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Avaya Inc. - Communications Equipment - Category Main Page
908-953-6000
211
Mount Airy Road
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
www.avaya.com
Sales
$4.3
billion
Business Description
Avaya Inc. is a leading provider of communications systems, applications and
services for enterprises, including businesses, government agencies and
other organizations. Our product offerings include
• Internet Protocol, or IP, telephony systems that converge voice, data and
other traffic across a single unified network,
• traditional voice communications systems,
• contact center infrastructure and applications in support of customer
relationship management,
• unified communications applications, which include voice and multimedia
messaging, and
• structured cabling products.
We
support our broad customer base with comprehensive global service offerings
that help our customers plan, design, implement and manage their
communications networks. We believe our global service organization is an
important consideration for customers purchasing our products and
applications and is a source of significant revenue for us, primarily from
maintenance contracts.
We
offer a broad array of communications systems, applications and services
that enable enterprises to communicate with their customers, suppliers,
partners and employees through voice, Web, electronic mail, facsimile, Web
chat sessions and other forms of communication, across an array of devices.
These devices include telephones, computers, cell phones and personal
digital assistants.
Avaya
operating segments include: Enterprise Communications Group, Small and
Medium Business Solutions, Services and Connectivity Solutions.
Enterprise Communications Group Segment
Our Enterprise Communications Group segment is focused on the sale of
communications systems, products and applications to our large enterprise
customers. Our primary offerings for this segment include IP telephony
systems and traditional voice communications systems, contact center
offerings, a core component of customer relationship management, unified
communications applications and appliances, such as telephone sets. A
critical component of our strategy is our focus on the migration of our
customers' traditional voice communications systems to a converged network
that provides for the integration of voice, data, video and other
application traffic on a single unified network containing both wired and
wireless elements. IP telephony systems integrate voice and data
communications traffic for transmission across a single network
infrastructure based on IP technology. Internet protocol is a type of
protocol, or set of standardized procedures, for the formatting and timing
of transmission of communications traffic between two pieces of equipment.
We believe the implementation of a converged network can provide significant
benefits to an enterprise in a number of ways. These benefits include:
• reduced costs through the use of a single unified network;
• simplified administration and lower costs for moves, adds and changes;
• least cost routing techniques for call processing;
• increased worker productivity resulting from enhanced wired and wireless
network access to all communication channels, such as voice, e-mail and fax,
from any device, including computer, telephone, cell phone, fax machine and
personal digital assistant; and
• enhanced business performance through the integration of IP telephony with
other communications applications, such as voice messaging, e-mail, unified
communications and contact centers, and third-party business applications,
such as those that facilitate supply chain management and work flow
processes.
Converged Systems. We are a worldwide leader in traditional voice telephony,
IP telephony and enterprise telephony, which we define as the market for
traditional voice telephony and IP telephony in the aggregate. Sales of
telephony products and systems by our Enterprise Communications Group and
Small and Medium Business Solutions segments are combined for purposes of
these market leadership calculations.
Our suite of IP telephony offerings includes:
• Avaya Communication Manager, our voice application software that manages
call processing, facilitates secure customer interactions across a variety
of media and supports a range of Avaya and third-party applications;
• our media servers, which put voice applications such as call processing on
the customer's local area network;
• our media gateways, which support traffic routing between traditional
voice and IP telephony systems, providing enterprises with the flexibility
to implement a new IP telephony system or to "IP-enable" their existing
voice communications system, thereby helping to preserve existing
communications technology investments;
• Avaya Integrated Management, a Web-based comprehensive set of tools that
manages complex voice and data network infrastructures; and
• our Avaya™ Extension to Cellular solution, which transparently bridges any
cell phone to any Avaya communications server.
In November 2003, we announced a strategic alliance agreement with Extreme
Networks Inc. to jointly develop and market converged communications
solutions. Under the alliance, we will resell Extreme's data networking
products on a stand-alone basis and as part of our suite of IP telephony
offerings. Extreme will also provide planning, design, implementation and
management services support to our Services organization. We will continue
to offer our own line of data networking products and related services and
support in addition to Extreme's portfolio. Extreme will also continue to
sell its data networking products through its multinational distribution
channels.
We also offer traditional voice communications systems, although the market
for these systems is declining and we are focused on the migration of our
customers' traditional voice communications systems to IP telephony systems.
Communications Applications. Our Communications Applications organization is
focused on applications that facilitate and enhance interaction in an
enterprise with customers, partners, suppliers and employees. This
organization is currently focused on infrastructure and applications for
multi-media contact centers and unified communications.
Contact Centers. Our contact center product offerings are software and
hardware systems and software applications for customer contact centers
(including call centers) which are the foundation of many CRM offerings. We
use the term call centers to refer to applications that primarily manage an
enterprise's interactions with customers via the telephone, and the term
contact centers to refer to applications that allow customers to interact
with an enterprise using multiple mediums of communication, including
electronic mail, access from a Web site, Web chat and collaboration, voice
self-service, telephone calls and facsimiles. We are the leading provider of
call center systems in North America and Western Europe. Our strategy is to
leverage this leadership position to market a broader suite of CRM
applications.
Our Avaya™ Contact Center Solutions® offer a suite of intelligent call
routing alternatives that can accommodate single call centers or multiple
call centers through "virtual" routing over a converged network. Calls can
be routed to customer care agents or self-service applications based on a
variety of criteria, or business rules, including call volume, workload,
agent language or other expertise or across time zones or countries and in
each case, routing is transparent to the customer. Our contact center
offerings include Avaya™ Interaction Center, which manages interactions
across a variety of communication channels, including Web, e-mail and
advanced telephony systems.
Unified Communication. We define Unified Communication as a family of
applications that allow individuals to collaborate and communicate more
effectively and to navigate more quickly in a networked infrastructure
through a variety of communications devices, including telephones, computers
or personal digital assistants. Our Unified Communication offerings include
our voice messaging and unified messaging products, our IP-based unified
communication solution and other multimedia collaboration tools. Unified
messaging is an advanced messaging solution that delivers the convenience
and benefits of combining the storage of more than one type of message,
including voice, facsimile and email.
We are the worldwide leader in sales of voice messaging and unified
messaging. Our messaging systems are configured both as stand-alone servers
or as embedded software or hardware in communications servers. Many of our
messaging systems are compatible with the voice communications systems of
other vendors so that an enterprise may choose our messaging system as the
standard for all its locations.
We offer a wide variety of voice messaging and unified messaging
applications designed to serve the telephone call answering, facsimile,
voice and unified messaging communications needs of enterprises. Unified
messaging facilitates access to messages through the most convenient device,
including Internet browsers, LAN-based personal computers and wireline or
wireless telephones, using text-to-speech technology for telephonic e-mail
retrieval. These products are marketed under a number of brands, including
our primary brands, Octel® Messaging and INTUITY™ AUDIX® Messaging. a single
system. In addition, our Avaya Unified Messenger system for Microsoft®
Exchange is a unified messaging system software solution that stores voice
and facsimile messages directly in a user's Microsoft Exchange electronic
mailbox and enables user access to this mailbox by telephone or fax machine
or a Microsoft Exchange interface on the user's personal computer. The Avaya
Unified Messenger® Solution—IBM Lotus Domino Version application enhances
the functionality of a user's Lotus Domino e-mail messaging by providing the
user with one mailbox for their voice, e-mail and fax messages.
Our unified communication offering, Avaya™ Unified Communication Center,
provides a user with ability to
• access voice, fax and e-mail messages from an array of communication
devices;
• connect to enterprise databases from a variety of media, including
computers, telephones and personal digital assistants; and
• utilize personalized information filtering to prioritize communication
interactions and screen calls or route them to voice mail.
Communications Appliances. We recently formed a new division within our
Enterprise Communications Group segment referred to as Communications
Appliances. Communications Appliances consists mainly of hardware such as
telephone sets and software that resides on alternative endpoints, such as
our IP Softphone, which provides the functionality of a digital telephone on
a personal computer or handheld device. To date, our appliances have
typically been sold as components of a larger sale of a converged system.
Small and Medium Business Solutions Segment
Our Small and Medium Business Solutions segment develops, markets and sells
communications products and applications, including IP telephony,
traditional voice systems and unified communication and contact center
applications for small and medium-sized businesses.
Avaya™ IP Office, our IP telephony solution for small and medium-sized
enterprises, can be deployed for enterprises with 2 to 256 stations and
features full voice and data remote access, call distribution and alternate
call routing for low cost and highest voice quality. In addition, the IP
Office applications suite offers voice mail, unified messaging, wireless
capability and an array of contact center management tools designed for the
small and medium-sized enterprise.
Traditional voice communications systems designed for small and medium-sized
businesses are also knows as Key and hybrid telephony systems. Our Key and
hybrid voice communications systems are our Merlin MAGIX system, which
offers telephony, messaging, wireless and call center capability to
enterprises with up to 200 stations and our Partner ACS system, which offers
telephony, messaging and wireless to smaller enterprises with up to 40
stations. Our Avaya INDeX system is marketed primarily in Europe, Australia
and Japan and can accommodate up to 1,088 stations. All of these systems can
be IP enabled.
Services Segment
Our Services organization provides standard and customized services to
enterprises in the following areas:
• network planning and design—including planning, design and assessment of
an enterprise's data network, its readiness and optimization for the
implementation of IP telephony, network consulting and design in supporting
business continuity and a comprehensive suite of security services for
separate voice and data networks as well as converged networks;
• network implementation—including solution preparation, design, deployment
and installation;
• management and operations—offering enterprises and service providers an
opportunity to outsource their communications systems;
• professional services in support of our communications applications; and
• maintenance and support—providing maintenance of our customer's networks.
We are the leading U.S. provider of maintenance services for enterprise
voice communications systems.
We deliver our service offerings through our Network Consulting Services,
Managed Services, Data Services, Professional Services, Technical Services
and Field Services organizations. Our Network Consulting team offers network
planning and design services. Our Managed Services organization helps
enterprises focus on core competencies by managing their internal voice
communications systems and helps service providers grow revenues by
providing end-to-end messaging and unified communication applications. Our
Data Services team can assist the enterprise with the design,
implementation, installation, maintenance and management of its data
network. Installation and repair of our products are performed primarily by
our Field Services organization. Our Professional Services team provides
custom implementation of our communications applications to meet indivicual
customer needs. Technical support and maintenance under contracts for our
voice communications products are provided by our Technical Services and
Field Services organizations.
Connectivity Solutions Segment
We are the worldwide leader in sales of structured cabling systems for
enterprises. We market these products primarily for enterprises of various
sizes for wiring phones, workstations, personal computers and local area
networks through their buildings or across their campuses under the brand
name SYSTIMAX. Our SYSTIMAX cabling systems provide a single cabling
solution for a network that integrates voice, video, data and building
controls on one network through an infrastructure of copper or fiber cabling
and associated connecting apparatus. The SYSTIMAX copper and fiber apparatus
products can be customized to fit a customer's needs.
We sell our ExchangeMAX® structured cabling systems primarily to central
offices of service providers such as telephone companies, original equipment
manufacturers and third-party engineering, furnish and install vendors.
Central offices are locations that house switches to serve the subscribers
of a service provider. Our ExchangeMAX systems are used to connect
transmission and switching within the central office environment to the
public telephone network and include coaxial and fiber cable used for voice
frequency and digital and fiber distribution networks.
We sell our electronic cabinets mostly to service providers to protect
wireless access equipment, switching equipment and broadband electronic
equipment. An electronic cabinet is a sturdy environmental enclosure
designed to house electronics devices and passive equipment, both in the
outside plant and inside buildings.
Communications Equipment Companies in the Directory
Alcatel
Avaya
Lucent Technologies
Ericsson
Harris Corp.
Marconi
Nortel Networks
Siemens
Tellabs
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