Avaya Expands Mobile Unified Collaboration Choices

Top 10 Mobile Apps For Business Collaboration

Avaya is offering mobile users more choices for unified communications with support for a broad range of consumer devices, the company said Monday at its user conference in Las Vegas.

The one-X soft client for initiating calls and other sessions managed by Avaya unified communications (UC) will now be supported on Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy II, on the Apple iPhone 3GS and 4G, and on Research in Motion's Blackberry touchscreen devices, in addition to Symbian and Windows devices, the company said in a statement. Avaya is also introducing the first version of one-X on Mac OS.

Other improvements include:

-- A new Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) client for Apple iOS on iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone, enabling UC and voice over wireless or cellular networks.

-- Presence status of team members available across Avaya endpoints and soft clients and mobile devices. Presence status is also federated with IBM and Microsoft unified communications technologies, allowing for a consistent view of who is in the office, on the phone, available, or unavailable.

-- Unified call logs, contact lists, and voice messages across all endpoints and soft clients.

-- Consolidation of mobile UC client applications, management and, administration onto a single, virtualized server to reduce IT support requirements and operating costs.

Avaya's goal is to provide mobile users with access to the same voice, video, contact list, and presence capabilities as users in the office. For example, the SIP client Avaya is introducing for iOS allows Apple mobile devices to connect to a corporate phone system using the same protocol employed by desk phones. Avaya has been pushing for broad adoption of SIP.

Avaya said one-X also allows it to support seamless handoffs from mobile to wired phones and vice versa.

The one-X clients work with Avaya Aura System Manager, which is used for system administration and helps provide a unified experience across all clients.

United Airlines is one Avaya customer that wants to use this mobile integration to be able to reach employees in or out of the office. "As a highly mobile, global company, it's a significant advantage to be able to reach someone on the first call regardless of the city they're in," John Gana, United Airlines telecommunications manager, said in a statement.

InformationWeek Analytics is conducting a survey to determine the satisfaction with mobile operating systems vendors. Respond to the survey and be eligible to win an iPad. Take the survey now. Survey ends May 27.