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

BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - Jul 7, 2011) - Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, today announced that the company was positioned as a Leader in the recently published 2011 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."

Avaya offers a range of contact center solutions, including Avaya Aura® Contact Center, which enables businesses to deliver high-quality agent-assisted experiences across multimedia channels, and Avaya Aura® Call Center Elite, the company's powerful voice-based customer routing solution. Both integrate with Avaya Aura®, which provides Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based communication services that enable unified communications and contact center solutions to be deployed to connected endpoints, regardless of the infrastructure the endpoints reside on.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant observed a variety of broad global trends influencing the planning of enterprise contact center infrastructure for 2011. They include:

• "Momentum for multichannel routing, including email response management, web chat and customer collaboration solutions."

• "Once almost solely limited to point-solution providers, many contact center infrastructure suites or portfolios include some level of contact center workforce optimization functionality."

• "Increasing awareness of social media influences and the potential impact on contact center exists, although actual adoption of social CRM solutions in contact centers remains primarily limited to companies that take a more aggressive approach to technology adoption."

Quote:
Onkar Birk, General Manager, Contact Center Solutions, Avaya
"Our core strategy in contact centers is to continue to help businesses deliver competitively-differentiated customer sales and service," said Onkar Birk, general manager, Avaya Contact Center division. "This means redefining customer experiences for a multimedia world now characterized by many different modes of real-time communications. To be successful in helping businesses turn customer experiences into competitive assets, businesses must be able to retain customer context as it travels across a range of media channels, yet do so in a streamlined, cost-effective way."

More Information:
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide can be found online here: For more information on Gartner Magic Quadrant reports, please visit: www.gartner.com.

About the Gartner Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 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 provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should" or "will" or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya's filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

⁽¹⁾ Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide" by Drew Kraus, et al, June 2011

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