Avaya Innovations magazine Issue 1 2013

Issue 1 • 2013
INNOVATIONSinspiring ideas from the leader in business collaboration
UC Case Study
BC Hydro
Executive Interview
Avaya Sales Chief
Tom Mitchell
The contact center
goes social
16 3422
Lean, Mean
Research
Machine
Avaya Labs Research
Is Inventing the Future
of How We Work
28pg

2
AvayaInnovationsLetterfromtheEditor
Letter from the Editor
W
elcome to the second issue of Avaya Innovations!
We’ve revamped our format to provide you with
more news, more interesting and relevant articles,
and a fresh design befitting a growing magazine.
One thing we didn’t change was our focus on innovation,
which is why this issue’s cover story (“Lean, Mean Research
Machine,” p. 28) focuses on the researchers at Avaya Labs,
whose work you’ll learn is directly responsible for many of
the most cutting-edge products in our lineup today. Research
and development is an issue near and dear to me. My father
is a retired Ph.D. chemical engineer who won Honeywell
Corp.’s top research honor, the Sweatt Award, back in the
1980s. Since those days, many companies have slashed their
R&D budgets, preferring to outsource their innovation to
universities or startups. Avaya hasn’t been immune to that
trend. Yet, I’m proud to say that Avaya not only continues to
invest heavily in R&D—19 percent of our product revenue!—
but that it continues to pay off, with 57 internally developed
products released last year.
In addition to our technical edge, which goes back to the
days of Bell Labs and our predecessor companies, Avaya
also offers a strong value proposition. For example, the
total cost of ownership for Avaya’s unified communications
products is lower than most of our competitors, as I noted
in a recent Avaya.com blog, “Free(ish) Ain’t Free(ish): The
True Cost of Microsoft Lync” (avaya.com/mag1). This is not
just my opinion, but the findings of respected independent
analyst groups such as Nemertes Research and Constellation
Research. Learn more about how going the Avaya way can
save your company money by downloading and sharing these
reports from my blog.
As we continue to evolve and improve the
Avaya Innovations magazine, I’d love to hear
your suggestions for stories from Avaya
and also from our ecosystem of partners,
developers, and customers. Please email me
at my address below.
Eric Lai, Editor
Editor@Avaya.com
Avaya Innovations
Issue 1, 2013
Editor:
Eric Lai
Publisher:
Richard Solosky
Creative Director:
Patrick Graziano
Director of Global Brand
Management, Avaya:
Laura Misdom
Chief Marketing Officer, Avaya:
Mark Wilson
Avaya Innovations magazine is published four times
a year. Read and download it online at
avaya.com/mag2
Subscriptions are complimentary for qualified
individuals and companies. Sign up at
avaya.com/mag3
The content contained in this publication is for
informational purposes only and may not be
incorporated into a contract or agreement.
Copyright ©2013, Avaya and/or its affiliates.
On The
cover
Avaya Labs researchers are keeping
the patent office busy—and the
product pipeline humming—
by solving real-world business
collaboration challenges.
Pictured (front row from right): Ravi Sethi, Dorée
Duncan Seligmann, Ajita John, Bengi Karacali-Akyamac;
(back row from right): Heinz Teutsch, Jim M. Landwehr,
Avram Levi; featured in cover story on p. 28, “Lean,
Mean Research Machine”

Issue1•2013
3
What’s inside
Lean, Mean
Research Machine
Avaya Labs Research is inventing
the future of how we work
28pg
The contact
center goes
social
How your business can embrace
the multichannel world
34pg
Is It Time
for a Private
Cloud?
Delivering cost savings—
and more
38pg
05 By the Numbers
24
Video Case Study:
Renown Health
04
CONSUMERIZATION CORNER:
SMARTPHONES FOR VIDEO
27
How-to:
Personal Video conferencing
16
Head-ON:
AVAYA SALES CHIEF TOM MITCHELL
14 Solutions
37
User Spotlight:
THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON’S
ROLAND RIVERA
06 What’s the Big Idea?
08 News and Events
18
Partner Up:
INTEGRATED RESEARCH CEO MARK BRAYAN
20
Best of Blogs:
CUSTOMER SERVICE MEGAPHONE
41 Last Call:
Fail Hard
22
Unified Communications Case Study:
BC HYDro
43 Contributors
What’sInside

4
AvayaInnovationsConsumerizationCorner
Consumerization Corner
LINKS:
Avaya Scopia Mobile:
avaya.com/mag4
Download our Scopia app:
For iOS, go to the
iTunes Store
For Android, go to the
Google Play Store
Go Go
Video
V
ideo chatting and conferencing are on the
rise, thanks to the smartphone. I’m not just
talking about Skype or FaceTime. Now in
version 3, the free Avaya Scopia®
Mobile app brings
high-definition, enterprise-class video collaboration
to iOS and Android, and connects you to 2 million
installed video conferencing and telepresence
systems worldwide. Video collaboration with
co-workers and business partners has never
been easier.
Looking for the best smartphones for mobile
video conferencing? Check out this heroic trio.
in a Google Play user review of
Scopia Mobile, one user touts it as
“excellent even over 3G,” making it
ideal for video conferences on slower
connections. Unfortunately, while the
Galaxy S III’s 4.8-inch, 1920x1080 HD
Super AMOLED™ display is large, it’s
also dimmer than the competition, at
330 cd/m2
max brightness. It’s also
more difficult to adjust than
competing phones.
iPhone fans will be happy to hear
that Apple’s iPhone 5 improves
upon its predecessors. Call quality is
especially upgraded: Apple added a
third microphone to the iPhone 5,
noticeably improving
call quality,
particularly on
speakerphone.
Out of all the
phones I tried,
I found the
iPhone 5 delivered
the clearest calls.
Like the Galaxy
S III, the iPhone 5
shoots video up
to 720p. Video
playback doesn’t
quite match the
Droid DNA or
Galaxy S III, though.
The iPhone 5’s
4-inch, 1136x640
Retina display is
smaller and slightly less crisp than
that of the Droid DNA and Galaxy
S III. Credit the iPhone 5 for having
the brightest display of
the three, however, at
500 cd/m2
max brightness.
Whether for an individual in
a BYOD-friendly workplace,
or an enterprise looking
to make an upgrade for
its teams, a smartphone
buy is a major decision. As
video chatting continues
to go more mainstream
for business, you’ll want
to invest in a smartphone
that isn’t just capable of
running Scopia Mobile, but
also capable of making the
most of it. This will help
you maximize your ROI and
your firm’s communications
infrastructure.
Happy smartphone
shopping!
To take advantage, though, you need the right
phone. Our featured smartphones all play well with
the H.239-compliant Scopia Mobile and offer clear
call quality, top-notch specs, and speedy 4G LTE
for jitter-free video and data collaboration. For
video conferencing, these phones all feature front-
facing cameras capable of recording HD video at a
smooth 30 frames per second. They also all come
with Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi, micro-USB, and 3.5-mm
headphone connections. For two-jack Skype and
PC headsets, however, you will need a 3.5-mm
smartphone “Y” adapter.
Across the board, the HTC Droid DNA impresses.
For video conferencing, I found the Droid DNA’s
quad-core processor and bright, sharp 5-inch LCD
screen, with a 1920x1080 resolution, to deliver
smooth, vibrant full HD playback. The display is
also bright, maxing out at 364 candelas per square
meter (cd/m2
), brighter than most LCD monitors.
The front-facing camera shoots video in up to
1080p, the best of all our reviewed phones. As
for call quality, the Droid DNA is good in terms
of loudness, clarity, and noise
cancellation, though I did notice
some minor, infrequent crackling
in standard calls.
The Samsung Galaxy S III
also packs plenty of power
and speed for mobile video
conferencing and data
collaboration. Audio and
call quality are strong, and
the front-facing camera
records video at 720p.
As for video playback,
By: Jude Chao
SamsungGalaxySIII
AppleiPhone5

Issue1•2013
5
BytheNumbers
By the Numbers
5

6
AvayaInnovationsWhat’stheBigIdea?
Once upon a time,
presence was
supposed to be
the key to enabling real-time
collaboration with co-workers
and customers. Letting you
know if people are in a meeting
or on a call is valuable. It’s also
not enough. “In most cases the
primary piece of information
learned from presence is whether
people have touched their
keyboard or mouse in the past
five minutes,” wrote Avaya Senior
Vice President Brett Shockley in a
white paper last year.
Turns out, the same technology
trends that created the boon of
Big Data have also cursed us,
the Information Worker, with
Too Much Data. It’s turned us all
into accidental hoarders, with
more emails, documents, IM
conversations, voicemails, etc.
than we can easily sift through
before a meeting. The problem
is, too many of our meetings
start late because, ironically, we
are manually searching through
our data in order to make our
meetings productive.
Some collaboration vendors
are trying to use contextual
information—such as the identity
of a person, the social networks
he or she may be a member of, or
his or her physical location—to save
you steps and make you more
productive. But most of these have
been piecemeal efforts to date. To go all
the way, you need more than context—
you need Awareness.
So how do you gain Awareness?
According to Avaya Labs Research
Director Dr. Venky Krishnaswamy, you
must analyze ALL the latent institutional
wisdom already collected and saved as
metadata by your company, and then
apply it to predict four things for you,
the Information Worker:
It’s like having a hyper-efficient
administrative assistant who knows
what you need before you do. That’s
what Avaya’s Awareness Engine does.
Developed by Avaya Labs researchers,
the Awareness Engine constantly
monitors and analyzes the work you do
in order to predict and present what you
might need.
“The overall result is a much smarter
enterprise with the potential for highly
amplified output per employee,” says
Krishnaswamy, who worked on the
Awareness Engine with Avaya Labs
researcher Ajita John and others.
Imagine that a calendar invite pops up.
You can click once to join the conference
in either audio, video, or Web chat
mode; access the latest versions of the
documents needed for the meeting on your
email, hard drive, or network; and open
them on whatever PC or mobile device you
are using. Similarly, if you get a phone call
from a co-worker, the Awareness Engine
will automatically find and open up the
current versions of the relevant documents.
Or let’s say you are a lawyer preparing for
a case. The Awareness Engine can mine
email threads, case briefs, correspondence,
and even social media postings to present
comprehensive background information
along with a list of colleagues you could
ping for more help. The beauty is that
all of these predictive activities are done
without the need to program anything. The
Awareness Engine’s software agents simply
observe, learn, and predict what you need.
The Awareness Engine hasn’t been
integrated in any Avaya products yet. But
expect it to arrive very soon. And when
this Age of Awareness arrives, expect your
productivity, and that of your colleagues,
to skyrocket.
It’s like having
a hyper-efficient
administrative
assistant who knows
what you need
before you do.
Turns out, the
same technology
trends that created
the boon of Big
Data have also
cursed us.
LINKS:
Awareness: Reinventing
Enterprise Collaboration
(Krishnaswamy)
avaya.com/mag7
Awareness: Driving the Next
Generation of Productivity
(Shockley)
avaya.com/mag8
THE PROBLEM WITH PRESENCE
What people you are most
likely to be involved with.
What conversations and with
whom are most relevant to
your current activity.
What information (documents,
emails, slides, etc.) are most
relevant to the user or topic
at hand.
What calendar events,
both past and present, are
significant to you.
By: Eric Lai
What’s the Big Idea?
With the dawning of the ‘Age of Awareness,’ collaboration is getting a
whole lot smarter.

HeadOn
77
What’stheBigIdea?Issue1•2013

AvayaInnovations
8
F
ortune 500 IT distributor SYNNEX
Corporation announced in February it will
begin distributing and supporting Avaya’s
unified communications products in the U.S.
SYNNEX is a publicly listed 10,000-employee global
firm with $10.3 billion in revenue in 2012.
“I think it will be an exceptional opportunity to
serve our partners and customers in this space,”
Peter Larocque, SYNNEX president for U.S.
distribution, told The VAR Guy blog. “There are a lot
of changes going on in the data center. Compute.
Storage. Networking. Video. Voice. Avaya really
complements the lineup that we have.”
Avaya will “gain access to a variety of partners
who are HP-centric and largely focused on servers
and storage. Going into the voice world will be
new for them,” Avaya Channel Vice President Karl
Soderlund (pictured) told CRN magazine. “These
partners are now going to be able to move into
the VoIP side of the house and have support from
SYNNEX in training and enablement. This is very
complementary.”
It was probably no shocker
that at the one-year pre-
anniversary of the start
of the Sochi 2014 Winter
Olympics, the temperature hit
66 degrees Fahrenheit. Sochi
is a subtropical beach resort,
after all; it’s Russia’s answer to
Miami or Cancun. But with the
western Caucasus mountains
just minutes away, it’s also
Russia’s winter playground—
at least when the weather
cooperates.
The weather may be out of the
control of Olympic organizers,
but they are working closely
with Avaya, the official
communications vendor, to
make sure that TV signals,
tweets, and telephone calls
are all transmitted without a
hiccup during next February’s
games. The network has been
undergoing real-world tests
since December 2012, when it
was used for the world figure
skating finals. Using Avaya
Virtual Enterprise Network
Architecture (VENA) gear,
the Avaya network will unite
all on-site sporting venues as
well as the athletes’ villages
to ensure that wireless and
wired communications are
available and smooth for
Olympic workers, tourists, and
television viewers alike. Read
more: avaya.com/mag9
@yourcustomers are
#connectingdifferently :-)
Are you? :-(
Check out this interactive infographic on
customer experience management:
avaya.com/mag10
NewsandEvents
News and Events
Credit: Sochi 2014 On Flickr.
The weather may be out of the control of Olympic organizers,
but they are working closely with Avaya, the official communications
vendor, to make sure that TV signals, tweets, and telephone calls are
all transmitted without a hiccup during next February’s games.
Network-PocAlypse
Sochi 2014: ENSURING THERE IS NO Avaya Wins Major U.S.
Distributor: SYNNEX
#1 How customers connect
More customers are now connecting with businesses onl
#1 How customers connect
More customers are now connecting with businesses online. 80% use email, 37% call.

Issue1•2013
9
NewsandEvents
Who’s Got the Lowest TCO for
Desktop Video?
Constellation Research compares five major desktop video providers: Avaya, Cisco,
Polycom, Microsoft, and Vidyo. For each vendor’s offerings, the analyst provides an
overview of the solution, evaluating integration with call control, encoding technologies,
scalability, network bandwidth computation, and the total cost of ownership for several use
cases. Avaya is found to have significantly lower TCO for pervasive desktop video conferencing
versus other UC vendors. Read more: avaya.com/mag25
Assess Your BYOD Readiness
Take this quick online test to check if your organization is ready for the
consumer mobile invasion. Read more: avaya.com/mag26
7 Communication
Trends for Today
From real-time analytics to the choice between private or public clouds,
seven things that enterprises will need to confront this year. Read more: avaya.com/mag27
Network Insights
Research Report
European IT pros share their views on the state of networking today, and
what the future could hold. Read more: avaya.com/mag29
˜˜ ANALYST: AVAYA A MAJOR PLAYER IN EXPLODING UCAAS MARKET
The market for unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is expected to grow from $2.52 billion in 2013 to $7.62
billion by 2018, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25 percent, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets.
This fast growth will be driven by video and collaboration solutions and enterprises deploying UCaaS on their existing
infrastructures. Avaya was one of the vendors named by MarketsandMarkets as a top player.
˜˜ FROST & SULLIVAN: AVAYA WINS 2 ASIA PACIFIC AWARDS
Research firm Frost & Sullivan named Avaya the 2012 Asia Pacific Inbound Contact Routing Systems Vendor of the
Year as well as the winner of the 2012 Asia Pacific Customer Value Enhancement Award for Self Services in Contact
Center. This is the second year Avaya has won the Inbound Contact Routing Award.
˜˜ AVAYA APPOINTS NEW CIO
Fari Ebrahimi was appointed CIO for Avaya in February. Ebrahimi comes to Avaya from Verizon, where he was a senior
vice president and CIO of Verizon Services Operations and led a number of large-scale global initiatives. With more
than 20 years of experience working with leading organizations, Ebrahimi brings innovative and transformational
leadership that will help Avaya enhance its IT excellence throughout the entire organization.
˜˜ EMEA NETWORKING ROADSHOW A HIT
Avaya’s EMEA Networking Roadshow hit 18 cities in Western Europe and the U.K. in January and February. Aimed at
Avaya partners and customers in the SME space, the Roadshow drew more than 650 Avaya partners and customers.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

HeadOn
10
AvayaInnovationsAvaya|Q3Quoted
10
News and Events: Quoted

1111
News and Events: SHOW US YOUR AVAYA!
NewsandEvents:ShowUsYourAvaya!
Instead of showing our products to them, we asked our customers to turn the tables on us and show
us THEIR Avaya products. And boy, did they come through! View and “like” the collage on the Avaya
Facebook page: facebook.com/avaya. There you can also check out Avayans doing the Harlem Shake
using Avaya video conferencing.
Issue1•2013

12
AvayaInnovationsNewsandEvents:Events
News and Events: Events
Marc Randall, Senior Vice President of
Networking, gives the keynote address
at the Avaya Technology Forum (ATF)
in Orlando held Feb. 26–28. The show
drew more than 500 attendees, double
the prior year, from 14 countries.
Avaya’s Mark Fletcher (aka
@Fletch911) interviews analyst
Zeus Kerravala for the Avaya
Technology Forum podcast at ATF.
A dance flash mob was one of the
highlights of the Dallas stop of the
Avaya Evolutions roadshow on Feb. 6
(on Twitter #AvayaEvolutions).
Senior Vice President Gary Barnett
and Senior Director Amir Hameed
demonstrate the Flare®
Experience
unified communications app on iPad.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author
Guy Kawasaki gave the keynote speech
to an audience of more than 830.
Avaya’s Mid-Market Director for India, Ajay Joseph,
speaking at the Healthcare CIO Summit, which
attracted 40 of India’s leading CIOs on Feb. 7–8.
The first five photos were shot by Avaya’s
Andres Larranaga.
Submit news and photos about Avaya events
to Editor@Avaya.com
PartnerConnection Day on January 31 in Mexico City drew
353 attendees. On stage (left to right): Galib Karim, Managing
Director of Avaya LATAM; Maggie Bautista, Marketing
Manager of Avaya LATAM; Karla Nussbaumer, Presales
Manager of Avaya México; Rolando Alanis, Sales Manager of
Avaya partner Temsa; Roberto Ricossa, Marketing Director
of Avaya Americas International; and Arturo Vargas, Channel
Manager of Avaya México.

Issue1•2013
13
NewsandEvents:ComingEvents
News and Events: Coming Events
May 14: Simplifying Contact Center Administration: Online: avaya.com/mag11
June 11: Innovation Implementations (in Contact Center): Online: avaya.com/mag12
Live From Avaya Technical Forum 2013!
Avaya’s Mark Fletcher podcasts from Avaya’s premier engineering-focused conference.
Online: avaya.com/mag13
Over the Top NG911: Enterprise NG911 on the Legacy E911 Network
Speakers: Mark Fletcher, Avaya; Matt Serra, Rave Mobile Safety; Tim Kenyon, Conveyant
Online: iaug.org
Speech Analytics Supercharged Quality Monitoring: Deliver Greater Efficiency Without
Sacrificing Customer Experience
Speaker: Dave Palmieri, Avaya
Online: iaug.org
Moving to the Cloud: Avaya-Esna Solution for Google Apps Integration
Speakers: Denise Gilardone and Gavin Lee, Avaya; Lee Ho, Esna Technologies
Online: iaug.org
Virtual Events/Webinars
Date Event Location For More Info
April 18 Avaya PartnerConnection Day Los Angeles avaya.com/mag14
April 25 Avaya PartnerConnection Day Minneapolis avaya.com/mag14
May 6–10 Interop Las Vegas interop.com
May 15 Avaya Evolutions Bogota, Columbia avaya-evolutions.com
June 3–6 Partner Community Council (PCC) Orlando pccamericas.org
June 3–7 IAUG CONVERGE2013 Orlando iaug.org
June 12–14 Interop Japan Chiba interop.jp
June 12 Call Center CRM Demo & Conference Osaka callcenter-japan.com
June 13 Avaya Evolutions Mexico City avaya-evolutions.com

14
AvayaInnovationsSolutions
solutions
Scopia®
Elite MCU 6000
Avaya’s new Scopia®
Elite 6000 Series multipoint
control unit (MCU) may offer the best bang for the buck
on the market today for companies interested in doing
high-definition video conferencing. And in these green times,
the Scopia Elite’s energy-efficient ways also make sense for
the environment as well as the corporate bottom line.
While it comes as a 1U rack-ready server, the Scopia Elite
6000 uses a hybrid hardware/software H.264-based
architecture that supports up to 40 1080p/30 frames per
second ports, or 80 720p/30 fps ports. That beats both
hardware and software competitors:
It also requires as little as one-quarter of the energy of
competitors’ MCU boxes:
The result, says Telepresence Options’s David Maldow, “is
the scalability and flexibility of a software bridge, with the
power of a specialized appliance. In fact, it is arguably the
most powerful MCU, at least in terms of resolution support
and capacity.”
The Scopia Elite 6000 Series MCUs can support all
standards-based telepresence systems, including Cisco/
Tandberg, LifeSize, and Polycom. It also supports personal
video conferencing and BYOD via the Scopia Desktop and
Scopia Mobile applications.
Source: Avaya.com
PowerConsumption(W)
Hardware MCUs
Scopia Elite
6000
Polycom
RMX
Cisco MCU
5300
720p ports density per 1U 80 30 20
Software MCUs
Scopia Elite
6000
Polycom
Collaboration
Server
LifeSize
UVC
1080p ports density per 1U 40 N/A N/A
Source: Avaya.com.
Avaya Releases Video Network Readiness
and Monitoring Tool
eVident is a new network monitoring tool from Avaya that will
be an invaluable aid to any IT manager expecting to increase
their video traffic over the next several years. The software
can simulate video conferencing traffic to assess your
network readiness at low cost, monitor video traffic in action,
and provide an analysis of the audio and video quality.
Avaya Expands DevConnect Select
Product Program
Avaya has expanded its DevConnect Select Product Program
(SPP) with the addition of solutions from 13 new and existing
SPP partners. Each is available for order directly from Avaya
and its channel partners in the U.S. and Canada, with delivery,
implementation, service, and support provided by the SPP
companies. Partners with new solutions include:
Avaya’s DevConnect SPP has introduced 30 solutions since its
inception in May 2012.
Avaya DevConnect Marketplace: avaya.com/mag20
• CallCopy
• DuVoice
• FCS
• Knoahsoft
• Movitas
• Mutare
• NetIQ
• OAISYS
• ObjectTel
• Phybridge
• Symmetrics
• Conveyant
• RSI
The Scopia®
Elite 6000 MCU
Is Powerful—and
Power-Sipping
Avaya eVident Monitoring

Issue1•2013
15
It’s no surprise that complex technical issues arise in
today’s unified communications and advanced contact
center environments with their multiple products,
applications, and even vendors. But it’s an absolute
wonder how the new Avaya Support Website (ASW) can
help our clients and partners resolve issues faster and
gain more control of their technology environment.
New features of the ASW are revolutionizing how you
obtain support. More efficient and effective than a
phone call, these features help you quickly identify
which product is the source of a problem and guide you
through resolution. It is a true multimedia experience
featuring a personalized dashboard and the largest and
most powerful Avaya knowledge base ever. The ASW
provides assisted search, quick escalations, live chat, and
talk (coming in the near future) with our best agents over
the Web. It can save you valuable time and reduce the
need for call-backs, hand-offs, and other delays in the
resolution process.
Introducing Ava
Your personalized ASW dashboard lists all of your Avaya
products, displays your current and recently closed
service requests, and gives you exclusive access to the
full range of Avaya support resources.
Whatever your support need, Ava, the Avaya support
avatar, is ready to help. Through Ava, you have immediate
access to support information throughout the Avaya
Knowledgebase, which offers articles and insights on
known solutions from the talented engineers who deal
with issues every day. Ava can also query the Avaya
Knowledgebase for you to refine your search. And, in
addition to product information, Ava can also access
educational content such as how-to videos, access
downloads, and even help you order parts.
If your exploration uncovers no known solutions, with just
a click Ava will launch a Web chat with a live agent or,
in the near future, a voice connection
via Web Talk. Either way, you and the
agent won’t be starting from scratch. As
you’ve explored the extensive resources available
through the ASW, Ava has been assembling a service
request in the background, as well as cataloging the
documents, video, audio, and other items you’ve found
in your browsing and search. The service request and
contextual content of your search are now available to
you and the agent as you choose the best channels and
resources for troubleshooting and issue resolution.
Urgent Need, Immediate Action
Should a full system shutdown occur, the Total Service
Outage button is the fastest way to get help. When
you click on this button and provide the answers to a
few short questions, a call to Avaya is initiated, and
you’re given priority in the voice queue for the Avaya
Emergency Response team without leaving the
current Web environment.
The ASW’s current rich capabilities are just the
beginning. Soon, Web Video will be an option, so
rather than communicating via phone, chat, or Web
Talk (via your tablet or PC), you’ll be able to see and
interact with Avaya experts through a rich video
experience, leveraging the technology of Avaya One
Touch Video. Many other features are also in the works
to make the site and its capabilities accessible so you
can communicate with Avaya experts whatever way is
most convenient for you, all from the same robust Web
environment. The new ASW from Avaya is all about
greatly improving your client experience and is available
to clients with an Avaya support agreement or through
your Avaya authorized partner. For more information
on the ASW, visit support.avaya.com. Read more about
Avaya One Touch Video: avaya.com/mag19
Solutions
New Website Includes Personalized
Dashboard, Web Talk, and Total
Service Outage “ER” Button
By: Michael Runda, President of Avaya Client Services
Avaya Support:
Faster and More
Effective Than Ever

AvayaInnovations
16
Head-On:TomMitchell
Head-On
What’s it been like since you took over?
It has been crazy busy, but crazy fun. I like being a part of
the day-to-day action of driving sales motions, working
with a team to put our strategies into action. And frankly, I
love the sales experience, both the art and the science of it.
It helps that I knew our sales and channel teams pretty well
already, and could hit the ground running!
What are some of the internal and external
challenges that Avaya faces as it goes to market
today? What kinds of transformations are in store for
Avaya and its ecosystem in 2013?
I believe there are two challenges we need to overcome to
be more successful. Internally, we need to focus on driving
our latest and market-leading innovations into our large
enterprise base. Every salesperson needs to be able to
articulate how Avaya solutions can make their customer
more productive, more competitive, while reducing total
cost of ownership. Because that’s what our customers
care about.
Externally, we need more coverage, so that any customer
that needs our solutions will be able to engage an Avaya
sales professional or a certified and highly trained partner
to obtain those solutions.
What are the biggest strengths of the Avaya sales
organization and partner ecosystem today?
Our Avaya sales organization is committed to customer
satisfaction. They are Avaya in the eyes of the customer;
this is the core of what they do. They hold the power to
keep customers loyal and it is an immense responsibility
that our team embraces in every interaction. We also have
an extraordinarily capable ecosystem of partners. In the
four years since we revamped our competency model, our
partners have embraced our new training and it shows in
our continually increasing customer satisfaction scores. As
an example, in the last two years alone our partners have
increased their sales and design credentials by 78 percent
and their service credentials by almost 300 percent.
Customers want to buy from experts, and our Avaya sales
organization and channel partners are delivering that
expertise consistently. That is an exceptional performance
for any sales community.
How do you plan to help Avaya grow and become
more successful?
Avaya’s sales model is customer-centered and channel-
engaged, which means that our Avaya sales organization is
responsible for understanding their market and identifying
a strong growth strategy. They need to continually assess
Recently elevated Senior Vice President for
Global Sales Tom Mitchell is a familiar face,
having overseen Avaya’s channel partner
team and its global sales strategy with
small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) for the past three years. In his
first in-depth Q&A, Mitchell shares the
challenges and the changes ahead for
Avaya and its global sales strategy.
By: Eric Lai
Maker
Market

Issue1•2013
17
Head-On:TomMitchell
their partner community and determine if they need to
recruit or further develop partners in order to capture the
necessary growth while never losing their eye on customer
satisfaction. And that’s exactly what we are doing: Avaya
needs to take market share and expand into new solution
areas. In order to do this, we need to have an optimal
sales coverage strategy, and that includes our Avaya sales
organization, our partners, and the exploration of new
routes to market. It is very dynamic.
What kinds of issues are you most urgently trying to
solve for the Avaya sales community today?
My biggest challenge is how to reduce complexity and
increase the ease of doing business. To this end, I have
championed many improvements that have already made
our processes simpler, faster, and more effective. Some of
the highlights over the past nine months include:
• The new sales and partner portal, which has
increased sales productivity with a faster, easier, and
more intuitive portal.
• New Quality Framework improvements have
introduced more options and added free design
support to effectively reduce the risk associated
with new technology.
• The ProServices Now Tool has reduced Avaya
Professional Services quote turnaround times by
95 percent, ensuring faster customer response for
Avaya and our partners.
• Finally, the launch of content syndication created a
free process that automatically delivers Avaya content
to partner websites in nine languages and across
all theaters, so customers always receive the latest
information from our partners.
What words of advice would you offer to anyone who
is interested in joining the Avaya sales community?
I always encourage any sales professional or partner to be
with the best in the business. Invest in training for greatest
competency and customer satisfaction, because this is what
is going to pay off in the long run.
SMEs are a newish but fast-growing business for
Avaya. How do we continue to accelerate?
We have two imperatives that will grow this market. The
first is to ensure that we have broad market coverage,
leveraging channel partners who know how to reach
these mid-sized customers.
The second is to continue to develop a highly desirable
solution portfolio that stays two steps ahead of our
competition. We have an edge in this regard because, unlike
many competitors, Avaya has choices for small and mid-
market customers. If a customer has sophisticated needs,
our sales community has a sophisticated solution in Avaya
Aura®
. If the customer’s needs are less complex, we have
an IP Office solution that offers the lowest total cost of
ownership in the industry. With its increased constructs, fast
time to cash, and lower investment thresholds, the mid-
market will enable our sales community to reach the next
level of success.
Personally, what Avaya products are you excited
about and think customers and the Avaya sales
community should be, too?
In addition to Avaya Aura and IP Office, there are four
products that really get me excited: Scopia®
video
conferencing, Aurix®
Speech Analytics for boosting
customer experience, the Identity Engines security tool
for BYOD, and our line of data networking solutions. All of
these products deliver real benefits for the end customer,
and they shift wallet share from our competitors to Avaya.
That’s a combination I can get excited about.
In addition to Avaya
Aura®
and IP Office, there
are four products that
really get me excited:
Scopia®
video conferencing,
Aurix®
Speech Analytics
for boosting customer
experience, the Identity
Engines security tool for
BYOD, and our line of data
networking solutions.
Tom Mitchell
Family:
My wife Lori and our two daughters,
Kristin and Kayla.
Favorite restaurant:
Coconuts is a casual place near my home
in Fort Lauderdale. I’ve never had a
bad meal at Coconuts.
Vacation spot:
The Exumas, which is a cluster of islands
in the Bahamas. You travel there by
small boat which is always thrilling.
Hobbies:
Boating and skiing with friends and family.
Leader you admire:
I was fortunate enough to meet
and spend some time with Colin Powell.
I found him reasonable, decent, and humble.
Last book read:
Guns, Germs, and Steel
by Jared Diamond.

18
AvayaInnovationsPartnerUp:MarkBrayan
Partner Up
How far along are your clients in transitioning away
from simple VoIP to full unified communications?
We have a lot of big Fortune 500 clients. All of them have
VoIP deployed, but most are moving toward UC to take
advantage of its broader base of functionality. That’s where
we come in, in terms of helping them manage that transition
and get the most out of that investment in UC. How far along
they are varies, but they are all moving in that direction.
What common challenges can switching to UC solve?
It’s about improving communication and productivity. For
example, one of our customers, a global bank, has offices
in dozens of countries and teams that work across those
offices. Their UC system enables team members to see who
is available at any moment in the day so they can schedule
calls and meetings very efficiently—without tedious email
ping-pong to find a time that suits everyone. They rely
on this feature every day, so it needs to be available and
performing, and this is where Prognosis comes in.
Prognosis [IR’s IP telephony management solution]
ensures that every part of the UC ecosystem is performing
around the clock so the teams can get on with their work
and maximize their productivity.
How interested are your clients in other SIP
applications, such as desktop and mobile
video conferencing?
Very interested. Another one of our customers, a
large technology company, is rolling out desktop video
conferencing to improve the effectiveness of remote
collaboration. The adoption of the service is heavily
influenced by the quality of the video. It’s not used if the
quality is poor.
By: Jude Chao
ON THIS
Integrated Research
CEO Mark Brayan
shares his prognosis.
“One of our customers is a global bank with offices in dozens of countries.
Their UC system enables team members to see who is available at any moment
in the day so they can schedule calls and meetings very efficiently—without
tedious email ping-pong to find a time that suits everyone.”
Integrated Research (IR) is a longtime
leader in unified communications
performance monitoring software.
I asked Mark Brayan, managing director
and CEO of IR, an Avaya DevConnect
partner, about his views on the future of
enterprise communications.
SIP

Issue1•2013
19
PartnerUp:MarkBrayan
Mark Brayan
WESTCON GROUP
TO SELL, SUPPORT
Avaya SCOPIA®
Avaya Scopia®
video conferencing gear will now
be distributed by the Westcon Group. Under
Westcon’s GoldSeal Support program, Avaya
channel partners lacking video expertise can
take advantage of Westcon to provide support
to end users.
NET2PHONE SIP TRUNKING SOLUTION
NOW ‘AVAYA COMPLIANT’
Net2Phone, one of the largest distributor-
based VoIP providers in the world and an Avaya
DevConnect partner, has made its SIP Trunking
solution compliant with Avaya IP Office 8.1 and
supported for use with both IP Office 500 and
IP Office Server Edition.
IMAGO AND AVAYA SIGN DISTRIBUTION
DEAL FOR Avaya SCOPIA
Imago Group PLC, Europe’s largest video
solutions company, has been appointed by
Avaya to continue distributing Scopia video
conferencing products in the U.K., Benelux,
and France. Imago and its subsidiary, Video
Corporation, have longstanding relationships
with Avaya.
SCANSOURCE TO DISTRIBUTE Avaya
Products IN FRANCE
Unified communications distributor ScanSource
Communications has expanded its distribution
agreement with Avaya to France. ScanSource
recently began offering Avaya products to
resellers in the U.K., Germany, Austria,
and Switzerland.
GROUP OF GOLD LINE SELECTED FOR
AVAYA DEVCONNECT
Ontario, Canada-based telecommunications
firm Group of Gold Line was selected to
become a Technology Partner in the Avaya
DevConnect program. Group of Gold Line
provides SIP Trunking and prepaid
long-distance calling solutions.
Congratulations to Avaya’s 2012
U.S. Partners of the Year!
»» Avaya Partner of the Year: Strategic Products
and Services (SPS)
»» Avaya Services Partner of the Year: NACR
»» Avaya Mid-Market Partner of the Year: MAC
Source Communications, Inc.
»» Avaya Growth Partner of the Year: CBTS
»» Avaya Networking Partner of the Year:
Integration Partners
»» Avaya New Partner of the Year: Carrier SME
BRAYAN IN BRIEF
Favorite books?
Servant Leadership by Robert K. Greenleaf;
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
Last great movie you saw?
The Shawshank Redemption.
Website you check every day?
The weather. I ride my bike to work, so I always need
to know.
Favorite restaurant?
Thai Naan, down the street from us in Sydney. The
food’s great, we know the owners, and the kids are
welcome. I don’t think I could go and eat anywhere
that I couldn’t take my kids.
CHANNEL
NEWS
What once-common call center and communications
optimization technologies do you see being phased
out over the next few years?
The thing about UC is that it’s an ecosystem, so anything
that doesn’t integrate or support that ecosystem is probably
going to be phased out. There will always be point solutions,
but they’ll also be integrated. Our monitoring tools have
to—and they do—support that whole ecosystem. The cool
thing about UC is that there are a number of choices: video,
voice, IM, email. That’s all part of the UC ecosystem, so it’s
all going to get used, it all needs to work, and it all needs to
work together. I can deliver a voicemail message by email
with UC. Anything that’s not part of that ecosystem, we’ll
phase out.
What’s in IR’s future?
We’re about to launch Prognosis version 10, our multivendor
UC management system. Version 10 includes a completely
new user interface and reporting engine. This version
delivers more analytics and gives not only technical users
but also business users all the information they need to
get value out of those environments. We also have an iOS
application for people to see how their systems are working
when they’re not in the office.

AvayaInnovationsAvaya|Q3BestofBlogs
20
For decades, consumers have run into problems with purchased products
or services from companies. As technology changed, the channels grew:
written letter, telephone, and then email and chat. Customers want to
engage with brands on their terms and via their channels. They do not think
in terms of discrete channels when interacting with companies. They make
no delineation between contact channels, nor do they differentiate between
sales, support, or marketing; they simply see the larger brand.
As social media grows, consumers’ use of it for support grows as well. Of
the actionable tweets and posts a company receives, 80 percent are related
to service and only 20 percent are about marketing, according to Forbes.
The majority of companies are rolling out a customer service strategy for
social media. Here are some recommendations on how to be successful.
SOCIAL MEDIA:THE CUSTOMER SERVICE MEGAPHONE
By: Carl Knerr

Issue1•2013
21
BestofBlogs
Best of Blogs
1. Go with speed. If employees can quickly address a problem, they
can prevent the complaint from becoming a public relations disaster.
Rather than waiting to build the brand’s overall comprehensive social
media strategy, the contact center team should create a Twitter handle and
target a few of their contact center agents to handle contacts. However,
don’t establish a social media presence unless you are ready to listen
and respond. Of the top 50 brands, 56 percent didn’t respond to a single
comment on Facebook and 71 percent were unresponsive on Twitter.
2. Selectively respond. It is important to evaluate the context of a
brand mention and decide if it warrants a response. A one-off complaint
about the temperature in a company’s retail store does not deserve a
response. However, a legitimate negative review of the company by an
analyst or customer should be addressed quickly.
3. Prioritize responses. Given the cost to the business of customer
churn, one approach to prioritizing is to determine if the user is an
existing customer and focus on him or her. Another approach is to use the
person’s level of social influence. Such an approach would have helped
British Airways when Jayne Gorman, a travel writer, had to wait 13 hours
for a response, leading her to write an article on the experience for The
Huffington Post. You don’t need to necessarily resolve an issue the way the
customer wants it resolved, but what you cannot do is ignore them.
4. Integrate with CRM and the contact center. Social media
interactions can be more effective if you are able to match the online user
to a customer in your customer relationship management (CRM) tool and
provide consistent work assignment. For example, Avaya’s Social Media
Manager (SMM) acts as an analytical funnel for all brand mentions, feeding
the actionable items directly to contact center agents. Not only does this
improve the workflow, but SMM filters out the 98 percent of mentions
that don’t require action while also providing real-time and historical
reporting capabilities.
5. Don’t be mistaken for a robot. Users of social media are not just
there to complain; they have joined these networks in order to socialize
with other people. As such, your online presence must be humanized
as well. HootSuite, a maker of social media tools, has their social media
owners introduce themselves and have a little fun at shift changes.
6. Market your customer support. Expose your personality and
your value—don’t just respond to complaints. When you can show users
where to turn if they have a problem, it helps to establish your brand as
one that takes care of its customers.
7. Don’t overcommit. The danger of using social media for marketing
is that it may leave people too dependent on using technology to speak,
while not allowing enough time to listen to customers. Social media is a
key part of most companies’ strategy going forward, but it should not be
the lynchpin.
“I think Jon has drawn an important
distinction between service and
experience, specifically with respect
to contact centers and IVR systems.
I find that too many IVR systems
are designed from a perspective to
keep queue lengths short, without
consideration as to the amount of
time the customer spends using
the system.”
– Comment at “Customer Experience,
Not Customer Service,” by Jon Alperin
Read the blog: avaya.com/mag24
“Best of Blogs” is curated by Avaya’s Social
Media Manager Jaime Schember. Read us
at avaya.com/blogs, follow us on Twitter at
@Avaya, and like us on Facebook.
‘TEN SCOPIA®
ADVANTAGES:
DRIVING FASTER ROI AND
REDUCED TCO’
By: ROBIN RAULF-SAGER
Scopia®
video conferencing just
works—from virtually anywhere,
anytime, over any network and on any
device. But why does Scopia work so
well? Robin explains why, and how that
helps organizations achieve faster ROI
and reduced TCO.
‘THE BEST OF BOTH CLOUDS’
By: PAT PATTERSON
If you’ve checked out the “Seven
Communications Trends For 2013”
white paper, you know that the cloud
is ready for business. But which cloud:
public, private, or both? The answer
depends on whether you are a small
business, a heavily regulated Fortune
500 company, or one that doesn’t view
IT as a core competency.
“Seven Communication Trends for
2013”: avaya.com/mag23
The BEST
of the Rest

22
AvayaInnovationsUnifiedCommunicationsCaseStudy:BCHydro
case study
AVAYA powers BC Hydro
with Avaya Aura®
communication manager
Providing energy
to 1.8 million
British Columbians,
Crown Corporation
turns to Avaya
to update aging
telephone
infrastructure.
Products:
–– Avaya Aura®
Communication
Manager
–– Avaya Aura®
Session Manager
The Benefits
Enable mobile employees to be reached anytime,
anywhere.
Flexible, easy “hot desking.”
Easier, lower-cost management.
theChallenge
When someone in British Columbia starts
their day with a coffee and the morning
news, they’re not just turning on the coffee
maker and the television; they’re turning
to BC Hydro to provide the energy that
powers their daily lives. Operating 57,648
kilometers of distribution lines and 900,000
utility poles, BC Hydro serves 1.8 million
customers—most of whom only realize
how essential the service is when a power
interruption occurs.
A vital part of running BC Hydro’s
operations safely and efficiently for
customers is a reliable telephone system to
facilitate communications throughout the
entire organization—from Prince Rupert
down to Penticton.
So when the technology support service
offered on BC Hydro’s existing Nortel
phone system was coming to an end, the
team knew they had an important choice
to make: Replace their 15-year-old system
entirely and install a new one from the
ground up, or upgrade and migrate to a
more current platform.
“There is no doubt, we were facing
challenges,” says Adam French,
telecommunications delivery manager of
BC Hydro. “We knew that our system was
quickly reaching the end of its life cycle, and
we had to implement a solution that would
be cost-effective while improving our ability
to provide British Columbia residents with
exceptional service.”

Issue1•2013
23
UnifiedCommunicationsCaseStudy:BCHydro
Unified communications
Solution
With cost-effectiveness a top priority, BC Hydro
chose to upgrade their existing system over time using
Avaya’s world-class telephony solution, Avaya Aura®
Communication Manager.
Avaya Aura Communication Manager is an
open, extensible IP telephony platform that
can be deployed as an IP PBX, a Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP)-only environment, or a
hybrid platform that supports both SIP
and non-SIP environments.
Switching more than 10,000 phone lines at
200 sites is no small task. At the heart of the
solution is Avaya Aura®
Session Manager, which
creates a geographically redundant call server in
BC Hydro’s primary data center.
The SIP system gives BC Hydro employees the flexibility
to have their phone number and office extension follow
them wherever they go. Employees can be reached in the
office on their desk phones or on the go through VoIP
softphones available on their laptops and mobile devices.
“Avaya’s system has really transformed how our IT
department—and BC Hydro—conducts business,” says
French. “Avaya has allowed us to better manage our time and
focus on other core competencies.”
Benefits
Simplicity
Because BC Hydro is a large company with a substantial
workforce, employee movement is a reality for the
organization. Consequently, the IT department must ensure
that 6,000 full-time staff and contractors with company
phones have reliable working access to the telephone system.
“On the old platform, we had to program all changes and
send a technician to a person’s desk to physically move the
phone if the person was switching locations,” says French.
“Now our employees can move desks easily without us; all
they need to do is log in to the phone at their new desk,
and they’re still accessible at the extension they were
originally assigned.”
The Avaya solution makes it very easy
for IT to relocate people in
BC Hydro’s new telephone
system as needed.
Flexibility
In just a short time,
BC Hydro’s new
telephone system
is providing its
employees with a
whole new level
of flexibility and
mobility. As a result
of implementing Avaya
Aura Communication
Manager, workers are
more efficient and happier
now that they can take their
calls anywhere, anytime.
“We’ve received lots of positive feedback
from employees about the features of our new system, and
what it allows them to do,” says French. “The ability to sync
up your desk phone to your cell phone and your laptop,
and take calls however you wish, has offered many of our
employees more freedom—especially those in the field.
They’re not tied to just one particular device anymore.”
Efficiency
BC Hydro’s new phone system is also allowing resources
to be put to better use. Because of the system’s efficiency,
BC Hydro has streamlined its IT processes and operations.
“It used to take five employees to manage the phone system
we had in place before; now it’s a two-person job,” says
French. “Members of our IT department have been able to
focus on other areas. It’s a much better system than what we
had, and it has made our jobs a great deal easier.”
“We’ve received lots of positive feedback from employees about the features of our
new system and what it allows them to do. The ability to sync up your desk phone to
your cell phone and your laptop, and take calls however you wish, has offered many of
our employees more freedom—especially those in the field. They’re not tied to just one
particular device anymore.”
—Adam French, Telecommunications Delivery Manager, BC Hydro

AvayaInnovations
24
VideoCaseStudy:RenownHealth
case study
Products:
–– Scopia®
Elite 5230 MCU
–– Scopia®
PathFinder Firewall Traversal
–– Scopia®
VC240 Executive Desktop Systems
–– Telemedicine solution incorporating Scopia®
XT1200 systems
–– Enovate telemedicine cart
–– Peripherals from GlobalMed
Background
Renown Health is northern Nevada’s largest integrated health
network and a nationally recognized healthcare leader.
Based in Reno, Renown serves a 17-county region comprised
of northern Nevada, Lake Tahoe, and northeast California,
including two California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation (CDCR) facilities.
Because the region has a highly dispersed rural population,
access to medical specialists previously required patients
to travel to urban centers of excellence. This caused undue
stress and incurred costs for patients already dealing with
symptoms associated with an acute, chronic, and/or complex
medical condition. It also caused delays in the delivery of care
and had the potential to negatively impact patient outcomes.
Kirk Gillis joined Renown Health in 2007 to develop new
healthcare programs for underserved patient populations in
the region. In early 2011, Renown launched a telemedicine
initiative to affordably and effectively deliver high-quality
medical care to patients in rural healthcare communities.
The telemedicine network envisioned by Gillis required
buy-in and investment from a number of stakeholders in
order to succeed. Together, they developed a program called
R-TeleMed, enabling highly skilled physician specialists in
Reno to consult on the evaluation and treatment of patients
in outlying areas.
RENOWN HEALTH DELIVERS
TELEMEDICINE CARE WITH
Avaya SCOPIA®
Video
conferencing SOLUTIONS
A nationally recognized
healthcare leader
improves the patient
experience and
drives down costs
with Scopia®
video
conferencing solutions.
The Benefits
Rural patients receive care from their primary
care provider while benefitting from the
knowledge and expertise of urban specialists.
Patients save time and money by reducing the
need to travel to urban facilities for treatment
and follow-up appointments.
Rural physicians receive training from
urban specialists.

Issue1•2013
25
VideoCaseStudy:RenownHealth
video
Affordable, Interoperable
Telemedicine Poised for Growth
Renown set out to find a solution that was
cost-effective and also interoperable
with the region’s existing telemedicine
infrastructure. They evaluated solutions
from a number of video conferencing
vendors including Cisco (Tandberg)
and Polycom. According to Gillis, “The
Avaya solution delivered the biggest
bang for the buck.” Gillis says that
Avaya offered efficiency and a quick
return on investment.
The program is expanding rapidly.
Renown has a goal of adding three
rural healthcare communities and three
urban specialists to the program every 90
days over the next two years; it is currently
on track to reach its goal of 25 rural healthcare
communities and 35 urban medical specialties.
Because Renown consults with two correctional facilities in
northeast California, the telemedicine platform for R-TeleMed
had to interoperate with CDCR’s existing systems. Avaya
offers full interoperability with all standards-based video,
enabling Renown to deploy it without jeopardizing CDCR’s
existing investments.
A Different Way of Delivering Quality Care
Delivering healthcare over video is not necessarily new, but
for those who have not used telemedicine before, there is a
learning curve.
“It’s not simply ‘medicine as usual,’” says Toni Muetze, an IT
project manager. “We help our clinicians and our patients
understand the etiquette involved in a telemedicine visit. We
also train the rural practitioners on how
to effectively use peripherals (e.g.,
a stethoscope) so that the visit
goes smoothly and there’s
no confusion on either side
when we want to examine
a patient via video
conferencing. The
result is a visit that flows
just as naturally as an
in-person visit.”
Muetze adds, “And our
program works. We
recently had a doctor
new to the program say
the visit was as effective as
if the patient had been in the
same room sitting across the
table from him. The audio and
video quality is crystal clear, which
enables a very natural interaction.”
A Workable Solution for Everyone
The R-TeleMed program is designed with the “Three C’s” of
care in mind.
Consultative Care–Patients and primary care providers in
outlying rural communities can consult with highly skilled
physician specialists to assist with the evaluation, diagnosis,
and treatment without needing to travel to Reno. Most
diagnostic testing and follow-up care can conveniently be
completed in the patient’s home community.
Collaborative Care–R-TeleMed connects primary care
physicians with specialists, expanding services available
in outlying communities. The primary care physician and
specialist work together to diagnose and treat most medical
conditions, while offering improved convenience for both
patients and physicians.
Continuity of Care–If the patient’s condition requires
treatment that exceeds the capabilities of their local
community, the primary care physician can transfer the
patient’s care to the consulting specialist who has been
involved with the patient’s care. This allows better continuity
of care, eliminates additional costs and delays, and expedites
the patient’s medical care and recovery.
A Secure Network That Protects Privacy
Security and protecting patient information are of
the utmost importance. According to Gillis, “We encrypt
all our data to protect privacy. One of the things that really
stood out with the Avaya team was their ability to work with
us to put extra security measures in place—so that both the
network and the endpoints are ultra-secure. They went above
and beyond to satisfy not only our requirements, but
also CDCR’s.”
Video conferencing
plays a key role in our
R-TeleMed program, and
the promise of a fully
integrated voice, video,
and data offering will
simplify our IT decisions
moving forward.
–Kirk Gillis, Vice President,
Renown Health

26
AvayaInnovationsVideoCaseStudy:RenownHealth
Looking Forward
As Renown Health expands the R-TeleMed program, they
are looking into adding mobile video conferencing so that
urban specialists can provide care regardless of location—for
example on their iPads when they are moving about in
a hospital environment. In the meantime, Renown is
improving access to care for patients throughout their
regional service area.
Gillis says, “The goal of our program is about improving
access, quality and healthcare costs in rural communities.
We don’t generate revenue from the program itself, but of
course we aim to provide the best possible care. When our
rural patients require treatment only offered in an urban
healthcare community, we want them to choose Reno and
Renown Health.”
• U.K. MEDICAL PRACTICE TRANSFORMS CONTACT
CENTER WITH IP OFFICE
For Frome Medical Group, deploying Avaya IP Office
500 with the aid of Avaya channel partner IPOffice Ltd
has improved communication with its 37,000 patients.
Callers to the new contact center get their calls
answered and appointments made more quickly.
• DUTCH UNIVERSITY REPLACES CISCO SYSTEM
WITH AVAYA AURA®
The Hogeschool van Amsterdam, also known as
the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, has
replaced its Cisco communication system with Avaya
Aura for its 3,000 employees. The Hogeschool will also
deploy Avaya’s contact center software.
• U.S. CITY CUTS COSTS, IMPROVES SERVICES WITH
AVAYA NETWORK
The city of Taylor, Michigan has adopted a new
Avaya data network that slashes maintenance costs
and boosts services to city workers and residents.
Fourteen city buildings are now linked in a secure,
reliable campus data network enabled by Avaya
Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 Series, 4000 Series,
and 3000 Series, and Avaya Wireless LAN 8100 Series.
Four Avaya IP Office systems are linked to form a
seamless, collaborative communications infrastructure.
A Fax over IP application from MultiTech, an Avaya
DevConnect Technology Partner, also allowed Taylor to
eliminate a mountain of fax machines and the phone
lines supporting them.
• NONPROFIT BOOSTS SERVICES WITH
AVAYA IP OFFICE, PARTNER
FamilyMeans deploys call reporting software
from Avaya DevConnect Technology Partner Xima
Software to analyze its calls. That’s boosted the
agency’s customer satisfaction, cut staff costs, and
helped FamilyMeans save a significant donation, too!
• STRONG, STABLE NETWORK UNDERPINS SYDNEY
ADVENTIST HOSPITAL
The busy Australian healthcare organization upgraded
its network to Avaya technology, including Avaya
Ethernet Routing Switch 8600, Avaya Virtual Private
Network Gateway 3050, and Avaya Virtual Services
Platform (VSP) 9000 core switches.
• TOP 5 GLOBAL ENERGY TRADER USES AVAYA
AURA®
SIP TECHNOLOGY
A leading energy trading firm is using the iTurret IP
telephony solution from Avaya DevConnect Technology
Partner Speakerbus. iTurret is tightly integrated
with the Avaya technology, including Avaya Aura®
SIP Enablement Services, Avaya Aura Application
Enablement Services, and Avaya S8300 Server with
G450 Media Gateway. Installed in four months across
three locations, the solution has “exceeded” the
customer’s expectations.
Learn more: Avaya.com
CUSTOMERNEWS
The Avaya solution
delivered the biggest
bang for the buck.
– Kirk Gillis, Vice President,
Renown Health

Issue1•2013
27
How-To
How-To
Wainhouse Research has identified several product or
technology elements that are key to choosing and
deploying a personal video conferencing solution. Keeping
these factors in mind will help any enterprise avoid the
failures of the past (wherein personal video conferencing
never took hold) and will enhance the customer’s probability
of reaching desired outcomes.
1. Ease of use and ultra-high reliability. Everyone
from senior staff to knowledge workers like product
marketing managers understands that if a solution were
not intuitively obvious and highly reliable, it would not
be adopted permanently. For sensitive sales situations or
for B2B calls, a video conferencing solution simply has to
work, and has to work every time. Most enterprise
professionals today are familiar with the virtual meeting
room paradigm: calling in to a virtual meeting room. Any
new video conferencing solution should support this
familiar mode.
2. Freely distributed client that is supported on a
wide variety of devices. In order to support internal
calls as well as calls to customers, external partners, and
suppliers, a video solution should be freely distributed
and available on Windows, Mac OS, iOS, and Android
devices at a minimum. The solution also needs to be able
to traverse firewalls when necessary. Bring your own
device (BYOD) is now a fact of life and any considered
solution should accommodate this trend.
3. Anywhere, anytime conferencing. While a free
client makes possible “anyone” conferencing, “anywhere,
anytime” is best served by an always-on virtual room
(meet-me bridge) offering. Other important features
include network address translation (NAT) and firewall
traversal and click-to-connect conferencing supported
by automatic client downloads.
4. Interoperability with industry-standard room
video conferencing systems. Many conference
rooms, both inside and outside any enterprise, are
video-enabled with H.323/SIP room systems from Cisco,
Polycom, and others. It is important that any personal
system deployed is able to communicate with these
systems for voice, video, and data/content-sharing.
Interoperability adds value to all who enjoy that status.
5. High-definition (HD) video. Consumer products have
introduced nearly everyone to the benefits of HD (720p)
video. Knowledge workers today want collaboration
sessions that do not sacrifice video quality and that
enable remote communications to substitute for
physical meetings.
6. Support for both scheduled and ad hoc
conferences. While room systems are generally
used in a scheduled environment, personal systems
are increasingly being used to launch ad hoc or
reservationless calls.
7. Recording and streaming capabilities. Not
everyone can attend every meeting at the scheduled
time. Recording sessions enable archives to be played
back at times and locations convenient to individuals.
8. Superior infrastructure architecture. To support a
worldwide deployment, the conferencing system should
be based on an IP architecture that supports distributed
deployments, redundancy, and remote management.
Interfacing with corporate directories is highly desirable.
9. Continuous presence multipoint calls. This is very
important for team, staff, and department meetings. With
an infrastructure that supports continuous presence calls
(often dubbed “Hollywood Squares”), all the participants
generally can have their video displayed at all times. This
makes meetings seem more natural than voice-activated
switching where only the current speaker can be seen.
Support for continuous presence is essential for any
meeting involving more than two endpoints.
10. Encryption. Information workers are often called into
meetings at non-regular hours with others who
may be many time zones away. Being able to
conference from home with encrypted media is
an important consideration.
In addition to these “technical” factors, Wainhouse Research
believes that deployment scale is also a critical factor. If
video-enabled users can call only a small number of their
colleagues (or only a limited number of devices), then video
will never become a mainstream communications mode, and
the full range of benefits will never be achieved. Metcalfe’s
Law, which states that the value of the network is dependent
on the number of endpoints, is highly applicable in the case
of personal video conferencing. Limiting desktop video to
small numbers of users relegates visual communications to
a silo, prevents usage from becoming pervasive, and is an
important factor in limiting success.
Andrew W. Davis is an analyst and senior partner at
Wainhouse Research. This is an excerpt from a recent
Wainhouse Research white paper sponsored by Avaya.
Wainhouse Research is an independent market research firm
that focuses on critical issues in the unified communications
and rich media conferencing fields, including applications like
distance education and e-learning.
HIGH-DEF AND HIGH AVAILABILITY
TEN STEPS TO MAKING PERSONAL Video conferencing SUCCEED AT YOUR COMPANY,
ACCORDING TO WAINHOUSE RESEARCH
By: Andrew W. Davis
1.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
2.
3.
4.
5.

AvayaInnovationsHeadOn
28
COVER Story
28
CoverStory-Research&DevelopmentAvaya|Q3
Lean,
Mean
Research
Machine
By: Eric Lai
Avaya Labs Research Is Inventing
the Future of How We Work
Avaya Labs Research is a study
in contradictions. Its roots—and
many of its scientists—were
drawn from the renowned Bell
Labs. Yet, its founder and many
of its star researchers openly
extol the ways that Avaya Labs
runs differently—and better—
than Bell Labs, originally the
R&D division of AT&T. Its small
50-person team is based in
Avaya’s suburban New Jersey
headquarters, far from the
high-tech hotspots of Silicon
Valley; Cambridge, England; or
Tokyo. Yet, since its founding 12
years ago, Avaya Labs Research
has consistently punched well
above its weight, publishing
papers and winning patents
at a rate that would make
many larger universities and
commercial vendors envious.

Issue1•2013
29
CoverStory:Research&Development
29
Issue1•2013
And here is perhaps the
biggest contradiction
about Avaya Labs:
Despite excelling at
these traditional
measures
of research
productivity,
Avaya Labs’
founder and
longtime president,
Ravi Sethi, insists
that his team be
judged by an additional
metric: how much their
research creates and advances
Avaya’s products.
By that measure, Avaya Labs has also
performed exceedingly well. Many of
Avaya’s most cutting-edge products
in the areas of social media, analytics,
unified communications, mobile video
conferencing, and network diagnostics
owe their genesis to Avaya Labs.
Achieving these disparate, almost-
conflicting goals is the result of the
pragmatic, collaborative culture that
Sethi has created. “We’ve got world-
class people and we’re attuned
to the company’s needs,” he says.
Power in the People
A noted computer scientist with a Ph.D.
from Princeton University, Sethi is a
24-year veteran of Bell Labs who rose to
head one of its three research divisions
during the 1990s. When Sethi joined
Avaya in 2000 to create Avaya Labs
Research, he had some firm ideas about
what he wanted to change about the
Bell Labs model and what he wanted
to keep.
One thing he insisted on keeping was
quality people. 70 percent of Avaya
Labs’ staff have Ph.D.s. Two-thirds
actually started their careers at Bell
Labs before being wooed by Sethi to
join Avaya Labs, which organizationally
sits in the Applications and Emerging
Technologies division led by Senior Vice
President Brett Shockley.
Sethi also had firm ideas about the
culture. “Much of the old
Bell Labs
didn’t have
experience in how
new technology
got to product.
Their priorities
were in other
areas,” says
Val Matula,
Avaya Labs’
head of
multimedia
technology research and
himself a 13-year veteran
of Bell Labs.
Sethi puts it more
diplomatically.
“We measure our
success not by idea
generation, but by
ideas that make it
all the way through
the pipeline to
customers. We didn’t
do this at Bell Labs.”
For instance, Avaya’s Flare®
Experience for communications
applications was developed by three
Labs researchers: Birgit Geppert, Frank
Roessler, and Trung Dinh-Trong. Rather
than transferring development of the
user experience to a business unit, the
trio became part of the Flare team
for two years in order to build the
final product.
Some bosses would
instinctively guard
their headcounts,
but Sethi has
no problems
sharing his
staff, saying
it’s better for
the company
while
providing
greater
satisfaction for
the researchers
themselves.
“Researchers
will go to great lengths
to make sure their ideas
get implemented,” he says.
From Seeds
to Sprout
Bengi Karacali-Akyamac confirms that.
“One of the things I’ve liked about
being at Avaya for the last 12 years is
seeing my work get used by the product
groups,” she says. “That doesn’t happen
often at other research labs, whether
university or commercial.”
A networking expert
with a Ph.D. from
North Carolina
State University,
Karacali-
Akyamac has
had good luck
in this regard.
Her first
project after
joining Avaya
in 2001 was
creating an application for analyzing
how ready an enterprise’s network is for
adopting IP telephony.
According to her boss, Data Analysis
Team Director Jim Landwehr, Avaya
Labs’ researchers realized that as IP
telephony started to take off,
existing tools would not
provide all the data
in one place to be
effective. Karacali-
Akyamac, along
with Avaya
Labs scientists
Lorraine
Denby, Jean
Meloche, and
other Avaya
engineers,
developed
an application
that was able
to diagnose IP
telephony problems
without using conventional,
less-efficient “packet sniffers”
and server software. This application
morphed into ExpertNet™, which even
today is used alone or by Avaya’s
Professional Services team to optimize
audio and video performance on
a network.
More recently, Karacali-Akyamac has
created an app for analyzing video chat
quality for mobile devices or PCs. The
app analyzes the movement in the faces
of the participants and estimates the
video delay between them. Karacali-
Akyamac says her prototype has
already proven itself accurate under a
wide variety of simulated conditions.
Such a lightweight, real-time tool for
analyzing video quality could help
ensure that Avaya’s desktop and mobile
video conferencing products deliver an
enterprise-class experience superior
to consumer apps like Skype and
FaceTime.
This exemplifies the
orientation of the Labs:
practical innovation
conducted by some
of the top minds in
the world as they
keep their eyes on
the prize—solving the
real-world problems of
business collaboration.
Heinz Teutsch
Ravi Sethi
Avram Levi

30
AvayaInnovations
30
CoverStory:Research&DevelopmentAvayaInnovations
One SIP at a Time Creates an Ocean
of Acceptance
Avaya Labs’ output has also changed Avaya’s product
road map or strategy. Take Session Initiation Protocol,
or SIP, the digital protocol for transmitting voice, video,
and data on the same line. When
Avaya Labs researchers
first demonstrated SIP
in 2001, there were
many skeptics
within Avaya who,
according to Matula,
“did not view SIP
as the wave of
the future.”
The SIP demos that
were put together by
Avaya Labs’ researchers
won the day. By 2004,
Avaya had launched its first
SIP products. Today, virtually all
its modern communications products are based on SIP.
In another instance, Avaya Labs helped save the
company tens of millions of dollars. VoiceXML is a
standardized scripting language now used by many
automated interactive voice response (IVR) software
solutions to interpret spoken words and commands.
Avaya didn’t have any VoiceXML technology at one
point, and according to Sethi, senior leaders were
evaluating possible acquisitions. Starting with free,
open-source software, Avaya Labs quickly put together
a VoiceXML system that it demonstrated to executives,
proving that they could build a working system quickly
and inexpensively in-house.
Keeping the Patent Office Busy
While Avaya Labs may be less pure “R” and more a
pragmatic blend of R&D, there is still plenty of basic
research being done. Collectively, Labs researchers
have filed for more than 500 patents, with individual
researchers like Dorée Duncan Seligmann having filed
Where Else
Innovation
Lives At Avaya
R
&D isn’t limited to Avaya Labs.
All told, Avaya employs 3,000
engineers globally. The best and
brightest engineers are honored with the
title Distinguished Engineer. The most
recent 2012 class of seven Distinguished
Engineers accounts for more than 267
U.S. and international patents and
patent filings.
Avaya also has specialized R&D teams. Take the VIPER
(VoIP Exploit Research) Lab (viperlab.net). Acquired
with the purchase of Sipera Systems in 2011, VIPER’s
researchers are well known for their communications
threat expertise as well as the tools they offer for
detecting hacks and malware directed at UC systems.
That has enabled VIPER to maintain its status
as a well-respected, neutral member of the
security community.
All told, Avaya invests nearly one-fifth of its
product revenue on R&D—higher than most other
communications vendors (Microsoft and Cisco invest
about 12 percent and 14 percent, respectively). It’s been a
good return on investment: Avaya released 57 internally
developed products in 2012. As a multinational company,
much of this R&D is taking place outside of the U.S. In
India, where Avaya employs 800 engineers and scientists
in Pune and Bangalore, the engineers have contributed
significantly to Avaya’s latest-generation products
such as Avaya Aura®
, IP Office, and contact center and
networking gear. “They pretty much touch the entire
gamut of our portfolio,” says Ram Kashi, research director
for Avaya Labs in India.
Indian engineers and researchers are also working
on cutting-edge problems. For instance, Avaya Labs
researchers in India have built working prototypes of
communications and call center applications using a
next-generation technology called WebRTC, says Kashi.
These apps run through a Web browser and are both
easier for developers to build and easier for end users
to access and use, he says.
Like Avaya Labs in the U.S., researchers are also driven
by practical problems. At the request of a customer,
researchers have built a “Priority Paging Engine” to
quickly send/receive high-priority audio to preset
groups of employees. They are also working on ways
to make Avaya communications software and phones
easier to use for users with visual, speech, or physical
impediments, such as boosting audio quality on demand
and providing different input methods. “We like to find
pain points that we can address,” Kashi says.
We measure our success
not by idea generation, but
by ideas that make it all the
way through the pipeline to
customers. We didn’t do this
at Bell Labs.
–Ravi Sethi, President, Avaya Labs Research

Issue1•2013
3131
CoverStory:Research&DevelopmentIssue1•2013
for more than 100 (and been granted 47 in the U.S.
alone, including her most recent one enabling
contact center agents to monitor social
media like Facebook).
Others have focused on
publishing. Networked Systems
Research Director Anjur
Krishnakumar and Data
Analysis Team Director Jim
Landwehr have authored
45 and 60 journal articles,
respectively.
Sethi himself has published a
major textbook while running
Avaya Labs. To date he has
published more than 50
papers and textbooks and is
an ACM Fellow.
Their productivity has been noted. In
an influential 2007 ranking of the top 50
software engineering institutions published in The
Association of Computing Machinery’s flagship magazine,
Communications of the ACM (CACM), Avaya was ranked
second among all commercial (non-university or government)
institutions, trailing only IBM Research, which employs more
than 3,000 scientists and engineers. Audris Mockus, an Avaya
Labs expert on software quality, was ranked ninth
among software engineering researchers.
But few can match Colin Mallows. The
English émigré, who graduated with his
Ph.D. in statistics from the University
of London in 1953, has published
more than 200 papers. Mallows
is best known within his field for
inventing the formula “Mallows’
Cp
” in 1973. Tens of millions of
business and MBA students—
including this writer—have
used the formula to assess how
well a model fits its sample
data. But Mallows is also well
known for his work in the 1990s
at AT&T Labs, where he helped the
federal government enforce post-
telecommunications deregulation laws.
He is a winner of the statistics profession’s
top honor, the Wilks Memorial Award.
The day after Mallows retired from AT&T (on Halloween
2000), he joined Avaya Labs on a part-time basis. Now 82,
Mallows is in his 57th year as a researcher and, in his words,
“still going strong.”
Ajita John Valentine Matula Dorée Duncan Seligmann

AvayaInnovations
3232
AvayaInnovations
Ahead of
the Curve
Avaya Labs
has quietly
innovated in
trendy areas,
too. As early as
2006, Matula’s
team was
demonstrating
how to enable
contact center
agents to easily chat
with customers by
video. That led directly
to Avaya’s current One
Touch Video solution,
which, in Matula’s words,
provides the closest thing
to “over-the-counter customer
service” possible.
Another example is in social media. “We knew
even back in 2005 that Facebook was going to be important
for business,” says Seligmann, another Bell Labs veteran who
directs the Labs’ collaborative applications team. Led by
Reinhard Klemm, they built a phone app into Facebook in
2006 to, in Seligmann’s words, “show you could bring unified
communications into Facebook, and bring Facebook to your
contact center.”
That early research eventually spawned today’s Avaya Social
Media Manager. Combining social media smarts on the front
end with big data-style analytics on the back end, Social Media
Manager smartly sifts through millions of posts on Twitter,
Facebook, and blogs to find the customer complaints and
comments with the most urgent need for responses by contact
center agents.
From the beginning, the Avaya Labs team has been a trailblazer
in trying to make software not only easier to use, but—much like
a personal assistant—actually able to predict what users need.
Called “awareness,” this technology leapfrogs past the passive
presence information that is the state of the art today (see
“What’s The Big Idea?” on p. 6). Awareness engines will enable
collaboration software to automatically open the latest versions
of relevant documents when a co-worker calls, or mine email
threads, internal document repositories, and the Web to provide
background information relevant to a person or event.
What the Future Holds
Seligmann’s non-traditional background (she studied
anthropology at Harvard and worked as a theater director for
several years before earning her Ph.D. in computer science at
Columbia) helps her and her team stay on the cutting edge of
the fast-changing collaboration field. Her team members,
Ajita John, Mike Sammon, and Klemm, are exploring how
to accelerate analysis of recorded conversations, whether
Joe Hall

Issue1•2013
33
Jim Landwehr
33
Issue1•2013
interactive 3-D multimedia
can improve audio and
video search, and how
to give consumers easier
access to customer
service via widgets
embedded in the social
networks that they use.
Data analysis researchers
such as Lorraine Denby,
Wen-Hua Ju, and Pat Tendick
are linking analysis of recorded
customer service phone calls with the
tracking of the speed and outcomes of those
calls in order to figure out what agents are doing right—and
who may need more training. And they are trying to do this
analysis in as close to real time as possible.
“You see the phrase ‘big data’ being thrown around all over
the place. We do that, too, but we want to put it in context,
so you don’t have to end up throwing hardware at a problem
just to avoid getting lost in your data,” Landwehr says.
The goal is to give businesses the ability to search and
glean findings from their audio and video calls as easily as
individuals can search the Web with Google today.
More traditionally, Avaya Labs is also working on smart
directional microphones that pick up only the sound of
the voice of a single contact center agent, rather than
conversations from nearby agents. These could replace
expensive, breakable headsets for contact center agents.
Agent headsets cost $100 and up; when used in a call center
setting, they need to be replaced once or twice a year.
That exemplifies the orientation of the Labs, though: practical
innovation conducted by some of the top minds in the world
as they keep their eyes on the prize—solving the real-world
problems of business.
“We don’t do any ‘Big Bang Theory’ type of research here,”
Matula says. “There are few speculative projects unrelated in
some way to communications. Instead, we focus on where we
can move the needle.”
SLA Monitor
Social Media Manager
Avaya Aura®
Experience Portal
Avaya Aura®
Conferencing
9600 SIP phones and
one-X®
Communicator
SES (SIP Enablement Services)
Avaya One Touch Video
EVAT (VoIP network assessment)
Network performance tool
Lets contact center agents engage smartly
with customers via Facebook, Twitter
Organizes multiple communication channels
for contact center
SmartConferencing feature lets users easily tag,
search, and play back audio and video
Avaya’s most powerful, easiest-to-use
phones today
Developed foundation for Avaya’s SIP roadmap
Enables contact center agents to video chat
with customers
Used by Avaya Professional Services to assess
1,000+ enterprise customers a year
Avaya Labs Research’s
biggest hits
Product what it does

34
Trend:CustomerExperienceAvayaInnovations
Social
MediaCustomer Service
success
future
http:
message
confidence
contact
brand
likes
site multichannel
fans
feedback
Internet
business
care
quality
community
online
www.
Support
Twitter
organize
loyalty
user
Help
Experience
Damart, a popular U.K. clothing brand, knows
quite a bit about delivering the warm and fuzzy:
It holds a dominant position in the thermal clothing
market. With more than 2 million customers in
its database, Damart sends out an astounding
90 million promotions and catalogs each year,
selling everything from outerwear to underwear.
Catering to both the young and older buyer, Damart
customer service faced a challenge. Younger
customers jockey for help online and through
social media. Meanwhile, some of Damart’s senior
customers go “old school” and write letters.
To solve this, Damart established a unified view
contact center that enables communication by
phone, email, Web, instant messaging, fax, scanned
documents, and SMS texting. To help the hipsters,
Damart also integrated the company’s social media
channels (Facebook and Twitter) into its contact
center. And the system doesn’t ignore the seniors:
Letters from customers are scanned and pushed to
agents, giving them a complete view of historic and
real-time customer information.
While customer experience has always been a
priority for companies of all sizes and in every
industry, the dynamics now are different. Used
to immediate gratification in other areas, today’s
customers simply won’t wait for customer service.
For the business, that means saying “the customer
is king” isn’t enough. To attract and retain
customers, businesses need to adopt modern
communication channels.
As customers embrace social media like Twitter, so
should your business. It’s the path to faster, more
effective customer service in the multichannel era.
#HelpCustomersNow
By: Anita Karvé

35
Trend:CustomerExperienceIssue1•2013
Trend: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The Meetup: Contact Center and Social Media
Once niche, social media has become a channel that businesses cannot afford
to ignore. Like phone calls, social media messages can be routed to contact
center agents with the right skills. Communications coming from Twitter,
Facebook, or company blogs can be delivered to agents with the same
context as voice calls or emails. The latest contact management platforms can
also capture additional information about the customer, including the number
of followers or friends and the sentiment—positive or negative—of a comment.
Marketing and PR departments have traditionally handled Twitter and
Facebook campaigns. But bringing social media into the contact center
improves the customer experience in many ways. It ensures a timely response
as well as consistent handling and responses by agents specifically trained
in the medium, both of which increase positive perception of the company.
Contact center agents are also trained to respond to complaints and solve
problems before negative comments spin out of control. And since contact
center agents have access to customer histories and other data, they can
deliver a more personal experience.
Technologies have emerged to bring social media into the contact center.
TweetDeck by Twitter can track tweets. Salesforce.com’s Radian6 is adept at
monitoring blogs, forums, and some social networks. And Avaya Social Media
Manager allows customer support representatives to engage directly through
environments such as Facebook.
Marketing and PR
departments have
traditionally handled
Twitter and Facebook
campaigns. But
bringing social media
into the contact
center improves the
customer experience
in many ways.
Not all channels are equally adopted by customers
Telephoning a company and
speaking to an agent
Gen Z
(18–22)
Younger
Boomers
(46–55)
Gen Y
(23–31)
Older
Boomers
(56–66)
Gen X
(32–45)
Golden
Generation
(67+)
Instant messaging/online
chat with a live person
Sending a mobile/SMS message to
the company requesting assistance
Help or frequently asked questions
(FAQs) on a company website
Click-to-call
Virtual agent
Sending an email to
customer service
Screen sharing
Online forum or community
with other customers
Contacting a company using Twitter
Percentage of U.S. online adults by generation who have adopted online customer service channels
63% 68% 66% 67% 75% 68%
64% 64% 60% 57% 60% 50%
55% 57% 56% 50% 54% 48%
47% 46% 40% 32% 29% 25%
37% 38% 29% 22% 21% 19%
41% 39% 30% 20% 16% 11%
34% 34% 27% 20% 19% 16%
36% 34% 27% 18% 14% 12%
34% 31% 22% 14% 10% 6%
31% 29% 22% 13% 10% 6%
Source: Forrester Research 2012.

36
Trend:CustomerExperienceAvayaInnovations
The Customer Experience is Always Right
According to Forrester Research, customers want a
variety of communications methods when interacting
with customer service. When asked how they had
received customer service in the past 12 months,
almost 70 percent said over the phone, 60 percent
used help or FAQs, 54 percent used email,
37 percent used chat, 20 percent used texting,
and 19 percent used a microblogging platform.
Customers are also looking for immediate
service. Forrester found that almost half of U.S.
adults give up on an online order if they can’t find
answers to their questions quickly.
Creating the Superior Customer Experience
Despite these stark facts, many companies are still
struggling to adjust. Others have adapted quickly. Take
online shoe retailer Zappos. Not only does the company
offer fast and free shipping on all orders, it also pays for
the shipping on all returns. And returns can be made
up to one year from the date of purchase. In addition,
customers can click to be taken to a “TweetWall” where
they can see at a glance the products that are most
tweeted about.
While the telephone remains the primary touch point
for many customers, you simply can’t ignore social
media. A customer in an airport may tweet for help
instead of making a phone call. Knowing that, JetBlue
Airways went proactive with its support strategy. It
answers each tweet, letting the customer know that it
hears them and is ready to help.
The key to success is ensuring that contact center
agents have the tools to quickly resolve any issue,
regardless of where—or how—the plea for help arrives.
Take Motiva. The San Diego-based company is a
450-agent provider of customer service solutions
that operates a contact center in Mexico. Motiva’s
new generation of contact center agents are very
comfortable with social media. Using Avaya contact
center technologies, Motiva agents can see a
customer’s phone calls, emails, chats, and social media
messages all in the same view—something that many
agent desktops cannot do. This integration, according
to CEO Higinio Sanchez, enables Motiva to “bring
customer service to a whole new level.”
The Right Route
In a heterogeneous environment, help requests must be
delivered quickly to agents with the appropriate skill set
and availability and who aren’t already overburdened
with other tasks. This routing needs
to happen seamlessly and
quickly behind the scenes.
This must integrate with
the single unified agent
desktop that can
handle all potential
interactions.
It’s also critical that
agents have access
to the full context
of a customer’s
interaction with the
company. After all,
there’s nothing more
frustrating for a customer
than getting transferred from
person to person and having to
repeat why you are calling as well as your name and
other basic information. Related to this, agents need to
be able to collaborate with other agents who may
have more experience or knowledge about a
particular situation.
To accomplish this, companies should create an
architecture built on open standards such as Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP), which complies with service-
oriented architecture (SOA) standards and supports
all Web-based standards. An open standards
architecture allows easier integration among the
telephony network, Web services, and back-office
applications, and gives agents the ability to deliver
personalized service to all customers.
Taking Care of Customers Now and in the Future
Customer service operations must grow with a
business and change over time. The underlying
technology must be scalable, without any performance
degradation issues. The technology also should cover
multiple sites and have a solid disaster recovery plan,
so customers never hear a busy signal or a recording
telling them their call can’t get through, or see an online
error message.
As customer experience starts to affect stock prices
and overall brand perception, it’s more critical than
ever to treat call centers and other customer-facing
operations as an integral part of corporate strategy—
and stay alert to how social media is reshaping the role
of contact centers. Be prepared for this monumental
shift by understanding the available tools, identifying
the conversations relevant to your organization, and
including social media as an integral part of your
customer contact strategy.
JetBlue Airways @JetBlue 11 Jan
@KING_OF_RINGZ Sorry to hear you are having trouble.
Anything we can do to help?
Expand
Once niche,
social media has
become a channel
that businesses
cannot ignore.

Issue1•2013
37
Rivera is convinced
that such a deal, if
properly written,
would “provide
value for our IAUG
membership,
and also value
for Avaya.”
“Sure, it’s quite
radical,” he says.
“But the University
of Washington is
a major research
university; yet despite our size, it’s still not always easy
negotiating with Avaya. I would imagine small or medium
enterprises have similar contracting issues. A master
agreement would mean that customers that were on the fence
would now have an incentive to purchase more Avaya products
because it would be far easier to do it.”
Talk to Rivera about the UW’s Avaya Aura-based rollout and
other topics at the IAUG CONVERGE2013 Conference taking
place June 3–7 in Orlando, Florida. The keynote speaker will be
Aron Ralston, the hiker whose survival was the subject of the
book and movie 127 Hours. Learn more: iaug.org
Title: Director, Network Strategy and
Telecommunications, University of Washington and
Member, IAUG Board of Directors
Experience: Assistant Director, Telecommunication
Services, State of Washington; CIO, Air Force
Technical Applications Center
Education: B.S. in Air Commerce/Transportation
Technology, Florida Institute of Technology;
Master’s in Computer Resource and Space Systems
Management, Webster University
Roland Rivera
Roland Rivera is making Avaya Aura®
the
core of the University of Washington’s
next-gen, multivendor infrastructure.
Unified
Communications
O
ver his nearly 30-year career, Roland Rivera has
overseen technology projects from sea (Florida)
to shining sea (Washington). His latest project
may be his most ambitious: upgrading the University of
Washington’s aging telecom system to a modern, SIP-based
communications system providing a variety of services for
30,000 faculty and staff.
It’s a multiyear, multimillion-dollar project that encompasses
multiple vendors. Rivera’s team is deploying a comprehensive
and secure new unified communications (UC) platform with
Avaya Aura®
as its foundation. But the University also plans
to use systems from AVST, Cisco, and Microsoft—in
particular, the Microsoft Lync unified communications
client, which will have the full set of collaboration features
including video conferencing.
“The project is very ambitious, but
the UW vision is to provide users
with ubiquitous UC, whether from
a mobile device, desktop PC, or
a high-end conferencing system,”
says Rivera.
The deployment, which began in
2011 with the stabilization of the
UW’s mission-critical call centers, is in
its third phase: the rollout of end-site infrastructure and
new SIP-based handsets and softphones to grant users
UC capabilities.
An Air Force veteran who retired with the rank of lieutenant
colonel, Rivera has shifted his service ambitions from his
country to Washington’s higher ed system as well as the
5,000-member International Avaya Users Group (IAUG).
He has presented on the UW’s deployment multiple times
to IAUG audiences and other higher ed institutions; their
valuable feedback has helped the UW continually modify
its UC architecture and approach.
Moreover, Rivera was elected to the board of directors for
the first time last year. He says the agenda of IAUG board
members like himself is to “provide really deep value to the
members as well as align ourselves strategically with Avaya
and our channel partners.” That includes better alignment
of Avaya products and services with member needs, and
convincing partners to create better, discounted Avaya
training programs. It also includes the more formidable task
of lobbying for a master service agreement between IAUG
members and Avaya.
the Open Standards Way
UserSpotlight:RolandRivera
USER SPOTLIGHT
By: Eric Lai
Rivera is convinced
that such a deal, if
properly written,
would ‘provide
value for our IAUG
membership, and also
value for Avaya’
The project is
very ambitious,
but the UW vision
is to provide
UW users with
ubiquitous UC

rimerica has carved out a thriving business by helping
“Main Street” families invest in their future. Practicing what
it preaches, the U.S. financial services provider recently
invested in new back-end communications infrastructure,
including an upgraded customer contact center running
on top of a private cloud that connects Primerica’s
headquarters and eight other locations. The private
cloud allows Primerica to deliver voice, video, messaging,
and conferencing services to 2,500 employees at lower
operational cost and with less IT labor.
P
Is It Time
for a
Private
Cloud?
By: Hanna Hurley
Public cloud services
have their faults. As more
enterprises become aware
of them, they are turning to
private clouds to give them
the best of both enterprise
and consumer worlds.

Issue1•2013
39
Temple University achieved similar goals when it switched
its student technology center to a private cloud. The
75,000-square-foot Teaching, Education, Collaboration
and Help (TECH) Center is one of the largest university data
centers in the United States with more than 700 computers;
its applications and network services are powered through a
private cloud. Temple figures it saved $2 million on installation
costs by choosing an Avaya-based private cloud. App delivery
and management also becomes much less complicated in this
now high-performance, future-proofed cloud network.
Five Advantages of Private Over Public Clouds
Public cloud services like Amazon, Salesforce.com, and
Dropbox have certainly gotten their share of hype in the past
several years. But there’s a growing backlash against the public
cloud as enterprise CIOs come to grips with the trade-offs
around security, management, and compliance. According
to a February 2013 survey by KPMG International, more
than 30 percent of global IT leaders deploying public cloud
infrastructures complained about deployment costs, integration
issues, data loss, and privacy risks or loss of control.
24 percent of those surveyed by KPMG said legal
and regulatory challenges of the public cloud
were causing them to look into private clouds.
By moving IT services into the cloud,
but keeping them behind the corporate
firewall, IT can adapt to business
requirements and service requests
more quickly—and protect and
manage company assets. The
advantages include:
• The ability to virtualize and run
multiple applications on the same
server. That lets IT consolidate their
data center, cutting IT costs and
increasing agility.
• Faster deployment of new applications
and services.
• Seamless scalability and load balancing for maximum
utilization of servers and other resources.
• Control over who sees your data and where it is stored,
allowing for greater compliance ease and auditing.
• A more consistent and reliable quality of service for all
users on any device.
More than half the respondents in an Open Data Center
Alliance survey said that they will be running more than
40 percent of their IT operations in a private cloud by 2015.1
According to Renub Research, organizations will increase their
investment in private IT clouds by a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 21.5 percent between 2011 and 2015.2
Cost Savings—and More
Much of the interest in private clouds centers on cost savings.
For instance, the U.S. government has been a private cloud
proponent for years and issued a “Cloud First” policy in
2010 requiring its agencies to choose the cloud whenever
possible for any IT investments. After the General Services
Administration (GSA) moved its email services to a private
cloud, it reported savings of $2.9 million in software licensing,
hardware, services, and support. GSA is estimating a $15 million
savings over five years.
Trend: Cloud
39
Issue1•2013
Which of the Following Are
the Key Challenges of Your
Approach to Cloud Adoption?
Total respondents (n=674)
Source: KPMG International’s Global cloud survey:
The implementation challenge.
33%
Implementation/
transition/integration
costs too high
31%
Integration with
existing architecture
30%
Data loss and
privacy risks
30%
Loss of control
26%
Lack of visibility
into future demand,
associated costs
26%
A lack of standards
between cloud providers
(interoperability)
26%
General
security risks
21%
Risk of intellectual
property theft
18%
Legal and regulatory
compliance
18%
Transparency of
operational
controls and data
Trend:Cloud

Avaya Innovations magazine Issue 1 2013

Avaya Innovations magazine Issue 1 2013

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Avaya Innovations magazine Issue 1 2013