New Avaya Consulting Services Help Businesses Accelerate Cloud Communications and Advanced Collaboration

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 25, 2013) -

• Avaya Launches Cloud Transformation Services and Continuous Performance Services to Help Companies Improve Business Results Through Communications Strategies
  
  
• Cloud Consulting Addresses Rising Demand, with Nearly Half of all Businesses Planning Deployment or Evaluating Cloud Options
  
  

Avaya today announced new consulting services to provide businesses with a strategic, operational plan for tapping the full potential of their collaboration solutions. The new consulting services address technologies impacting enterprise communications today -- including cloud solutions, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technologies, network security and self-service automation -- and help remove the complexity and minimize the risk associated with adopting advanced collaboration for improved business results.

The new consulting offers are Cloud Transformation Services and Continuous Performance Services. Cloud Transformation Services help organizations define and implement a cloud communications strategy that supports business objectives. Continuous Performance Services provide subscription-based consulting for a range of technology solutions (such as SIP transformation or self-service) and enable enterprises to maintain an optimized collaboration environment for months or years with predictable outcomes.

The consulting offers are delivered by Avaya Professional Services, an organization backed by 1,500 specialists with expertise across many industries, countries and concentrations, including a global team of business and technical consultants. The Avaya Cloud Transformation Services and Avaya Continuous Performance Services are available now globally.

New Avaya Cloud Transformation Consulting
Demand is high for cloud-based services, with 47 percent of businesses planning deployment or evaluating their cloud communications strategic options, according to Avaya research¹. Avaya Cloud Transformation Services provide consulting to both large enterprises and cloud service providers to help them define business requirements and implement cloud solutions.

For large businesses, Cloud Transformation Services help:

• Analyze and determine the optimal communications delivery mode, with a cost/benefit analysis of cloud delivery options (managed, private, public or hybrid).
  
  
• Develop financial modeling using real-world communications benchmarks. This helps identify inefficiencies in a business' collaboration technologies, and recommend changes aligned to their financial and operational requirements.
  
  
• Implement plans and design architectures for cloud communications that integrate a client's business processes and back office applications.
  
  

For cloud service providers, Cloud Transformation Services help:

• Provide guidance through the entire process of refining a hosting strategy, and define an architecture that meets the customer's business requirements.
  
  
• Implement a solution that assists a service provider in setting up a cloud environment for their first customer.
  
  

New Continuous Performance Services
Avaya Continuous Performance Services delivers a new model for providing prescribed consulting engagements on an annual subscription basis. They help ensure a business' network and applications continuously perform per customer requirements. The initial Continuous Performance Services include areas beneficial to a subscription-based model, such as:

• Security Assurance: Assists in achieving effective, practical communications security as threats emerge and evolve over time.
  
  
• Self-Service Application Tuning: Adjusts customer service automation through early-stage application design, existing application enhancement, or ongoing tuning and refinement. Includes analysis and recommendations to enhance speech automation, which improves customer satisfaction and reduces costs.
  
  
• SIP Economic Consulting: Delivers guidance through each phase of a SIP rollout and provides ongoing validation of realized savings through SIP based on financial targets.
  
  
• Network Visualization Subscription: Identifies network efficiency opportunities through a graphical tool depicting one's entire business network, updated in real-time based on configuration and service provider costs.
  
  

Quotes:

"The new Avaya Consulting Services offers are an extension of our expertise in collaboration and customer experience, and will provide companies with ongoing guidance and strategic insight to address the many challenges in deploying and optimizing communications. Backed by Avaya's vast experience, cloud communications is an ideal consulting offer to start with, providing building blocks to virtualize solutions for improved efficiencies and business results."
--Seth Frank, global vice president, Avaya Professional Services

"Businesses are turning to collaborative communications environments to improve employee productivity and provide a more engaging experience for their customers. But determining how communications technologies -- such as cloud communications, SIP, video and contact center solutions -- can be most effectively leveraged in enterprises can pose significant challenges that require expert help. Consultants, such as those behind Avaya's Cloud Transformation Services and Avaya Continuous Performance Services, are often key for businesses to derive the most benefits from their investments."
--Brian Riggs, Principal Analyst, Ovum

Additional Information:
--Security Remains a Concern: According to Avaya research, 71 percent ranked security as the top challenge and concern in adopting cloud communications services, with 51 percent citing reliability as the second top concern.
--Cloud Priorities: The top three services that enterprises plan to move to the cloud over the next 2 years are: Email and Office Productivity Suites (51 percent), unified communications (38 percent) and audio/video conferencing (31 percent).
(Based on an Avaya survey of International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) respondents, June 2013)
--For a Q&A with vice president of Avaya Professional Services, Ajay Kapoor, please visit here.

Tags: Avaya, Avaya Consulting, Cloud, Avaya Aura, Services, unified communications, contact center

About Avaya:
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking 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 Based on an Avaya survey of International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) respondents, June 2013