IP Telephony

Contact Centers

Mobility

Services

WHITE Business Communications

PAPER
Applications on Any Network
May 2005
avaya.com

Table of Contents

Section 1: Introduction ................................................................................................ 1

Section 2: Business Communications Applications – Definition .................................. 1

Section 3: The Avaya Approach to Business Communications .................................... 3

Applications on Any Network

Section 4: How Customers Are Benefiting From Avaya Business ................................ 4

Communications Applications Solutions

Section 5: The Avaya Portfolio of Business Communications ...................................... 6

Applications Solutions Delivers Value

Section 6: Conclusions ................................................................................................. 8

Section 7: Footnotes ......................................................................................................... 9

Section 8: Learn More ....................................................................................................... 9

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Section 1: Introduction
Leading technological innovators such as Avaya are seeking to assist businesses and other enterprises in
leveraging communications infrastructure through Business Communications Applications.

The emergence of this new type of Business Communications Applications is discussed in the Avaya white
paper, “New Era of Intelligent Communications,” and serves as important foundational reading for those
seeking to better understand the origins and implications of this new category.1

This paper focuses on: how Business Communications Applications are quickly becoming a requirement for
businesses seeking competitive differentiation through increased business agility; and how Avaya is mapping
out a leadership position in this application category, to apply across all networks, and delivering tangible
business value to those enterprises implementing its solutions.

Section 2: Business Communications Applications – Definition

Business Communications Applications constitute a new class of intelligent applications that act as the glue
that brings together end-users, networks, and other enterprise business applications. These applications
connect workers, customers and business processes to the right people, at the right time, by the right
communication medium. Business Communications Applications are real-time, mission-critical applications
that address the following areas:

• Telephony and Conferencing – connecting people to people, and people to groups with intelligence and
control.

• Contact Center – connecting businesses intelligently to their customers proactively and reactively as well as
connecting customer service personnel to internal customer databases and status on process outcomes in
other enterprise applications, such as Siebel or SAP.

• Unified Communication and Voice Messaging – enabling people to intelligently and seamlessly control their
multiple methods of communicating, as well as access to critical business applications and information.

• Collaboration – enabling people to work more effectively by sharing applications regardless of location.

• Email and Instant Messaging – providing secure links to both public and private communications channels
and selected groups.

• Mobility – providing seamless communications for the enterprise workforce – the same, consistent
communications capabilities and information-access regardless of location – and control to the enterprise.

Business Communications Applications fill a powerful position within an enterprise’s operational architecture,
interacting with people, processes, business enterprise applications and the underlying network infrastructure.
This interaction is depicted below.
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Figure 1: Business Communications Applications within an Enterprise’s Architecture

Business Communications Applications deliver important business benefits. This category of applications
enables a new level of business agility, consisting of organizational speed, responsiveness, and control. They
can provide communication intelligence across globally distributed processes, supply chains and value chains,
opening up significant leverage opportunities. Because these applications become embedded in business
applications and processes, and because they run on any network, they can help enterprises leverage their
investment in network infrastructure to deliver business value. By connecting people to people, and people
to applications, they can optimize productivity with enhanced control and functionality, while linking
communications and business intelligence – reducing transaction-completion time, and increasing the
quality of decisions. The result is differentiated customer service with the customer served faster, more
effectively and in a manner that suits individual customer preferences. Because these applications are built
with open interfaces, enterprises can customize their implementations to best address emerging market
opportunities.

Business Communications Applications, while fully leveraging the enterprise’s network, should not be
confused with the infrastructure. Because they exist at the application layer and are software-centric rather
than hardware-dependent, these applications ride on the network but are not embedded in the network layer.
This independence from the infrastructure allows them to be network-vendor-agnostic and run on a wide
variety of network types, including LANs, WANs (private line, PSTN), cellular, wireless, and over a variety of
network protocols. Business Communications Applications also drives tremendous value from previous
investments in networks without being locked in a single network or vendor supplied infrastructure.

Business Communications Applications are focused on improving business performance, rather than just
improving performance of the network. Planning, design and acquisition of these applications naturally falls
into the domain of the enterprise-application organization, rather than the networking organization.
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Section 3: The Avaya Approach to Business Communications Applications on
Any Network
Avaya is known globally as a voice innovator. The Avaya voice heritage has led it to global leadership positions
in IP telephony, contact centers and intelligent call routing. At the core of its leadership is the fundamental
understanding that voice technology must always be reliable, secure and highly available. From this unique
voice heritage, Avaya is leading the transition to a new era of intelligent communications, transitioning from
real time to right time communications.

Figure 2: Evolution of Separate Voice Applications to Embedded Business Communications Applications

Avaya has leveraged this voice heritage to craft its approach to designing and delivering its Business
Communications Applications. It has focused on three key foundational elements for Business
Communications Applications – Intelligent Communications; Open Interoperability; and High Availability and
Security.

Intelligent Communications is the capacity of the application to connect people and processes globally
by intelligently incorporating communications into real-time business operations. It accomplishes this by
embedding multi-modal communication awareness and presence capabilities into business applications,
including supply-chain and value-chain applications. The results from this integration function include making
employees more productive, processes more intelligent, and customers more satisfied. Specific applications
might include:

• Important customer contact – web, email or voice – routed anywhere in the world to the right resources
and skills

• ERP supply failure alerts executives, and launches collaboration session to resolve

• Salesperson on the road is able to access all enterprise resources remotely, including receiving customer
calls placed to her back at the office

• Extending full IP Telephony capabilities to remote branch office workers who are directly interacting with
customers
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AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

Unlike other vendors that force customers into proprietary end-to-end systems and software,
Avaya is leading the industry to a model that gives enterprises choice.

The second foundational pillar of the Avaya Business Communications Applications portfolio is Open
Interoperability. Unlike other vendors that force customers into proprietary end-to-end systems and software,
Avaya is leading the industry to a model that gives enterprises choice. Recognizing that the new Business
Communications Applications inherently need to interact with a wide array of business applications, access
devices and network topologies, Avaya has incorporated open interfaces into every application it is bringing
to market. Avaya is delivering SIP-enabled Business Communications Applications now, while other major
communications vendors have talked about SIP but have yet to implement.2 This enables simpler application
insertion into ongoing business processes, by reducing the complexity of integrating the Avaya applications
with existing applications and network infrastructure. Avaya applications can be viewed as modular compo-
nents that can easily be linked with existing applications and the evolving ecosystem of applications from
other software providers. In addition to applications interoperability, Avaya has focused on network interoper-
ability through ongoing exchanges with network-equipment vendors and service providers. Avaya has made
important commitments to open standards, compliance testing and interoperability support, backing up its
promise of open interoperability. The ultimate proof of its commitment to interoperability is the growing
number of customer installations of its Business Communications Applications that are running smoothly
on server platforms from HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems, and on networks based on 3Com, Cisco, Extreme
Networks, Foundry Networks, and Juniper infrastructure platforms.

The third foundational pillar of The Avaya Business Communications Applications portfolio is delivering these
applications with High Availability and Security. Avaya supports its Business Communications Applications
with platforms that are designed to be as reliable and secure as its customers have come to expect in their
older dedicated voice networks. For example, Avaya has built in encryption support for both its IP Softphones
and IP desksets, providing secure communications capability regardless of location or underlying network. It
has provided for new failover options that use distributed platforms to automatically take over applications
delivery in the case of a network fault or specific platform crash. Recognizing that its applications are running
on converged networks and interacting with numerous other applications, Avaya has expanded its support for
applications performance, fault management, root-cause analysis and multi-vendor remediation processes.
It has also provided for a new level of applications management security that encompasses applications and
platform security-hardening and secure monitoring and control.

Section 4: How Customers Are Benefiting From Avaya Business Communications

Applications Solutions
Turning the possibilities of the Avaya Business Communications Applications into real business value
happens within one business at a time. The following are three cases of real enterprises that have
implemented Avaya applications and have embedded Intelligent Communications into their business
process in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Padcom, Inc. is one of North America’s leading providers of mobile data solutions. To increase their competi-
tive advantage and help fuel aggressive growth, Padcom’s leadership decided to transform their headquar-
ters-based sales and service groups into mobile teams in order to provide customers with highly personalized
support and increase their business speed and agility. To accomplish this transformation, the company needed
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to take “connectedness” to a whole new level. Padcom selected Avaya for the company’s mobility transforma-
tion based on Avaya’s open implementation and superior communications application capabilities, and its
ability to run seamlessly on Padcom’s Cisco-based network infrastructure. Implementing the capabilities of
Avaya Communication Manager, along with laptops equipped with secure Avaya IP Softphones, all operating
over established VPN links, Padcom was able to liberate its sales and service teams’ operational processes to
better interact with their customers and colleagues. When the softphone isn’t convenient, the same number
reaches them on their cell phones, via Communication Manager’s Extension to Cellular feature. By having
access to full communication resources over different network connections (wired, wireless, cellular), the
sales and service teams also have access to Padcom’s key business processes, such as their CRM, supply
chain management and CTI applications. According to Padcom, “Our sales and service staff has never been
more reachable. Fewer calls get missed, and response times are faster – both of which reinforce our brand
image for differentiated support.”3 Avaya is committed to rapidly enhancing the mobility capabilities of its
Business Communications Applications in order to continue to provide leading-edge solutions to innovators
like Padcom.

Padcom selected Avaya for the company’s mobility transformation based on Avaya’s open implementation
and superior communications application capabilities, and its ability to run seamlessly on
Padcom’s Cisco-based network infrastructure.

Amicus Outsourcing Ltd. is a fast-growing U.K. based company specializing in outsourcing multi-channel
customer contact and fulfillment solutions. Looking for a contact-center solution that would help differenti-
ate it from competitors, Amicus found that solution with Avaya. While the heart of the solution was an Avaya
contact-center application with outstanding reliability, that was just the beginning. Amicus gained advanced
skills-based routing, call blending, and remote-agent functionality delivered through IP Telephony communica-
tions to implement a streamlined business delivery process, which also was capable of integrating with key
CRM applications of its clients. Taking full advantage of Avaya virtual call-center capability unsurpassed by
other IP Telephony vendors, Amicus uses Avaya Virtual Private Network capabilities to connect remote agents
who are equipped with Avaya IP Softphone applications on their laptops to manage the full functionality of
their contact-center tasks. With the call-blending capability of Avaya Computer Telephony (ACT) agent, pro-
ductivity is maintained at optimal levels, allowing the agents to shift from incoming call response to outbound
campaigns. ACT also ensures that all agents get relevant campaign information for all calls via screen pops,
further increasing their effectiveness. According to Amicus, “Because everything is integrated, we’re
generally able to get campaigns up and running in a manner of days. And that gives us massive competitive
advantage.”4 As a global leader in contact center applications, Avaya is focused on continuing to drive greater
business value for customers like Amicus.

Charter Manufacturing, a U.S. steelmaker facing sharp competition, wanted to increase its collaboration
capabilities throughout its multiple locations while both reducing its cost structure and improving its
business-continuity capability. Charter’s customers expect flawless execution of service processes – for
instance, agile responses to last-minute order-change requests. The company wanted to meet this need but,
of course, still make a profit on all transactions. Intelligent communication was required, and the solution
was Avaya Business Communications Applications. Charter was able to implement an enhanced interoffice
communication application suite by extending main voice-communication capabilities to remote locations and
field service personnel with increased business-continuity resiliency over an IP network. The solution improved
collaboration capabilities between facilities, insured against missed customer calls, lowered costs, and
empowered its field-based technical service representatives to coordinate between customers and Charter’s
production staff. The solution hit on all of Charter’s key objectives.5
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These are merely a sampling of the impact that Avaya Business Communications Applications are having on
driving business agility, improved customer service, and creating competitive differentiation.

Section 5: The Avaya Portfolio of Business Communications Applications

Solutions Delivers Value
Avaya is a leading provider of communications solutions that are converging into the new Business
Communications Applications space with leading market share positions in the following applications:

• #1 in IP Telephony globally

• #1 in Contact Centers in the US, Western Europe and Asia Pacific

• #1 in Voice Messaging, Unified Communications and Unified Messaging globally

• #1 in Voice Maintenance Services globally

Avaya is poised to take a market leadership in the new category of Business Communications Applications
with its recent announcement of a large number of new product and services offerings.

Figure 3: New Business Communications Applications Solutions from Avaya

The Avaya new capabilities are best understood through the lens of its Business Communications Applications
foundational pillars.
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Intelligent Communications

Avaya is greatly expanding its collaboration capabilities with conferencing offerings for enterprises of all sizes.
Communication Manager 3.0 has integrated conferencing functionality allowing on-demand conferencing of
up to 300 people. This offer is part of the Avaya Meeting Exchange multimedia conferencing suite. It
incorporates SIP-based interfaces, providing:

• Integration with business applications such as corporate directories, IM, Outlook & Notes

• Administrative control including access control, secure scheduling, recording and playback (for time
shifting for collaborators not available), reporting & billing and access to help desk services

• Conferencing over a variety of net protocols including TDM, TDM/H.323 mix, SIP

• Easy integration with best of breed Web, IM and Presence tools from IBM, Microsoft, WebEx, Macromedia

• Developer tools for custom development and integration

Avaya is also expanding the reach of its IP Telephony application with the introduction of:

• Highly integrated gateways for smaller branch offices of fewer than 10 people

• Greater endpoint breadth and functionality, with a phone application development environment for XML
apps, and new color and monochrome IP screen phones

Open Interoperability

A key enabling technology for the emergence of Business Communications Applications is SIP (Session
Initiation Protocol). Avaya has committed to a dramatic expansion of SIP capabilities in its applications
offerings. Within Communication Manager 3.0, Avaya is expanding SIP trunking and SIP application
integration capabilities. With the release of its Converged Communication Server 3.0, Avaya has created a
new SIP-based centralized user presence and user profile management that can extend throughout the enter-
prise. For the desktop, Avaya is providing new SIP-based Avaya Desktop client, including IM/presence and
a free downloadable “lite” peer-to-peer version as well as an expanded range of SIP phones, and third-party
interoperability. Other leading communications vendors have been slow to integrate SIP as fully into their
applications.

The longer-term benefits of open interoperability within Business Communications Applications come
from the innovation of the larger software-development community. Avaya has greatly expanded its global
DeveloperConnection ecosystem in an effort to spur this cycle of innovation for the new category of busi-
ness applications, with a commitment to an open call model through the combination of Communications
Manager 3.0 and the Converged Communications Server 3.0-SIP Enablement Services. It is also introducing
an open (CSTA) web-services interface to Communication Manager through the introduction of the Converged
Communications Server 3.0-Application Enablement Services. The new development environment will provide
a single secure and redundant platform, which protects investments by integrating traditional CTI, CSTA/XML
and Web Services. This will simplify the programming interface for Communication Manager and moreover, it
will enable developers to create web-services-based applications enabled by Avaya communications capabili-
ties. The Avaya SIP support and certification process for third-party developers has received public recognition
acknowledging its leadership in advancing open interoperability.6
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Avaya is also introducing the Phone Application Gateway, extending application access to Avaya IP appliances.
This will enable developers to extend their web services applications to Avaya IP desksets with easier integra-
tion and elimination of code duplication.

High Reliability and Security

The quest for achieving the highest reliability in the industry is an ongoing focus for Avaya. The Avaya
approach is based upon the best practices for delivering defense against failure by creating self-healing
survivability at many levels. Starting with redundant failover servers at the core of the applications structure, it
has expanded to the next level with a series of enterprise survivable servers that will automatically reconfigure
around network failures. In a recent industry bake-off, Avaya had the fastest fail-over call controller response
than any competitor tested.7 Unlike other vendors who provide only a small subset of telephony functions in
the event of a fail-over, Avaya Gateways, including the new G150/G250/G350 gateways, are configured to
connect over the public telephone network when IP WAN faults occur to provide continuation of branch/local
office full-functionality during the fault outage.

Avaya has also integrated the technology acquired with RouteScience to “add a nine” to its application
availability across enterprise WAN connections. By actively monitoring Avaya applications as they flow through
various network links, Avaya Converged Network Analyzer (CNA) can reroute the application across multi-
vendor infrastructures and multi-service provider network links in the case of both network failures and
quality “brown-outs,” which would otherwise impact delay-sensitive applications like IP Telephony. This new
application monitoring capability can deliver increased applications availability performance by two to 10
times, with 20% to 50% in bandwidth cost-savings through the use of lower-cost Internet connections.

Avaya is adding to its security platforms and services with enhanced proactive, secure, customer–assistance,
and notification capabilities. Within its Global Services portfolio, Avaya has announced the globalization of
Remote Managed Services for IP Telephony services and its industry-leading applications-performance,
fault- and resolution-management platform. It is also enhancing this offering with a new “single-point of
accountability” Software Release Management services option, which addresses configuration-management
issues. As part of its efforts to support new customer-facing regulatory and security requirements, Avaya is
now offering the regulatory-compliant, Secure Access and Control for remote maintenance monitoring of its
applications with the customer’s network.

Section 6: Conclusions
Business Communications Applications are an important new category of tools for enterprises seeking to
achieve increased business agility and competitive differentiation. Those responsible for architecting and
delivering high-value applications will see the emergence of these new applications as an opportunity to help
their companies compete more effectively in a world that, from a communications perspective, is shrinking.

Avaya is committed to accelerating the development and delivery of powerful Business Communications
Application solutions to the marketplace. With its focus on Intelligent Communications, Open Interoperability,
and High Availability and Security, Avaya not only talks about, but is delivering, superior applications
performance on any network infrastructure, even on those that are built on products from vendors that are
attempting to build proprietary applications capability into their infrastructure systems.
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Section 7: Footnotes
1. Avaya White Paper, “New Era of Intelligent Communications: Driving Agility Through Business
Communications Applications,” http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/resource/assets/whitepapers/
ef-lb2713.pdf

2. How Avaya Mobility Solutions Are Helping Padcom Build Competitive Advantage,” Case Study, http://www.
avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/resource/assets/casestudies/ef-lb24604.pdf

3. “Standing Out From Competition,” Case Study on Amicus, http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/

resource/assets/casestudies/lb2260.pdf

4. “Steelmaker Charter Manufacturing Relies on Avaya IP Solutions to Deliver Just-in-Time Advantage,” Case
Study, http://www.avaya.com/gcm/master-usa/en-us/resource/assets/casestudies/lb2442.pdf

5. Sean Doherty and Peter Morrissey, “Live Proof in the Labs: IP PBXs,” Network Computing, March 17,
2005. “We didn’t invite Cisco Systems because it did not participate in our first call for proposals and its
CallManager doesn’t support third-party endpoints.”

6. Sean Doherty and Peter Morrissey, “Live Proof in the Labs: IP PBXs,” Network Computing, March 17,
2005. ”We were pleased that Avaya has an extensive certification process for third-party SIP support and
has demonstrated a commitment to making it work.”

7. Business Communications Review Magazine Large IP-PBX 2004.

Section 8: Learn More

For more information on how Avaya can take your enterprise from where it is to where it needs to be, contact
your Avaya Client Executive or Authorized Avaya BusinessPartner, or visit us at www.avaya.com.
 About Avaya
Avaya enables businesses to achieve superior
results by designing, building and managing their
communications infrastructure and solutions. For
over one million businesses worldwide, including
more than 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500®, Avaya’s
embedded solutions help businesses enhance
For businesses large and small, Avaya is a world
leader in secure, reliable IP telephony systems,
communications applications and full life-cycle
services. Driving the convergence of embedded
voice and data communications with business COMMUNICATIONS
applications, Avaya is distinguished by its AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS

value, improve productivity and create competitive combination of comprehensive, world-class

advantage by allowing people to be more productive products and services. Avaya helps customers avaya.com
and create more intelligent processes that satisfy across the globe leverage existing and new
customers. networks to achieve superior business results.

© 2005 Avaya Inc.

All Rights Reserved. Avaya and the Avaya Logo are trademarks of Avaya Inc. and may be registered in
certain jurisdictions. All trademarks identified by the ®, SM or TM are registered trademarks, service marks
or trademarks, respectively, of Avaya Inc., with the exception of FORTUNE 500 which is a registered
trademark of Time Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Printed in the U.S.A.
05/05 • EF-LB2714