• Mobility will raise the expectation of availability
• Businesses will advance from social media to social business
• Continuous connectivity will drive communications support services
• Clients will take control of managed services

To explore all 12 trends, download the white paper now

Once you’ve downloaded your white paper, you’ll also receive Communications Diagnostic Sciences: Keeping pace with solution evolution.

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Now, I may not be a huge fan of reality TV, but you can’t argue that this isn’t a good step for the New Avaya.

Let me back up and explain… If you go back to my May 17th post, you can read about our “Think Big” launch event for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises where this all started. As part of this event, we invited Buddy Valastro, star of the hit TLC TV series “Cake Boss” to participate in a customer roundtable to talk about our IP Office products.

And, of course, we ordered a cake.

Thanks to the creative thinking of Cake Boss, they came up with the idea of building our gear into the cake and placing a live video call via…, well, THE CAKE. Next thing we know, Buddy isn’t just speaking at our event, but Avaya gets woven into an episode of the actual show. Here, look:

Buddy and Alan Baratz:

This is an “interactive” cake, folks:

And, well, this is a cake video call:

Besides seeing myself for 1.5 seconds in the audience on the show, here’s why i think this is really cool. It’s another step in the right direction for the New Avaya. Let’s face it, many people still think of Avaya as a stodgy, old school, Ma Bell-spin off telephone company. But given the new direction of the company – our new tagline: “Avaya. The Power of We.”, our focus on business collaboration, all the cool new technology (See Flare, web.alive, ACE, Social Media Manager – just to name a few), ‘old school’ is clearly no longer what Avaya is anymore. I mean, there’s just no way Avaya is mainstream enough to make reality TV five years ago… pure and simple.

And to celebrate, we hosted employee viewing parties across Avaya’s campus earlier today with (you guessed it, more cake). Here are more photos:

And finally, back to my “23rd” Immutable Law of Marketing – I just can’t help myself… here’s yours truely with Buddy:

NEC Corporation announced today the immediate availability of UNIVERGE Sphericall as a VMware software-based virtual appliance, enabling organizations to directly implement communication-as-a service delivery models as part of their private or hybrid clouds.

Virtualized voice and data infrastructure provide a cost effective, flexible, and agile method of delivering new applications and services rapidly to market. With virtual appliances based on VMware vSphere, customers also realize the additional benefits of pooling infrastructure resources, elasticity to meet capacity on demand, and more effective disaster recovery for business continuity.

Highlights:
- UNIVERGE Sphericall is now adapted to a VMware software-based virtual appliance making it an ideal choice for a wide range of communication services,
- Cloud Service providers can now deliver high-availability, scalable communication-as-a-service solutions in the cloud, and
- Unified communications functions such as VOIP, conferencing, IM, and Presence, can now be deployed alongside other virtualized business applications in your NEC and VMware software-based private or hybrid cloud.

Supporting Quotes:
“We believe CIOs are looking to virtualization and cloud strategies to deliver business applications, which may include ERP, CRM and even unified communications, as a service in a very streamlined, efficient manner – all on fewer physical servers than was ever possible before,” said Taichiro Hashizawa, Vice President and Senior General Manager, NEC. ”As a pure software-based communications solution based on open standards, Sphericall is suited to fit squarely within virtualization and cloud strategies in a wide variety of configurations.”

“VMware and NEC share a common vision for delivering cloud computing solutions to customers,” said Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “NEC’s new communication-as-a-service solution based on VMware vSphere® is designed to help customers virtualize additional datacenter resources for building enterprise hybrid clouds.”

As part of a three-year strategic agreement, the companies are adding elements of Avaya’s Unified Communications and Contact Center products to the HP Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) services portfolio for enterprises. This solution set is to be sold and delivered by HP.

“Organizations face constant change and the decisions they make must be flexible enough to meet future needs – such as unification of real-time communication with Web 2.0 and social media applications,” said Gary M. Budzinski, senior vice president and general manager, Technology Services, HP. “With HP and Avaya, clients can increase the agility of their existing communication architectures and realize the aspiration of unified communications for multivendor interoperability and ultimately save organizational costs.”

“HP and Avaya have highly complementary portfolios that deliver extraordinary benefits to customers, especially when combined with HP’s consulting and IT outsourcing expertise,” said Joel Hackney, senior vice president, Global Sales and Marketing, and president, Field Operations & Avaya Government Solutions, Avaya. “The HP and Avaya relationship enables customers to take out costs and transform their business via the strategic application of communications tools and services in the procurement and management model that best suits a company’s objectives.”

HP and Avaya Unified Communication Solutions

• Clients experience a full life cycle of services and support that spans planning, design, implementation, ongoing management and training. HP is offering Avaya Aura™ Unified Communications architecture and applications, Avaya Contact Center applications and Avaya’s range of end-user client applications and endpoints as part of HP UC&C Lifecycle Services.
• Organizations with multivendor environments can outsource the ongoing operations of their Unified Communications applications and infrastructure with the HP Managed Service offering for Avaya Aura™.
• Clients in the healthcare, life sciences and financial services industries will have access to vertical solutions designed specifically to address their unique business requirements.
• HP Networking  and Avaya have tested and certified products and solutions targeted to address the needs of enterprise, midsize and small businesses.

“Underwriters Laboratories was able to protect our existing multivendor investments and enable greater interoperability between business and desktop applications,” said Christian Anschuetz, chief information officer of Underwriters Laboratories, a global independent product safety testing and certification organization. “With HP and Avaya, our organization is making greater use of technologies we have today and increasing the productivity of our workforce through richer, easier-to-use collaboration capabilities.”

These offerings, built on HP’s UC&C consulting services, take a comprehensive approach to enterprise communications from strategy and planning through implementation, design and education.

HP helps clients develop a business case, long-term vision and current gap analysis based on their unique requirements. The result is that clients have a complete life cycle of services to ensure their technology is mapped to deliver organizational value.

Avaya Aura is certified for interoperability with HP Networking products as part of the HP AllianceONE Program. HP also is a Platinum- or Gold-certified Avaya Connect channel partner in countries worldwide as well as a Platinum member of the Avaya DevConnect developer program.

About Avaya

Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected operational and financial results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2010 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2009. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2010 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

Irving, Texas – September 20, 2011 – NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a leading provider and integrator of advanced communication and IT solutions, today announced the general availability of UNIVERGE® Sphericall® for Medium Businesses and Small Enterprises (MB/SE), a full-featured, enterprise class unified communications solutions for the mid-market.

Available in four configurations, UNIVERGE Sphericall for MB/SE includes simple user-based licensing, a choice of IP desktop phones, UM8700 for unified messaging, and NEC general-purpose server, all seamlessly integrated within the application environment of a mid-sized business. The solution offers proven, high availability and redundancy that is excellent for mission-critical environments.

“Mid-sized IT organizations today are making more communications decisions, and they want the same scalability and full functionality out of their unified communications solutions as large enterprises. Plus, they want to deploy it in their data centers,” said Dave Michels, industry analyst, Verge1. “NEC’s software-based approach provides a fully integrated UC solution that is tailored specifically for mid-market organizations who want the freedom to choose general purpose hardware in virtualized environments, plus give users tools that will be useful for years to come.”

Sphericall for MB/SE Key Features and Capabilities

• Full UC Capable Sphericall Platform with advanced Voice Features
• Rich Internet Access (RIA) UC Client for a variety of Client Platforms (PC, MAC, Android)
• Unified Messaging with UM8700 for integration Exchange or Lotus Notes
• Video Conferencing & Audio Conference Capabilities
• Softphone, Presence, Instant Messaging/Chat & more
• Auto Attendant, Call Recording, &Single-Number Portability (Mobility)
• Online Smart Directories
• Point-and-Click/Drag–and-Drop Call Management
• Create Customized Automated IVR Messaging
• Alternative TUI (UM8700)
• Speech Recognition (UM8700)
• Personal Assistant (UM8700)

“Companies of all sizes are looking for easy-to-install and use communication tools that increase access to information and contacts,” said Jay Krauser, Director, NEC Corporation of America, Enterprise Technologies. “With Sphericall for MB/SE, tools are delivered on any mobile device for enhanced access in the office and remotely. Furthermore, Sphericall MB/SE provides companies with limited IT staff a way to simply deploy these advanced communications features.”

More information on NEC Corporation of America can be found here:
www.necam.com/entcomm
www.NECToday.com
Twitter at www.twitter.com/NEC and @NEC
Facebook fan page: www.necam.com/facebook

About NEC Corporation of America
Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is a leading provider of innovative IT, network and communications products and solutions for service carriers, Fortune 1000 and SMB businesses across multiple vertical industries, including Healthcare, Government, Education and Hospitality. NEC Corporation of America delivers one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of technology solutions and professional services, including unified communications, wireless, voice and data, managed services, server and storage infrastructure, optical network systems, microwave radio communications and biometric security. NEC Corporation of America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a global technology leader with operations in 30 countries and more than $37.5 billion in revenues. For more information, please visit www.necam.com.

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Avaya today announced it is helping hospitals improve patient care and reduce costs by integrating real-time, intelligent communications into healthcare software applications. These healthcare applications – powered by Avaya Agile Communications Environment™ (ACE) and IBM’s Health Integration Framework – can help hospitals boost safety, efficiency and enable faster, more accurate clinical decisions.

Avaya ACE is a service-oriented architecture (SOA) -based application that uses Web services to help healthcare providers integrate communications from nearly any vendor with clinical support applications. The software runs on IBM’s Health Integration Framework, which includes WebSphere and DB2, and provides application developers with a suite of tools including application adapters built on health care standards such as HIPAA EDI, HL7 and IHE integration profiles. As a result, clients can more easily integrate patient and clinical data using a single interface.

With global IT spending in health care projected to rise more than 6.2 percent in 2010 according to research firm IDC(1) , hospitals and healthcare providers like Florida Hospital are seeking solutions to efficiently manage patient care.

For Florida Hospital, a 2,200-bed healthcare institution with seven campuses surrounding Orlando, Florida, Avaya has teamed with IBM Global Services to jointly deploy Avaya ACE and the IBM Health Integration Framework to integrate and automate communications for Emergency Equipment Compliance. Joint Commission regulatory requirements mandate that emergency medical equipment such as defibrillators and airway intubators must be tested every 24 hours to ensure it is fully functional at the moment of an urgent patient crisis. Equipment tests must be validated and recorded; non-operational equipment or missing supplies reported, repaired or replaced — a time-consuming, manual process that is open to error.

The new solution will allow a nurse to run the test check and record the status in a laptop. Appropriate departments will automatically be notified when equipment repair or supply replacement is needed. Staff are subsequently notified via text messages or phone calls if test requirements have not been met within a 24-hour period. Finally, the hospital has an auditable record that the tests have been performed.

“Florida Hospital is always looking for ways that we can improve patient safety and care by giving our caregivers more time with their patients and reducing time for administrative tasks,” said Jayne Bassler, chief clinical informatics officer, Florida Hospital. “By integrating communications with our emergency equipment management system, we expect to improve positive outcomes while becoming more efficient and meeting our regulatory requirements.”

Communications-enabling the Patient Information Portal

Avaya has also integrated communications into the CAREfx Fusionfx Patient Information Aggregation portal using Avaya ACE and the IBM Health Integration Framework to enable real-time clinical alerts. The award-winning solution provides visibility into a healthcare provider’s presence from the CAREfx portal. While in the portal, colleagues and support personnel can contact one another using click to call, instant or text messaging, email and/or file sharing. For example, when admitting a patient with chest pain, the care provider can quickly identify the best communication method to use to contact the patient’s primary care physician. Using either a quick text message or instant message with the primary care physician’s office, the care provider can request a prior EKG and cardiologist note without having to pick up the phone.

According to Avaya client research, communications-enabling the CAREfx portal has demonstrated a 75 percent improvement in clinical workflow: reducing time from emergency to recovery to two hours from eight. See the IBM and Avaya CAREfx Flash Demo at:  http://www.madeoperativ.com/avaya/demo/index.html

Streamlining Patient Discharge Processes

Using Avaya Healthcare Workflow Solutions, hospitals can also make patient discharge processes more efficient. By building communications into the patient checkout process, multiple departments can be notified well ahead of a patient’s discharge time, including pharmacy, dietary, housekeeping, transport, patient accounts and more. By providing enough advance notice, deliveries from pharmacy or dietary can be halted – thus decreasing waste; rooms can be turned more quickly, and patients can be on their way home or to other facilities much sooner. With the average U.S. hospital bed representing $500,000 in revenue per year, Avaya patient workflow solutions can provide a net benefit of $1M for an average 300-400 bed hospital.

Avaya has a broad range of enterprise communications solutions for healthcare to more than 5,000 healthcare institutions, including health systems, doctors’ offices and hospitals. This includes one of the largest non-profit healthcare systems in the U.S., Group Health Cooperative, which recently selected Avaya contact center capabilities to solve patient issues; Bert Fish Medical Center, a health care complex that improved communications across nine facilities using Avaya solutions; and Intermountain Healthcare, a non-profit healthcare system of 21 hospitals.(2)

For more information about Avaya ACE, please visit http://www.avaya.com/usa/topics/avayaagilecommunicationenvironment

About Avaya

Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

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