INTEROP: VoIP Power to the People

We want to make unified communications available to everyone," said Diane Shariff, director of unified communications solutions at Avaya. "You have to improve productivity, and it has to be easy to use."

The platform adds speech access for IBM Lotus Domino 7.0, and upgrades compatibility with Microsoft Exchange 2007 and Internet Explorer 7. In addition, users can now record up to nine optional greetings – and each one in up to three different languages with the new multi-lingual call answer feature. Callers only hear a greeting in their preferred language.

In tacit acknowledgment that maintenance and support is a big issue for IT staff, especially in smaller companies, Avaya also introduced a new set of support tools – available free to its maintenance customers and VARs – InSite Knowledge Management and HealthCheck.

InSite allows users to log into a Web site, enter a natural-language question in the search box, and instantly receive relevant data culled from more than 28,000 articles created by Avaya experts. Additionally, InSite Knowledge Management is “self-learning,” meaning it archives every query and response in order to provide faster matches to future queries on similar issues. This intelligence also helps Avaya more quickly identify troublesome trends based on the high volume of search requests that occur for a particular issue - allowing for rapid customer alerts and fixes.

This is delivered in a simple virtual report with integrated links to Avaya InSite Knowledge Management troubleshooting and administration articles. Combining these two tools gives customers valuable new data and reporting tools at no additional cost. The tools also help customers prevent problems and reduce the impact of issues, since it takes less time to fix them.

Avaya HealthCheck is a proactive test that customers can run to get a single, comprehensive view into what is occurring within their communications network, tracking everything from gateways to end points to circuit packs in order to identify any configuration issues that have caused other customers problems in the past. It provides this via Web by performing an audit revealing how each element of a system is performing, and which components require updates or administrative changes.

And then there's LifeSize Communications, which at INTEROP was talking up the LifeSize Express + LifeSize Focus integrated HD camera and microphone array, which delivers an immersive, high definition telepresence experience over existing broadband networks, even at a mere 1mbps.

Colin Buechler, senior vice president of marketing at LifeSize, says the idea is to allow its reseller partners to go into new opportunities with a range of solutions for every size. "Many companies have an interest in telepresence but are confused by price points and the trade-offs they represent," he said. "This gives the midmarket a Fortune 1,000 experience without the Fortune 1,000 pricetag." He said the main targets for the cheaper system are small conference rooms, executive offices home office and telecommuters and various vertical applications, such as telemedicine.

"We believe that HD video will be as pervasive as audio," said Buechler. "It's just a question of getting the price and performance right."