Avaya's latest release of Avaya Aura has introduced some new and existing features that will change the way companies with multi-vendor PBXes interact with each other.
Avaya's Aura Architecture extends Communication Manager Software capabilities into a unified communications (UC) environment composed of multiple solutions and vendors.
Avaya Aura Session Manager will appeal to IT organisations because the solution focuses on managing an environment that includes multiple vendors, such as Cisco Systems, Nortel and Siemens Enterprise Communications, and on facilitating the regional and global deployment of UC applications.
In addition, Avaya Aura Session Manager delivers:
* Lower total cost of ownership
* Centralised infrastructure
* Single routing and dial plan control
* Integration of third-party equipment
* Reduction in wide area communications charges
* IMS-based foundation for new, quickly implemented applications
The result is a platform for fully exploiting the value of converged communications, satisfying the needs of employees and customers, quickly distributing the enhanced applications that deliver improved performance while driving down overall costs and simplifying system management.
Avaya Aura Session Manager's SIP-based routing provides more centralised control capabilities and significant improvements in scale, enabling more cost-effective and larger distributed deployments for enterprises. Avaya Aura Session Manager overlays the existing PBX infrastructure, ensuring an evolutionary path forward that protects investment in today's Avaya systems and software.
Application sequencing
Application sequencing offers customers control over caller ID information. For example, a call placed by a business user in Cape Town, to a customer in Johannesburg, which is taking advantage of tail-end hop-off, will display the correct Cape Town caller ID, rather than the local Johannesburg caller ID information.
In addition, given that Session Manager binds specific services to specific users regardless of device, an end-user could invoke call recording capabilities in mid-conversation, regardless of device (cellphone, desk phone, softphone or trading floor turret). Using a centralised call-recording application, Session Manager is able to span multiple networks that the end-user may use during the normal course of business, in a manner not possible with previous legacy architecture approaches.
With application sequencing, business user services and UC applications can follow users throughout the network, on any device. Applications include call filtering, social networking pop-ups and personal assistant. In addition, services that users normally employ are available to them on their mobile devices; policies that apply to their desk phones will also apply to their mobile devices.
The network ceases to be a constraint because users are defined by their profile in the enterprise, not by their location on the network. Users can have desk phones, mobile access, PCs, home-based devices, and their defined services follow them to each device. This is true even if the user roams from one location to another and logs into another device. Users on two continents can have the same set of services, while users in neighbouring offices can have different sets of services.
Third-party PBX endpoint application sequencing
Because calls to and from users on third-party PBXes (non-Avaya) can be directed to the Avaya Aura Session Manager, applications can be applied to calls to and from these endpoints. Avaya Aura Session Manager provides the capability to create a profile for third-party PBX users and add applications to be applied to these users to do things like blocking calls based on user preferences, directing calls to these users when they move across the Avaya Aura powered enterprise, and augmenting caller identification information for incoming and outgoing calls - all without upgrades or code modifications to existing third-party PBX equipment.
In summary, applications sequencing is the provisioning of communications features and functions from a variety of applications servers working behind Avaya Aura Session Manager Server to a user community distributed across a network of multi-vendor IP telephony systems. All systems would be compatible for networking purposes, features would be common across systems, and centralised applications could be shared. It is in a multi-vendor environment that the capabilities of Session Manager are required to disable boundaries between disparate systems.
Article written by Hilton Bezuidenhout, Product Manager, ATIO interactive division.
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