Page 4 - AvayaExtra Q1 2018

4 Telecom Reseller: Extra Report on Avaya
2nd Quarter 2018
Avaya Targets Australia’s Midmarket with Cloud UC and CC Launch
‘Powered by Avaya’ enables simple cloud transition with suite of customisable uni ed communication and contact centre SaaS
Sydney, Australia - Avaya has launched its ‘Powered by Avaya’ cloud o ering in Australia, providing a simple and exible way for midmarket companies to migrate to cloud-based solutions across uni ed communications (UC) and contact centre (CC). e midmarket is the engine room
of Australia’s economy. While it accounts for
only seven per cent of all businesses, it makes up about one-third of all private sector turnover.
Despite its economic contribution, the midmarket is frequently overlooked as vendors either dedicate resources to large enterprise customers, or provide rigid, watered-down solutions that do not deliver the exibility
and scalability to meet the needs of modern organisations. ‘Powered by Avaya’ is a so ware-as- a-service (SaaS) stack, including Avaya IP O ce, which will enable channel partners to package
and deliver customised and exible Avaya UC
and CC through a subscription-based model. Avaya partners can o er a full range of solutions
– on-premises, hybrid cloud or fully-hosted
– and end-users can manage their migration
to the cloud at their own pace. With analyst
rm Gartner predicting the public cloud services market increase by 18.5 per cent globally, there is signi cant potential for channel partners that want to o er the same rich communications experiences customers expect from Avaya solutions, delivered on-premises as cloud-based o erings. Several partners already have ‘Powered by Avaya’ solutions available to midmarket organisations in the region. Avaya partners that wish to host and maintain Avaya cloud services in their own data centres
can sell these services directly to customers, with the option to wrap additional microservices around the core product, as well as continuing to sell the full portfolio of Avaya solutions. Avaya
is also working with key wholesale distribution partners to deliver a complete cloud solution
for partners. Channel partners will be able to
focus on building innovative solutions for their end-user customers and delivering future-proof communications experiences. ‘Powered by Avaya’ marks the expansion of Avaya’s hybrid cloud solutions portfolio that also comprises the Avaya Oceana, Equinox and Breeze platforms, which are built to empower organisations to implement and capitalise from arti cial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the Internet of ings (IoT), big data and more.
David McEwen, General Manager, VExpress Distribution: “Cloud services have been a major talking point for many years, however, we now see an increasing number of enquiries around cloud from our reseller partners and customers. As a distributor, our job is to help resellers through their transition to cloud, a process which can take time and is transformational for their businesses. e new Powered By o ering from Avaya will help this process, allowing us to support our reseller community as it further builds out its capabilities in this competitive environment.” Peter Chidiac, Managing Director A/NZ, Avaya, said: “Moving
to cloud-based UC and CC environments is an ongoing process, particularly with new challenges presented by the expanding presence of trends such as AI and IoT. Powered by Avaya is designed to simplify this process for resellers that already have an established cloud play, as well as those in the early stages of their transformation.”
For more information, please visit www. avaya.com. l
Avaya Announces New Smart Desktop Devices for the Hospitality Industry ...continued from page 3
device. e ability to more e ectively promote hotel services on a completely customizable touch screen can help transform a traditional cost-center into a pro t-center, boosting hospitality provider revenue.
e latest release of Avaya Vantage will support hospitality businesses with the Avaya IP O ce® Platform in addition to Avaya Aura®. Enhancements in the latest version will also
enable guests to sync their personal mobile phone to the Avaya Vantage device to use while staying at the hotel. Avaya Vantage will also o er specialized features to support a broad range
of other vertical industries, such as insurance, healthcare, banking and more.
Avaya’s new Hospitality IP devices portfolio initially consists of three new models with features including HD audio, programmable so keys, speaker with acoustic echo cancellation, and an optional full 3.5 inch color display screen. All of these devices are supported by Avaya Aura, Avaya IP O ce as well as the Powered by Avaya IP O ce cloud service available from Avaya channel partners.
“ ere’s increasing demand on the hospitality industry to provide guests with a unique experience in amenities, services and comfort. Most guests don’t want technology to be intrusive, but will appreciate the conveniences it can deliver. Avaya’s smart desktop devices
portfolio enables hospitality businesses to step up their game, providing guests with the ‘wow factor’ that helps ensure repeat bookings.”
– Jean Turgeon, vice president and chief technologist, Avaya
“As organizations around the world embrace digital transformation, the hospitality industry is following suit. is market o ers considerable growth opportunities — with its impressive hospitality customer base and re-energized commitment to deliver vertical-targeted UC solutions, Avaya is poised to greatly bene t from this growth.”
– Alaa Saayad, TITLE, Frost & Sullivan
A case study describing how customers are using Vantage to digitally transform the hospitality experience is also available here https://www.avaya.com/en/case-studies/ unnamed_vantage_hospitality/.
For more information, please visit www. avaya.com. l
outpacing those that come from landlines.
With a service unlike anything else available today, Avaya transforms this growing number from a challenge into an opportunity. Avaya Mobile Experience is another example of our mobile- rst approach to UC and CC innovation that aims to enhance customer experience by delivering contextual information between customers and contact centers in a way that represents how customers interact with companies today, and to do so in a more cost- e ective manner.”
David Chavez, vice president, Architecture & Innovation, Avaya
“While companies today could identify callers and attempt to route for them with more delity, few do because of the additional integration
and complexity. With Avaya Mobile Experience, the mobile network identi es and di erentially treats mobile callers providing expanded experiential options to the caller. In addition, utilizing an Avaya Breeze snap-in, companies can build routing logic to easily improve personalized service.”
Sheila McGee-Smith, president & principal analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics, L.L.C.
Sidebar: What Identity-as-a-Service will bring to Avaya Mobile Experience
Although Avaya Mobile Experience makes use of mobile subscriber data to identify a caller, it is o en necessary to fully authenticate a mobile caller prior to the start of con dential interactions with a contact center or mobile web. Whereas the demarcation point for Avaya Mobile Experience extends to the smartphone, Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) delivers a next- generation multi-factor authentication (MFA) service to the user.
IDaaS is mobile-centric and relies upon establishing a binding between the caller and their smartphone.
In addition to using the possession of a smartphone as the rst factor of authentication, IDaaS makes use of leading multi-modal biometric technologies (e.g. ngerprint, voice print, facial recognition) as additional factors. IDaaS brings all of this together with the use of distributed ledger (blockchain) technology in order to permanently record proofs-of-identity for mobile callers. In this way, di erent parties can fully authenticate a mobile caller in a consistent and highly con dent manner. For the contact center, this can potentially reduce agent talk time up to 45 seconds.
It can also eliminate considerable user “friction” for the mobile caller and result in a far better customer experience. IDaaS is expected to go live in late CY2018, at which point it
will seamlessly ride on top of Avaya Mobile Experience.
For more information, please visit www. avaya.com.
(1) Figure based on actual Avaya customers’ internal analytics. l
Avaya Unveils New Mobile Cloud Service for Contact Centers
Avaya Mobile Experience enhances the customer experience for smartphone callers while enabling businesses to reduce carrier costs and propel digital transformation.
ORLANDO, FL - Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA) has announced a unique service that will enable contact centers to accelerate digital transformation, reduce toll-free carrier costs, increase the accuracy of contextual information, and enhance the customer experience for the ever-growing number of mobile callers. Avaya Mobile Experience, a consumption-based cloud o ering, identi es when an incoming call originates from a mobile device, transports contextual information on the caller to the contact center, and enables selected calls to be de ected to the mobile web for a mobile application-enriching digital customer service experience.
Avaya and Post-Quantum also announced today that they are collaborating on Identity- as-a Service (“IDaaS”) using blockchain and other emerging technologies to improve contact center security. IDaaS will initially be incorporated into the Avaya Mobile Experience (see separate announcement here).
Toll-free numbers remain a central customer contact point for most organizations, with up to 70 percent of calls to contact centers coming from mobile devices.(1) Contact centers pay carriers for each call arriving over a toll-free line regardless of whether the call originates
on a mobile device or a non-mobile device, adding substantially to operational expenses.
In addition, the con uence of mobile callers with the limitations of legacy toll-free solutions o en leaves additional challenges for businesses operating toll-free lines. For example, the area code of many cell phone numbers does not re ect the actual location of the caller, which can a ect routing accuracy to an appropriate contact center resource.
Owned and operated by Avaya, Avaya Mobile Experience will help enterprises bridge this technology gap. Avaya Mobile Experience will identify mobile callers and collect high- delity caller-identi cation information. A mobile
user calling a toll-free number will be given an option to de ect the call to the web. When the caller selects this option, the toll-free call
ends-along with the associated per-minute costs-and they receive a message with a link for personalized access to the required information on the company website.
Website interactions can be augmented with additional self-service solutions such as chatbots or re-escalate to voice, video and co-browsing for an enhanced, omnichannel customer experience.
If the mobile caller chooses to interact via voice, the customer information collected by Avaya Mobile Experience will be passed along to help the agent handle the call more e ciently, reducing toll-free line costs and increasing agent productivity.
Avaya Mobile Experience will provide contact centers with exibility, agility and simplicity which will improve customer responsiveness under changing business requirements. e service will easily integrate with any vendor’s technology, enabling contact centers to maintain their existing infrastructure. Organizations with Avaya technology-based contact centers can also take advantage of Avaya Breeze Snap-ins to add di erentiating service enhancements, such as webRTC and co-browsing.
Read the Blog: Innovation that Accounts for Increased Mobility https://www.avaya.com/blogs/archives/2018/03/ increased-mobility.html
As part of the Avaya Mobile Experience, IDaaS will reduce the risk of identity fraud by using biometrics to authenticate mobile callers and unlock sensitive data, and blockchain to allow contact centers to verify the customer’s validity.
Avaya Mobile Experience will be o ered with simpli ed pricing and no annual contracts or minimum spend requirements. Initially, this service will be sold directly to U.S. companies, and will be applied to mobile calls originating from U.S. or Canadian-based phone numbers.
More information can be found at http:// www.avaya.com/mobile-experience, including a form where customers can submit their contact information to receive future updates.
Quotes
“ e number of mobile calls coming to contact centers over toll-free lines is far