What is Avaya?

When it comes to business telephony solutions, there's no doubt that the name Avaya will be mentioned somewhere. That's because Avaya is one of the world's leaders in business collaboration and communication solutions. They provide unified communications, real-time video collaboration, contact center, networking and related services to companies of all sizes worldwide.

In 1995, the company that would become Avaya was part of another called Lucent Technologies. Under Lucent, the employees worked to better understand how communications could benefit businesses of all sizes. In 2000, those employees decided to spin off of this business and focus their energies on communications solutions for business customers.

The new company came up with the name Avaya and started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on October 2, 2000 under the stock symbol AV. In 2007, Avaya became privately-held when it was acquired by Silver Lake and TPG Capital, giving them the opportunity to innovate even further and accelerate its strategy.

Since 2001, the company has sold and acquired many companies, including: VPNet Technologies, Inc., VISTA Information Technologies Inc., RouteScience, Tenovis, Spectel, NimCat Networks, Traverse Networks, Ubiquity Software Corporation, Agile Software NZ Limited, Konftel, Sipera, Aurix and Radvision. As of 2015, Avaya has approximately 12,711 employees worldwide. It has offices located in 145 countries and its global headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California.

Avaya is recognized as one of the leading providers of communication solutions. It was named the official telecommunication equipment supplier for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Avaya has received countless awards, including TMC and CUSTOMER Magazine 2015 Customer Product of the Year Award for the Avaya Aura Experience Portal and as a Leader by Gartner in Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony. It has also received the NorthFace Scoreboard Award for Delivering World Class Customer Service and Nemertes PilotHouse Top Provider for Enterprise Video Conferencing.

Avaya offers their solutions through wholesale or through knowledgeable local providers called Avaya Connect Partners. There are thousands of Avaya Connect Partners worldwide, with Converged Communication Systems being one of them. Avaya's partner program, called Avaya Connect, gives resellers the tools, support and training to deliver the best solutions that fits each business's needs. Through Avaya Connect, companies have the ability to offer the best technology to their own clients. Avaya works closely with all of their partners to educate, train and support in all of their solutions.

Unified communications is all about combining different forms of communication into one solution for an efficient, easier way for employees to communicate. Avaya has a number of unified communications solutions to help companies improve productivity and customer service while reducing costs. By integrating various forms of communication, including email, instant messaging, telephony and video, businesses can communicate and collaborate effectively on any device in any location.

Avaya's newest unified communications solution is the Avaya Aura architecture. Avaya Aura delivers video, voice, messaging, presence, web applications and more to users. It reduces infrastructure costs and allows organizations to quickly and efficiently deploy applications from a centralized data center. Avaya Aura products include the Avaya Aura Communication Manager, Avaya Aura Conferencing, Avaya Aura Messaging Avaya Aura Application Server 5300 and the Avaya Aura Solution for Midsize Enterprise.

Businesses of all sizes are making their transition to the cloud. Whether private, public or hybrid, the cloud brings flexibility that traditional infrastructure never could. Avaya Collaborative Cloud is the strategic framework for providing communication services and applications to partners and customers through the cloud. Avaya Collaboration Cloud delivers choice and flexibility and allows customers to choose between a public, private or hybrid cloud to support their various services.

Avaya is a global leader in the contact center market, providing companies with reliable and scalable communications-centric solutions. Their solutions help businesses manage calls, improve customer service and compete more effectively. Whether a small business or large enterprise, Avaya has the perfect contact center solution to fit their needs.

Avaya Aura Contact Center Suite is the contact center solution for Avaya Aura customers. It creates a single integrated system, combining voice, video, chat, email or social media. It uses a model of session management to bring customer service people and applications directly to the customer. Avaya also has the IP Office Contact Center, an affordable contact center solution for SMBs. This multichannel solution integrates with IP Office to create a simple, easy-to-use contact solution.

Avaya has a number of data networking products. Their portfolio is designed to address and exceed competitors' products in resiliency, performance and efficiency. Avaya's data networking portfolio includes hardware for Ethernet switching, unified branch, wireless networking, access control, unified management and a virtual enterprise network.

Converged Communication Systems has been an Avaya Business Partner since 2003 and was Avaya Partner of the Quarter. The team at CCS are certified and trained to provide maintenance and support to Avaya solutions and are available to answer any questions about Avaya products. Contact us today at sales@convergedsystems.com.