Avaya Launches IP Office 8.0 - Mobile Collaboration Optimizes Team Performance For SMBs

January 11, 2012

Avaya IP Office 8.0 introduces a range of advancements for improving collaboration, including a comprehensive set of mobile capabilities that drive better team performance and keep mobile workers connected to their colleagues and customers wherever they go.

Justin Jaffe, research manager, SMB and Home Office Markets, IDC said that, "Many general business and IT investment priorities cited by small and medium-sized businesses are associated with improving productivity by leveraging mobile communications and collaboration capabilities. Solutions like Avaya IP Office that are comprehensive, easy to integrate with existing infrastructure, and designed specifically for mobile SMB workers will be particularly attractive."

The new mobility application for Avaya IP Office 8.0 — called one-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office — enables users to access a set of unified communications capabilities on Android-compatible devices now, and on iPhone devices in early 2012.

Key features of Avaya one-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office include:

• Full multi-party conference management via mobile device offers the ability to invite, view, mute and drop participants during a conference call. Users can set up voice conferences by selecting the participants and then, with one touch, initiate the group conference.
• Integrated presence enables users to display availability status to co-workers via mobile device (e.g. available, do not disturb), and show specific times of availability based on a user’s Microsoft® Outlook calendar. Unavailable workers can let colleagues follow them and receive an alert when availability resumes.
• Instant Messaging lets workers easily find business colleagues via an integrated corporate directory and begin a text chat with multiple co-workers simultaneously.
• 'Geopresence' displays one's location anywhere in the world, and is ideal for teams in places such as hospitals, hotels or companies where employees need to quickly identify a co-worker's physical location.
• Visual Voicemail lets users see all of their business voicemails on their mobile device with date/time information. Users can hear voicemail messages as they are being left in real-time and access a call in progress to converse.

Avaya's new one-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office application builds on the previously-available Essential Mobility solution for IP Office, a solution that extends voice capabilities such as one number access and call control. Essential Mobility is currently supported on Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone devices (support for Android and Blackberry devices available in first quarter of 2012).

Avaya IP Office 8.0 also offers new "serverless" collaboration capabilities delivered through an integrated unified communications module, called the Avaya C110 Unified Communications module. This can eliminate the need for an external server in IP Office implementations, helping to simplify deployment for partners, reduce installation times and decrease equipment costs.

Additionally, new desktop IP Office plug-ins embed communications into popular business productivity applications, providing a more convenient way for workers to communicate via their preferred application. This enables users to:Use federated presence to bring Google Talk and IP Office contacts into Avaya one-X® Portal for IP Office—the company's 'all-in-one' communications portal for SMEs.