Avaya Promises ‘Innovative’ New Roadmap

Gitex 2022 in Dubai has proved to be a busy period for Avaya as the company continues to showcase what it is currently doing and what is coming next.

The company has promised a roadmap which is “full of innovation”, delved into its partnership with Honeywell to deliver smart cities, and showcased how it is preparing customers for the metaverse.

Here is a brief roundup of the latest Avaya news that the UC Today team has gathered from Gitex 2022.

Roadmap Full of Innovation

Avaya confirmed that the company will be officially rolling out its latest roadmap on November 1 with Todd Zerbe, SVP, Engineering at Avaya, promising “different things” in it than what is previously expected from Avaya.

The company has stated that it is focusing on “innovation without disruption” as a big part of its upcoming strategy in the same week that it made its Media Processing Core generally available.

Zerbe said: “I think we’ve got a lot of really great things on our roadmap; we’ve already been doing a lot with digital, but really expanding out that social media aspects of our platform.

“We’ve got some really interesting things coming in terms of customer journey and some of our analytics.

“There’s just a lot to get into in a short time here, but I think there is some really exciting stuff for Avaya right now.”

‘Human Touch’ to Honeywell Smart City Projects

Avaya has partnered with Honeywell on its “Smart Cities” project, which aims to improve the quality of life for residents through digital solutions.

Honeywell plans to do this by reducing the time to deliver emergency services and improving the efficiency of waste management systems, lighting systems, and more.

Avaya’s role in the project is to add the communication element to ensure smoother communication between citizens and public services.

Ahmed Fayed, Managing Director at Avaya, said: “What we are doing with Honeywell is adding the human touch tools to the smart cities.

“We are adding that experience to the citizens and the interface with people in the smart cities.

“We can use artificial intelligence to make the collaboration and communication with citizens smarter and in through the different channels that they would like to use based on their preference and in a smart and fast way. 

“So we are adding the communication part to the smart cities for faster and smooth interactions.

“Our cooperation with Honeywell is not new. We started our cooperation a couple of years ago in Egypt through the New Administrative Capital. It was a successful cooperation and a very successful project.   

“We found that the cooperation between the two companies can add a lot to the customer, can add a lot to the market, so I’m very happy with this cooperation.”

The New Administrative Capital is a strategic relationship with the Egyptian government, which officially had the aim of relieving congestion in Cairo.

Avaya and Honeywell collaborated to deliver a command and control centre which delivers public safety services.

Preparing Customers for the Metaverse

Earlier this week, Nidal Abou-Ltaif, President of Avaya International, revealed that he believes bridging its customers to the metaverse fits precisely into the “innovation without disruption” theme.

Working with Avanza Solutions, the vendor showcased a digital twin of the process of a business coming and opening up shop in Dubai.

In reality, it is a task that could take months or years however Avaya and Avanza are enabling people to do it all in the metaverse.

Speaking with David Dungay, UC Today Editor-in-Chief, in Dubai, Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, believes Avaya’s CCaaS platform could improve public sector life.

Kerravala said: “If you have a problem, you can speak to a metaverse agent that’s running on the Avaya CCaaS product and then they can help you through the process.

“Then you just upload the information to the real system and you’re all done so it’s taking a lot of the complexity out of it.

“One of the things I like about the Middle East, especially Dubai, is the government is very forward-thinking, so the public sector here drives a lot of innovation.

“I think the use of the metaverse to improve the public sector was very creative and innovative; kudos to both Avaya and its partner for thinking that. “

Yesterday (October 11), Avaya announced a significant new partnership with Wavenet at Gitex 2022.

The move will allow UK partners to sell Private Cloud Services, including UCaaS, in a wholesale model with Avaya technology for the first time in years, giving them ultimate control of their customers.

The announcement comes just two years after the Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) partnership with RingCentral was released with an agent model.