Many of you have been waiting as long as I have been for a truly unified client for the PC to enable more effective communications in your organization. Enterprise workers today are bombarded with too many meetings, calls, emails, IM, voicemails, and fax from customers, co-workers, suppliers, partners, and even family. On the best day it can be a challenge to ensure that all the highest priority tasks are completed on time. The day may finally arrive in the very near future where this issue is addressed with Avaya’s latest soft client offering.
Avaya one-X™ Communicator, which was announced in March and appears to be ready for prime time in August of this year, is the next generation Unified Communications desktop application that provides enterprise users with simpler, more intuitive access to all their everyday communications tools. With Avaya one-X Communicator, users can better manage communications tasks, making them more productive, responsive, and collaborative regardless of where they are working on any given day.
The client combines softphone, intelligent presence (Avaya, Microsoft and many others over the next 12-18 months using Avaya Intelligent Presence Server if you need a 3rd party presence engine, which I will discuss in my next blog), voice/video calling, visual voicemail integration with Avaya Modular Messaging, visual voice/video conferencing, as well as access to corporate directories and call logs which allows improved workforce productivity across your enterprise. Organizations can deploy one-X Communicator either as a standalone client or as an integrated part of leading desktop productivity tools like Microsoft® Office Communicator and Citrix Presentation Server.
One-X Communicator brings together multiple product options into a truly unified client that supports both H.323 and SIP, which allows organizations to standardize on one solution that can be used both today and tomorrow with the changing IP/SIP telephony landscape. The solution can be used in the office with your office phone, in Telecommuter/Teleworker mode at home/on the road with a cell phone or in Road Warrior (VoIP through a PC) mode with a headset to provide ultimate flexibility.
The product will also be included in the Avaya UC Standard Edition Bundle which provides an additional suite of UC (Mobility Solutions) solutions including cellular connectivity, VPN phone capabilities, Avaya Presence capabilities, Microsoft integration for presence, Click to Dial and Call applications and Portal based Softphone capabilities.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the need for a single client like Avaya one-X™ Communicator as a single solution, or the need for the UC Bundle to provide choices based on different needs in your business.
