GITEX – the Middle East’s largest technology exhibition and conference – has been taking place this week in Dubai. The event showcases some of the world’s most cutting edge technologies with a specific focus this year placed on the capabilities of 5G connectivity. Now in its 39th iteration GITEX divides itself to segregate different areas of technology with dedicated zones. The communications hall includes some of the world’s most renown brands including Huawei, Cisco, NEC and Avaya.
Grabbing the headlines recently – with news of its partnership with RingCentral – Avaya hold a prominent position at GITEX 2019 with a well-recognised international reputation. UC Today attended GITEX 2019 to bring you all the latest news updates and Avaya did not hold back with a series of announcements.
New CCaaS Platform and Partnership with Microsoft
With years of experience in the contact centre industry Avaya has been one of the market leaders when it comes to customer experience platforms. At GITEX 2019 Avaya announced its latest development in the market. Joining forces with Microsoft, Avaya unveiled IX-CC. Avaya IX-CC is a cloud native Contact Centre as-a-Service platform offering customers rapid and flexible deployment options. The new platform will be available on Azure hosted in Microsoft’s cloud data centres in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Although initially availability of the new solution will be confined to the Gulf region, Avaya have confirmed that it will be expanded to partners and customers globally over the coming months.
UC Today spoke to Avaya International’s Vice President and CTO, Ahmed Helmy, during GITEX 2019 to find out more. Helmy explains that Avaya have developed the new solution from the ground up as next generation cloud native solution. In development for over 18 months, IX-CC, will form the core architecture and infrastructure platform for Avaya’s new CCaaS offering. The partnership with Microsoft – as well as offering hosted infrastructure benefits – will also be utilised to enable new go-to-market possibilities for Avaya’s new platform.
“We have been very focused on building the right technology and architecture for our CCaaS offering. This is the right partnership with one of the strongest cloud players so we can offer our technology through a real multi-tenant architecture to any type of customer.”
Helmy went on to tell us how the new solution will offer a range different benefits to business of all sizes and verticals. Small and medium businesses can leverage the speed of deployment, flexibility and economy of the solution but it also offers enterprise organisations a transition path to cloud solutions. Private cloud and dedicated instances within a public cloud will all be available as options for customers. Avaya have enriched the new IX-CC solution with a host of contact centre features from existing Avaya solutions but are also looking to expand its capabilities with new enhancements made possible by its cloud native architecture.
Innovations for IX Workplace UC Portfolio
Avaya also utilised GITEX to preview a host of new upcoming enhancements which will be added to its IX Workplace portfolio. IX Workplace encompasses Avaya’s suite of unified communications capabilities including collaboration, calling and meeting functionality as well as the option to connect with the range of Avaya endpoint devices. The main addition to the portoflio is the introduction of Avaya IX OneSpace which will provide a consolidated UC client where users can optimise and manage their use of the Avaya UC tool suite.
IX OneSpace will integrate a multitude of possible communication channels and different applications into a single console which users can customise to optimise their own internal process management. The new solution is now available for customers to test and evaluate and has potential applications for general UC users as well as for agents in contact centre environments.
Utilising and open infrastructure and integration capabilities – through the use of APIs and SDKs – allows IX Workplace to integrate with a number of line of business applications and by leveraging the new cloud based client with IX OneSpace it will offer businesses a chance to enhance employee processes and their overall productivity. IX Workplace will offer integration with the Microsoft productivity suite, CRM tools, social media platforms to offer users an overarching consolidated view of their daily tasks.
Savio Tovar Dias, Avaya International’s Senior Director for Sales Engineering, demonstrated the updated solution to UC Today during the show and told us more about the benefits it can offer.
“Avaya IX OneSpace has been developed as we have realised that there is a need in the market to focus on the employee and their work day – we wanted to help the employee stay focused, and avoid distractions, by creating a single tool where they can manage all of the communication and applications that they need.”
The capabilities of emerging technology are also going to be leveraged within the portfolio. Utilising AI, analytics, speech recognition and process automation Avaya offers a new realm of possible enhancements to IX Workplace users. Repetitive administrative tasks – such as HR enquires or data entry – can be automated releasing a user to focus on more pressing functions that generate greater value for their business. The introduction of the new innovations are expected to be generally available in the EMEA and APAC regions in the first half of 2020.
With the RingCentral partnership news still captivating interest globally Avaya has maintained its focus on innovating for its customers and partners. This new set of announcements from GITEX seem to elude to increasing focus on areas outside of UCaaS. Now – with an exclusive UCaaS deal signed – the potential for Avaya’s focused development in other aspects of its portoflio is surely heightened and may offer customers even more value in areas such as CCaaS, collaboration and user experience.
