Avaya Positioned as a Leader in Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure Worldwide

BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - March 22, 2010) - Avaya Inc., a global leader in business communications applications, systems and services, today announced that the company was positioned as a Leader in the recently published Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide.(1)

In the annual report, Avaya was cited as a contact center infrastructure leader based on two key criteria: 'ability to execute' and 'completeness of vision.' Gartner defines contact center infrastructure as "the products (equipment, software and services) needed to operate call centers for basic telephony support and contact centers for multichannel support. This type of infrastructure is used by customer and employee service and support centers, inbound and outbound telemarketing services, help-desk services, government-operated support centers and other types of structured communication operations."

"Our strategy in the contact center arena is to continue to integrate context-based services into the application layer of the Avaya Aura(TM) SIP architecture," said Anthony Bartolo, general manager, Avaya contact center solutions. "And in doing so, we're redefining the interaction model for higher productivity, customer satisfaction, and lower costs."

Avaya Aura provides the SIP-based communication services that enable unified communications and contact center solutions to be deployed to connected endpoints regardless of the infrastructure that the endpoints reside on.

In its market overview, the Gartner Magic Quadrant report states that "the majority of shipped solutions are based on Internet standards, including TCP/Internet Protocol (IP) in telephony and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which enables the systems to more readily support geographically separate operations on a centrally-deployed system and provide for greater scale in the application platform."

Gartner elaborates on the strategic importance of SIP in its report, stating, "SIP also promises to help to integrate to other enterprise communications applications, such as presence and conferencing -- or alternatively, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) in the case of presence. This will enable contact centers to incorporate communications and collaboration more easily with subject matter experts from outside of contact center staff and helps to integrate the technology more tightly into enterprise unified communications (UC) strategies."

"We believe Avaya's contact center infrastructure solutions enable companies to gain a full scope of a customer's needs -- from their historical relationship to their preferred mode of contact to their current, real-time requests," states Bartolo. "We will continue to extend our vision of customer service excellence with new solutions that address the ever-evolving needs of the customer."

According to Bartolo, this vision includes the delivery of contact center solutions which can significantly enhance customer service in a cost-effective manner. He adds: "An Avaya customer recently reported that it was able to increase first call resolution of customer problems from 7% to 72%, compared to the prior year. Another business used Avaya solutions to integrate multiple customer service platforms to drive a 12 percent reduction in costs in its first year of implementation. These are the types of benefits we see more businesses gaining going forward."

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide can be found online at: http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/avaya/vol6/article2/article2.html. For more information on Gartner Magic Quadrant reports, please visit: www.gartner.com.

About the Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2010 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Avaya

Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Avaya Inc. and Gartner, Inc. are both owned in part by Silver Lake, a leading financial investment firm. Gartner research is produced independently by Gartner analysts, without influence, review or approval of their outside investors or shareholders. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see Guiding Principles On Independence and Objectivity on Gartner's website, http://www.gartner.com/it/about/omb_guide.jsp.

(1) Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide" by Drew Kraus et al, February 22, 2010.

Contact Information: Avaya Contact: Jonathan Varman 908-953-6432 jvarman@avaya.com