is pronounced, with service additions and changes enacted in real-time.

SDN Fx architecture–throughout automation and programmability
There is a huge opportunity which Avaya foresees in the 'Digital India' mandate. “We have a role to play as our technology is uniquely positioned to accommodate the applications that India needs. India requires a new generation of networking, which is low cost, agile and secure,” says Vishal. Avaya’s R&D team in Bangalore built the SDN Fx networking technology, which was ahead of the market by more than 24 months. The Avaya SDN Fx architecture dramatically reduces time-to-service, enabling easy connection of devices and users at the network edge. The company sees this technology as the smart foundation for smart anything executing the Make in India vision, and it is winning awards and customer recognition globally. The Avaya SDN Fx architecture is the first to deliver automation and programmability from the network core to the user edge, providing “connect anything, anywhere” simplicity. An ideal foundation on which to build Internet of Everything strategies, this extensibility makes it much easier to accommodate and configure the escalating number of intelligent devices and users at the edge that need to be connected. In order to build a smart infrastructure, Avaya SDN Fx helps in achieving digital inclusion efficient networking technology for the nation. “SDN Fx is the foundation that accelerates deployment of smart cities and mobile environments everywhere, and improves performance of customer and team engagement solution that the industry has been demanding. Also our SDN Fx networking solutions are more energy efficient and secured to help ward off emerging threats to data networks,” adds Vishal.

Reinventing Communications
Avaya’s key area of focus is to enable business to create and deploy communications applications, which could either provide radical process improvements or generate clearly measurable outcomes. Avaya’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions are available in public, private or hybrid cloud-based service models and can allow companies to adopt new capabilities to support digital transformation, while leveraging investments in existing or legacy platforms. Avaya also offers a single integrated application development platform called Breeze, providing capabilities that extend across both the Unified Communications space and the Contact Center space to allow applications to be built in a way that reflects real business processes and customer requirements, not technology silos. Avaya Breeze provides a next-generation communications solution development environment, and incorporates an e-commerce delivery mechanism called Avaya Snapp Store. It simplifies application development while delivering built-in capabilities for enhanced mobility, embedded communications in customer environment in both the private and hybrid/cloud requirements. Avaya Breeze and Avaya Snap-Ins enable organizations to customize their Customer Experience operations to create a competitive advantage and increase customer lifetime value. Snap-ins are modular, re-usable code that connects or enables a specific outcome. The Avaya Breeze snap-ins can be used across multiple applications, either alone or in conjunction with other snap-ins.

When it comes to providing support for the unified communications and contact center solutions throughout the enterprise, Avaya offers a platform called Aura. The platform integrates and delivers voice, video, data, and web communications applications and services from anywhere, whether in office or on the go. The Avaya Aura Platform delivers rock-solid reliability and remarkable adaptability and supports new collaboration capabilities, applications and customer services immediately. Additionally, it provides a scalable and flexible support to everything, from click-to-dial video conferencing to sophisticated contact center systems, in locations from small branches to corporate headquarters. And it keeps up with change and business growth and enables organizations to expand the communications functionality.

Leading the way
Whether it is a large organization with a solid IT team, or smaller customers with limited or no in-house technology support, Avaya works with its partners to transform the conversation from a product and discount-led selling approach to a value and outcomes-based one.“We keep our business radars active at all times and always link our R&D efforts to business outcomes we want to achieve with our customers. As a result, new technologies will dictate a change of direction in how a company like Avaya executes,” concludes Vishal.


COLLABORATION AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
Avaya serves Enterprise and Midmarket businesses with Unified Communications, Contact Centre Solutions and Multi-channel solutions as the path to differentiation along with Networking and Wireless solutions. It creates engagement environments for teams, customers and the entire ecosystems by custom-crafting solutions that are unique to each organizations’ specific businesses, challenges and needs. Avaya Engagement Environments are made up of solutions consisting of new and existing Avaya unified communications and collaboration, contact center and networking products and services. Further, it is supported by Avaya capabilities in mobility, cloud deployment, application and workflow development and managed services.

Avaya is also helping organizations meet changing customer expectations with innovative customer engagement solutions, which can be implemented through a fully hosted or hybrid cloud model to help ease the transition between existing and new technologies for digital businesses. The Avaya Customer Engagement solutions deliver a flexible, robust foundation provided by Avaya Aura and Elite contact center solutions, now available as 100 percent virtualized, 100 percent software-based platforms that eliminate the need for hardware-based media gateways to perform important call center functions. As the only company specializing in complex business communication solutions, built on open and mobile software platforms, and supported by a robust underlying network infrastructure, Avaya is uniquely placed to help drive customers’ digital transformation strategies.

ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY AND SEAMLESS COMMUNICATION
Tata Technologies had been through a period of exponential growth over the past few years. It was operating via a diverse range of PBXs with little or no integration, no effective audio conferencing facility and no standard reporting tools for analyzing the cost of communication. Tata Technologies wanted to optimize communications to simplify and unify dialing from each of its locations and finally realize significant operational efficiencies to maximize ROI.

It implemented an Avaya Aura Collaboration solution as part of the company’s focus on its “One-to-Win” business strategy — designed to help the organization to significantly simplify and improve communications with its customers and amongst its global employees, and to enhance productivity. The solution included the Centralized Avaya Aura System and Media gateways in the branch offices with IP Phones and Avaya Soft-Clients for Mobile and Desktop Collaboration. The implementation resulted in enhanced productivity using four-digit inter-office dial plan 38 percent reduction in communications costs in India in the first year and seamless communication with customers and employees, regardless of worldwide location.