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

BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - Jul 19, 2012) - Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, today announced that the company has been positioned as a Leader in the recently published 2012 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 multimedia 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 complete Customer Experience Interaction Management solution, which enables businesses to deliver high-quality agent-assisted experience across multimedia channels, integrated self-service, and optimized workforce and reporting for insight into the customer's experience. 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. Avaya also recently announced a number of new and expanded solutions to enable companies to offer and manage social media, mobile and video customer service.

The Gartner report noted that in 2012, various broad trends are influencing the planning and deployment of enterprise contact center infrastructure, representing a change from a more conservative market seen in prior publications of this Magic Quadrant document. Included among these trends are the following:

• Infrastructure consolidation and centralization projects among companies that operate multiple contact centers. These companies increasingly are looking to leverage the location independent nature of IP-based infrastructure to reduce duplication of infrastructure investments.
  
  
• Momentum for multimedia routing, including email response management, Web chat and customer collaboration solutions. These solutions, which have been traditionally purchased from best-of-breed or point solution providers, are now increasingly being evaluated within the portfolio of the traditional ACD vendors.
  
  
• Once almost solely limited to point solution providers, workforce optimization functionality is now included in many contact center infrastructure suites or portfolios. This functionality encompasses varying combinations of contact recording, agent evaluation, workforce management, coaching and e-learning tools, post-contact survey, and agent performance speech analytics.
  
  
• Increasing awareness of social media influences and the potential impact on contact center operations.
  
  
• Growing interest in adding tighter linkage between customer service operations and both internal- and external-facing mobile applications -- Mobile applications are seen as a way to provide customers with easier access to self-service information by supporting a visual interface to option selections and data that previously was available only to those accessing the company using a more traditional computer interface. These solutions can also provide customers with additional information and options based on real-time information regarding contact center operations, such as expected wait times and callback options.
  
  

Quote:
"Delivering a consistent, world class customer experience requires a deep understanding of your customer, their needs and preferences over time, regardless of the the voice, video, social, mobile or web channel they may choose to use ... this time. It directly influences brand preference, loyalty, and profitability that will translate into positive business results. We are completely focused on enabling the interactions -- both live and automated -- that delight customers every time. Our goal is nothing short of helping our customers deliver extraordinary experiences to their customers by connecting the channels of interaction, the processes, and metrics into cohesive, end-to-end solutions."
Brett Shockley, SVP and GM, Applications and Emerging Technologies, Avaya

Additional Resources:
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide
http://www.gartner.com/reprints/avaya-vol8?id=1-1B5HWWN&ct=120629&st=sb

About the Gartner Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Tags: Avaya, contact center, Gartner, Magic Quadrant, customer service, BYOD

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.

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¹ Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide" by Drew Kraus et al, June 27, 2012