Home Enterprise Avaya Joins Web Services, VoIP
Avaya Joins Web Services, VoIP
By Jim Wagner | May 02, 2005
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Communications software and systems provider Avaya rolled out its roadmap for intelligent communications, which calls for more emphasis on software and includes a software update, officials announced Monday.
Software improvements are a key component to what officials at the Basking Ridge, N.J., company see as the future of IP-based telephony, or VoIP . Intelligent communications connects business applications to communications applications, letting people connect to the worker, customer or process they need using video, text or voice.
Jorge Blanco, Avaya vice president of products and solutions marketing, said the business applications used today in the workplace aren't getting integrated to take advantage of telephony advances as simple as conferencing, notification and telephony sessions.
"Our proposition is that, clearly, not only is there growing demand but an opportunity to think about communication applications and business applications in a completely different way and allow them to unify at the business process level," he said.
To do that, Avaya is looking to the world of Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) to help integrate applications with communications.
Blanco said Avaya wants companies to start creating applications that marry Avaya's communications expertise with business applications, but not at the expense of forcing a major revamp.
"Ultimately, we see ourselves moving into a more software-centric set of solutions," he said. "We're not abandoning the systems in the least bit; we want to continue to maintain the fact we deliver mission-critical five-9s reliability, so for that you need a little bit more packaging of software and hardware. But a more software-centric environment is where we're clearly moving."
Reflecting that focus is the company's decision to commit 90 percent of its research and development investments to ongoing software development. Avaya officials also announced it was joining the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) technical committee at the OASIS standards body.
The company released a new version of its Converged Communications Server, as well as Communication Manager 3.0 and Application Enablement Services.
The Communication Manager is the core telephony software behind Avaya's MultiVantage applications and gives companies call-center capabilities and messaging and contact-center functions.
VoIP call reliability and survivability, a factor key to the technology, is one of the main focuses on the updated software. The new version comes with Enterprise Survivable Server (ESS), which allows branch offices in an IP-based telephony network to take over in the event of a failure at headquarters or a network disruption, so people can still take phone calls.
The software also includes a failover feature to Avaya's H.248 media gateways to keep connections running in the event of a migration from the primary server to a local one or vice versa, as well as an auto-fallback feature to allow systems administrators to fall back to the primary server.
For developers, the Converged Communications Server is an application platform to create new services that take advantage of the Communications Manager. The software is based on SOAP and XML standards and lets the developer create services for instant messaging on SIP, video and collaboration.
Avaya added the administration Web service to its Application Enablement Services set that allows developers to customize administrative logic in the Communications Manager using a set of wizards. The company also released a software development kit with API libraries, server software and sample applications to create software that integrates Communication Manager with third-party programs.
In related news, Avaya announced an expansion of its partnership with Juniper Networks Monday to develop joint converged communications solutions to customers. The two companies also agreed to resell each other's products and services.