2021 Avaya Pitstop: Your Guide to Avaya

American multinational technology company, Avaya, is a well-known leader in business communication and technology. One of the best-known names in communications, the brand has been around since 2000, although Avaya’s offerings have evolved a great deal since then.

Today, Avaya stands out as a pioneer in digital transformation, offering teams a wide range of communication and workspace collaboration solutions, alongside CPaaS (Communication Platforms as a Service) CCaaS (for the Contact Centre), and Managed Services.

Currently, Avaya serves more than 220,000 customers in locations around the world. The company is present in 190 countries, and often ranks at the top of the market leading lists for things like UC and Contact Centre technology.

Here’s your guide to Avaya.

The History of Avaya

Avaya is a multinational UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS company, committed to promoting the digital growth and evolution of companies. Currently run by CEO Jim Chirico, Avaya has roots in many other major communication brands, like AT&T, Western Electric, and Lucent Technologies.

Way back in 1995, Lucent Technology separated from AT&T. Avaya was one of the components of the Lucent Technologies brand for a while, initially offering desk phones, office switchboards and similar products. The company gradually turned its focus towards IP telephony systems, VoIP technology, and wireless communications. In 2000, Avaya spun away from Alcatel completely, and remained a public company until 2007.

During October 2007, TPG Capital and Silver Lake purchased Avaya in a transaction valued at $8.3 billion. Today, Avaya has countless customers around the world, and an incredible reputation.

Key facts:

• Launch date: 2000
• CEO: Jim M. Chirico
• Trading name: AVYA
• Headquarters: Durham, North Carolina
• Website: www.avaya.com
• Employees: 7,900+
• Revenue: Over $2.9 billion (2020)

Major Moments in the Dialpad Timeline

Perhaps one of the biggest moments in Avaya’s timeline was when the company became the property of TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners in 2007.

However, since then, the organization has evolved in many different ways. Since 2001, the company has acquired a host of other ventures, including VISTA Information technologies, NimCat Networks, Agile Software Limited, Spipera, Radvision, Konftel, Quintus, VPNet Technologies, Traverse Networks, and Aurix.

Avaya also placed a $900 million bid on Nortel following the company’s bankruptcy proceedings and was announced to be the winner of the assets in 2009.

Growth hasn’t always been easy for Avaya. The company officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2017, sending shockwaves throughout the industry. However, as a testament to the company’s strength, Avaya was back up and running again within a short period of time. By December 14th, 2017, the brand was already a public company again, trading under the AVYA ticker.

Since recovering from bankruptcy, the most significant step forward for Avaya has been its partnership with RingCentral. Together, the two companies built a new UCaaS solution called Avaya Cloud Office. The RingCentral team also contributed $500 million in funding to be the exclusive provider of the new cloud offer from Avaya.

Avaya UCaaS Offerings

Avaya’s UCaaS solution is the incredible Avaya “OneCloud” service, designed to provide companies with a digital workplace for collaboration, communication, and productivity. The One Cloud offering is built around a focus on all-in-one communication solutions so companies can provide a comprehensive environment for better employee performance.

OneCloud UCaaS promises brands the option to enable work from anywhere in the new age of hybrid employment, with a simple and straightforward experience for all employees. You can deliver collaborative tools to your teams through the cloud and keep everyone educated and informed wherever they are. The flexible cloud experience can also adapt to the company, blending with legacy and on-premises equipment where necessary.

Avaya OneCloud UCaaS comes with access to meeting and conferencing tools, as well as standard cloud conversational services. Avaya OneCloud and Avaya Cloud Office gives you a cloud phone system that works according to your needs, with everything from virtual team rooms to reliable phone call quality, and up to 100+ business integrations. Features include:

• Meeting and conferencing on any device
• HD audio and video conferencing
• AI insights and guidance
• Call meet and message in a single app
• One-touch dialing and directory integration
• Contextual conversations across all devices
• All-in-one hybrid, cloud, or on-premises model
• Support for up to 250,000 USERS
• Enterprise-grade performance with 99.999% reliability
• Customizable environment for each employee
• Integrations with leading business tools
• Global reach for all team members
• Avaya Aura presence services with Microsoft integration
• Avaya Aura systems manager
• Simple device provisioning
• Comprehensive routing and monitoring
• Reporting and analytics
• Remote application and device management
• Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprises
• Avaya Aura Application enablement visa CPaaS
• Avaya IX messaging
• Avaya Workspace for file and document sharing
• DevConnect application support
• Managed services and support
• Alarm monitoring and proactive issue resolution

Avaya Cloud Office solutions and OneCloud technology work with a wide range of IP phones, but you can also access your preferred hardware from Avaya directly if you want an all-in-one solution. Avaya has some of the most impressive desk phones on the market.

For teams with specific needs regarding compliance, speed and security, Avaya has the “OneCloud Private” service, which allows you to access a dedicated cloud environment just for you. You can access all the benefits the private cloud with public cloud speed, including end-to-end security and recovery measures. Avaya OneCloud Private is ideal for larger companies, and it comes with a free trial to get you started.

For the collaboration part of the UCaaS stack, Avaya offers Avaya Spaces, which is an all-in-one environment located within the Avaya Cloud Office environment. Spaces supports all kinds of collaboration with over 30 security features to keep the conversation secure everywhere. The system works with tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack, and there are APIs to suit your workflow.

Meetings via video and audio are available as standard, along with chat, screen sharing, and file distribution. All calling and conversations is backed by the secure reliability of Avaya’s global infrastructure too.

Avaya CCaaS Offering

Avaya is one of the leading communications companies on the market today supporting companies in their journey to a more aligned tech environment. The UCaaS and CCaaS offerings from Avaya are available either as single solutions, or as part of a comprehensive Avaya OneCloud package. Avaya OneCloud CCaaS is the contact centre as a service system building effortless experiences for agents and customers alike.

The solution promises companies all the tools they need to transform agents into superstars, including AI insights and virtual assistant guidance when your agents need help capturing information. There’s the option to interact with a range of customers through different channels on the same desktop, allowing for better contextual conversations. Plus, business leaders and managers can monitor operations easily with key performance indicators and dashboards.

Avaya CCaaS, whether used as a standalone service or alongside UCaaS technology, ensures you can track every part of the customer journey, routing customers to the ideal agent for their needs. The backend environment is simple and customizable, with some of the most powerful cloud tools around. Features include:

• Comprehensive connections with Avaya OneCloud UCaaS
• All-in-one omnichannel contact centre support
• Tracking and management for all conversations in one dashboard
• AI assistance and guidance for agents
• Real-time and historical insights and analytics
• Employee augmentation features
• Employee and supervisor browser-based dashboards
• Self-service administration for easy provisioning
• SMS, MMS, email, web chat, voice, video, and more in the same space
• Voice to text transcriptions for compliance
• Interactive voice response with AI
• Call recording and storage
• Standard 256-bit AES encryption
• Dual channel recording to capture all conversations
• Global cloud-based environment
• Screen recording functionality
• PCI and HIPAA compliance
• Live monitoring and quality management
• Coaching in real-time
• Scheduling and forecasting features
• Unified reporting
• Customer surveys

From a convenient cloud-based desktop designed to suit either your agent or supervisor, Avaya gives businesses the opportunity to upgrade contact centre functionality and productivity. Whether you’re accessing AI for voice to text transcriptions and agent assistant, or unlocking new digital channels for services, there’s something for every need.

Because the Avaya environment is based in the cloud, it also means that companies can scale easily whenever they choose. You can expand your contact centre to support all kinds of hybrid and remote working strategies with ease and implement stress-free deployment from a manageable back-end environment. All the while, you still get the incredible service and support from the Avaya team to ensure you and your employees can outshine the competition.

Avaya Differentiators

Avaya is currently one of the most impressive organisations in the communication landscape. The Avaya team has a presence in more than 190 countries, and the company powers more than 90% of the Fortune 100, as well as:

• More than 5800 healthcare institutions
• 8 out of 10 of the world’s leading health service brands
• 80% of the world’s largest motels and hotels
• more than 4,800 educational groups worldwide
• All of the world’s top 10 car manufacturers
• The world’s top 10 insurance companies
• 19 out of 20 of the leading major banks

Via consistent commitment to development and excellent performance, Avaya promises companies of all sizes a better communication experience through via UCaaS and CCaaS. Some of the biggest benefits of working with Avaya include:

Flexibility

Avaya offers solutions to match a wide range of needs, with the flexibility of the cloud to help you scale at a speed that suits you. There’s private cloud connectivity for companies with specific compliance and security needs and dedicated HIPAA and PCI compliance for people in the financial and healthcare industries.

For companies still struggling to make the transition to cloud, Avaya also ensures that you can move at a pace that suits you, with tools that align to existing legacy applications and services, hybrid deployments and more.

Excellent integrations and partnerships

Avaya’s biggest partnership right now is with RingCentral, but the company also works with a range of certified professional consultants, resellers, and market leaders to help businesses get the communication portfolio that suits them. You can expect easy integrations with all the tools you already use, as well as immersive APIs and CPaaS solutions to help you build a more comprehensive landscape for your hybrid, in-office, and remote teams.

The partnerships Avaya has around the globe makes it a highly adaptable company to work with when you’re building a UCaaS and CCaaS environment for work all around the world.

Managed services and extras

Outside of things like collaboration, UCaaS, and CCaaS tools, Avaya also offers wonderful customer service built to suit your needs. You can add managed services solutions to your package which come with things like quality tracking and real-time monitoring, so you never have to worry about losing quality in the middle of a call.

Avaya even has a unique Device as a Service solution which means you can buy your monthly cloud service subscription with smart phones and conferencing devices included. The as-a-service offering makes it easy to access the latest technology as you need it, with constant upgrades.

Intelligent Innovations

Avaya is on the cutting edge of the digital transformation journey these days. The company connects both UCaaS and CCaaS in a simple interface where companies can better keep track of crucial conversations and pave the way for greater productivity.

At the same time, Avaya is always investing in new and improved solutions for the modern business. AI solutions make it easier to route conversations to the right agents at the correct times, while voice recognition tools help with recording and compliance. AI assistants can support your workers, while transcriptions help with keeping the right information secure.

Omnichannel interactions

Both for UCaaS and CCaaS, Avaya supports communication wherever it might happen. This includes allowing your team members to call chat, meet and collaboration on any device and in any environment. You can even use Avaya alongside other common tools like Salesforce and Google Drive, or connect it with Slack and Microsoft Teams.

In the contact centre, employees can track conversations on multiple different channels in the same place, making it simpler to bring context into every conversation.

Security and reliability

Avaya knows how important it is to deliver the kind of security and constant performance that businesses need today. There’s a full stack of services tailored to your needs, and everything is backed by powerful service level agreements to give you peace of mind. Excellent global uptime and persistent monitoring of quality means you never miss out on an important call.

Avaya also holds itself to the highest standards when it comes to things like compliance and regulations, so you can rest assured that you’ll be protected according to things like HIPAA and PCI too.

A Global Leader

Avaya data centres and technology spread all over the world, giving companies endless room for growth. The company has become the number one provider of small business telephony solutions, and it’s the number one global provider of contact centre technology.

Governments in over 40 countries rely on Avaya today, and the company continues to evolve with more than 4,300 patents held so far.

Hardware and Software in One

One of Avaya’s main selling points at the moment is its ability to offer a full all-in-one experience. Alongside the Avaya One Cloud environment with CCaaS and UCaaS technology, Avaya also offers managed services and a series of the world’s best devices and phones.

Companies can access devices like smartphones and conferencing systems as part of their purchase with Avaya. If you want to buy all of your communications tools in the same place, then Avaya has you covered both on the cloud and outside of it.

How is Avaya Placed?

Avaya is recognised around the globe by countless leading publications and analysts. In 2021, the company earned the position of “Market Leader” for video conferencing in the Aragon Research Globe, and it was named Customer product of the year by TMC.

Avaya is also Digital.com’s top Business Phone Services provider, and it earned the Frost and Sullivan Best Practice Award for 2020. In 2021, Avaya was named one of America’s most responsible companies, and in 2020, Avaya also earned the “Tech Cares” award.

Avaya also frequently places within the Gartner Magic Quadrant listings for Unified Communications as a Service and CCaaS. In 2020, Avaya Spaces was ranked in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for meeting solutions, only a year after it was officially introduced to the market.

Avaya has also appeared in rankings like the Forrester Wave for things like Unified Communications and Collaboration, as well as Desktop video conferencing.