Avaya Communicating on All Fronts

<<<... “This is a big deal,” said Lippis. It can also be used as a development platform for creating presence-aware applications. It is due in May with initial integration with Microsoft’s Office Communicator. Avaya will add integrations with IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Exchange later this year, along with a software development kit for Avaya DevConnect developer partners. IBM is on a unified communications quest. Find out more.

Avaya will also launch a UC client that can work in multivendor environments and can act as a front end to other systems such as Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007. The Avaya one-X Communicator acts as a sort of uber user interface to multiple communications tools, including desktop video, visual voice mail, presence, e-mail, IM, directories and contact history. It provides one-click launch for any type of communication.

The initial release, which supports both H.323 and Session Initiation Protocols, works with telephony presence in Avaya’s Communication Manager and IM presence from Microsoft’s OCS 2007. Additional integrations are planned for later release. It also works with Polycom video processing technology to allow such functions as transfer, forward, conference and hold to be applied to desktop video. It is due in May from Avaya, as well as partner Lenovo in versions that run on the ThinkPad.