Avaya and Differentiating in the Future of Communications

Jean Turgeon talks future technology for Avaya

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AvayaJeanTurgeonAI
Unified Communications

Published: March 5, 2018

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Publisher

During Avaya Engage, the company was excited to start talking about their plans, and how they would be innovating for the cloud UC and contact centre experiences of tomorrow. During the event, we heard about numerous tech trends – particularly those related to cloud deployment and the impact of hybrid cloud.

Avaya was talking about everything from the rise of artificial intelligence, to the new potential that comes with the Internet of Things, and even the need for security in almost every aspect of the UC and CC world. If that wasn’t enough, there was also plenty of chatter around the concept of the Blockchain, and how secured transactions could be used to support compliance and privacy in the communication environment.

As part of a Blue-Sky discussion around the future of customer experience technology and collaboration, I spoke to Jean Turgeon, the VP and Chief Technologist, Digital Transformation at Avaya, to hear more about where the company is going in the coming months, and years.

What Kind of Technology is Avaya Looking at Today?

For Avaya, the move into the cloud and a more software-focused business mean thinking about more than just the standard telephone endpoint. The company is looking at everything from how they can store their data lakes securely, to what they need to do to get ready for rising tech like quantum computing and the blockchain.

During GITEX in October of 2017, Avaya became the first vendor in the world to demonstrate an AI-empowered UC and contact centre solution with blockchain-secured data privacy. The happiness quota technology offered sentiment analysis and looked at how blockchain could be used in the communication strategies of the future.

“From there, we began to look at new services that we’ll soon be announcing. We’re considering things like Identity as a Service, and you’re going to be hearing more about our consumption of the blockchain architecture in the future. However, we’re saving these announcements for our Enterprise event.”

How is AI Growing on the AI Front?

After the exciting new announcement that Avaya would soon be purchasing Spoken Communications and the underlying IntelligentWire company that comes with them, I was interested to learn more about how the brand’s AI functionality might be changing.

Jean noted that Avaya already had their own AI play before Spoken, but they hadn’t done a great job with messaging that out to the market. “In Oceana 3.3 we had the Avaya Messaging Automation feature, which offered some basic natural language processing, machine learning, and integration with third-party messaging platforms. We enhanced those things in 3.4, but it didn’t get a lot of attention.”

Now, they’re announcing the evolution of AVA the AI solution that first arrived a few years ago as a bot technology. This system is now evolving and combining with AMA to become the Avaya AI platform. “IntelligentWire will also help us to enhance our solutions with more sophisticated natural language processing, machine learning, and so on.”

Importantly, however, Avaya isn’t going to start ignoring the potential of third-party AI solutions.

“Our open platform means that we can integrate with other solutions and provide our customers with complete flexibility to choose the AI strategy they need.”

Jean noted that the company began to see a greater demand for AI around a year ago, which is why they started marketing AMA too, but it’s likely that everything will continue to grow this year. “Now we have the opportunity to start bringing in a huge amount of real-time information to AI to leverage, it’s going to be a continued evolution experience.”

How is Avaya Differentiating Themselves in the Cloud?

While Avaya did deliver some UC solutions to the cloud before now, their contact centre cloud wasn’t a reality fast enough for their customers. However, Jean acknowledged that the company has made the strategic investments and acquisitions it needs to this year to really push towards the future of cloud.

“We’re differentiating ourselves by offering a robust and scalable platform for digital transformation. We can offer hybrid cloud flexibility and more without having to ask our customers to get rid of technology that’s already working. What’s more, we’re working with IoT partners and other companies to find more innovations around what we do.”

Avaya has a next-generation platform for both CC and UC, and that’s a powerful differentiator in itself. The ability to blend UC and CC together is convenient for a lot of businesses, and it allows Avaya to compete more readily in the marketplace.

We have a very powerful omnichannel, we’ve delivered customer journey visualization to agents, and we’ve given people the flexibility to unify all the user experience clients – drawing together video, web conferencing, telephony and more with the Equinox – so that everyone can consume the digital services they need in the UC and CC world.

Do You Think Any Transformative Changes are Coming?

With so many significant changes in the Avaya portfolio and roadmap, I was interested to see if Jean thought there may be an upcoming shift-change in the way that the communication industry looks and behaves. He noted that it’s always difficult to predict the future. One trend he sees having an impact on many companies is the rise of Quantum Computing.

“Because we store data, we need to make sure everything we build is quantum safe. Quantum computing is sure to have an impact on our data lakes.”

Another thing that Avaya sees happening in the future, is technology coming together more readily. “We’ve deployed contact centres, telephony, and various new solutions, but all kinds of communication and technology features are coming together in the modern landscape. Take the example of a visually impaired person, for instance. They could wear a camera on their shirt that’s tied to video surveillance and AI system that describes what’s happening around that person in real-time through a headset or earpiece.”

Jean went onto say that the rise of IoT, self-driving cars, and other technology could all make the world a more incredible place.

“It seems like nothing more than a story, but people are already having these discussions. In technology – everything is possible today, and that’s what we’re going to be focusing on in the future.”

Artificial IntelligenceCustomer ExperienceDigital TransformationMergers and AcquisitionsUser Experience
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