Manage workflows, reduce latency and cut costsdoc.mediaplanet.com/all_projects/5533.pdfUnified...

Unified commUnicationsOctober 2010

revolutionize your businessManage workflows, reduce latency and cut costs

AN iNdepeNdeNt SUppLeMeNt froM MediApLANet to USA todAY

Green businessLower travel costs and emissions

UC and SubwayBig sandwiches, big savings

Not just for the fortune 500s SMBs take advantage of solutions in school snacks

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cHaLLenGesIt’s hard to imagine now, but not too long ago, if someone wanted to move data among different “office suites”—say, place a spreadsheet into a slideshow presentation—he or she often had to recreate that spreadsheet from scratch.

the time for Uc is now

that’s because the data formats of each program were incompatible—a problem that grad-ually went away with technology

that now eases the integration of social media tools such as Face-book, YouTube and Twitter.

For industry insiders such as Jeff Rodman, co-founder and chief tech-nical officer at Polycom, a Pleasan-ton, Calif.-based telepresence, video, and voice solutions and service pro-vider, a similar evolution in tech-nology—on a larger scale—led to the creation of what’s now commonly called “unified communications” or “UC.” “The same move is underway now in this new arena of business collaboration, blending another broad set of disparate functions so they can work smoothly and seam-lessly together— for example, deter-mining a colleague’s presence, ini-tiating an (instant messaging) ses-sion and then escalating to a voice or video call,” Rodman said.

As the term is generally used, UC is the integration of real-time com-munication services such as Inter-net telephony, IM, video conferenc-ing, presence information, speech

recognition and call control with non-real-time communication ser-vices, such as voicemail, e-mail, text messaging and fax. A tech segment that market researches are expect-ing to become a $5 billion business in about five years, UC is gaining traction largely because it offers simplification, cost-savings, ad-vanced functionality and freedom. Consider the benefits of UC in the wireless world. As the use of mobile devices such as smartphones, net-books and tablets rises, and as vid-eo plays a more prominent role in business communications—two trends which should get a further boost with the spread of superfast “4G” mobile Internet networks—UC is expected to become critical.

“With UC we have been able to substantially cut patient check-in/checkout processes and when a hospital bed often represents more than $1 million a year in rev-enue the productivitybenefits of communication enabling the staff work flow with UC has driven (a re-turn on investment) in months, not years,” Durow said. Unified com-munications also facilitates tele-commuting—an advantage for dis-persed businesses that’s also eco-friendly and can save office space

and money. Customer-facing busi-nesses that must be able to scale up or down depending on demand al-so greatly benefit from UC. James Bond, vice president of software and product development at Hern-don, Va.-based hosted communi-cations provider Apptix, recalled one client, E-Appraisal, a Las Vegas-based provider of residential and commercial appraisal services and products, that increased its collab-oration capabilities while reduc-ing e-mail costs alone by nearly 90 percent with a UC system. “Prior to using Apptix, E-Appraisal incurred costs reaching $500 per month with their e-mail service provider—with Apptix’s integrated commu-nications solutions, their costs for hosted SharePoint, IM and e-mail under $60 each month,” Bond said. While unified software integration has had a head start on unified com-munications, UC’s cost savings and productivity likely will continue to fuel its rapid adoption. One day soon, experts say, we can expect all of our communications modes to seamlessly integrate.

Rich tehraniCEO, Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC)

top three Uc considerations:

1 Your corporate network must be able to support

VoIP in order to properly imple-ment UC.

2 Make mobility part of your strategy. UC delivers the

greatest value when mobile workers can make use of it.

3 Carefully weigh the bene-fits of both “all-in-one” and

multi-vendor solutions, relative to your needs and existing net-work infrastructure.

BEST TIPS

James EspositoSee how Subway saved with UC.

WE rECOMMEnd

pAGe 8

UnIfIEd COMMUnICaTIOnS 2nd EdITIOn, OCTOBEr 2010

country Manager: Jon [email protected] Manager: Jackie [email protected]

responsible for this issue:Publisher: Lauren [email protected] Developer: ondriona [email protected] Designer: Missy [email protected]: patrick Barnard, paula Bernier, erik Linask, rich tehrani

Distributed within: USA todAY, october 2010this section was created by Mediaplanet and did not involve USA todAY or its editorial departments.

photo credits: istockphoto.com unless otherwise noted

Greening your business with Uc p. 6Go green with unified communications.Panel of experts p. 10What’s next for unified communications

Mechanical size: Bleed: None Trim: 9.75” x 10.25” Live: None

Final Output size (at: 100%) Bleed: 58p6 x 61p6 Trim: 58p6 x 61p6 Live: 58p6 x 61p6Colors & varnish: 4cp Inks:

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Link name Status Linked (w, h) % Effective res. Mode plt-howwework_BW_125dpi.tif Up to Date 27.6% 452 ppi Gray Revision #: 1Notes/reason for change: In blue box, we changed “...TRENDS FOR BUSINESS...” TO “...TRENDS OF BUSINESS...”.

Client: Plantronics Job #: .Description: USA Today Insert Ad Acct. Mgr: J. Polson Art Director: G. Chisholm Project Mgr: Raquel Canales Prod. Mgr: R. Canales Artist: RH / Bender Ref: 3013

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CreativeFeed • 29 East 19th Street • 5th Floor • New York, NY 10003 • www.creativefeed.net • P: (212) 966-3025 • F: (646) 607-9337

Instant message, text and emaIl

are great. Unless, of coUrse, the message

is important.it’s the most vital communication tool today, as it has been for thousands of years: the human voice. Voice is how emotions are conveyed, urgent communications delivered, and, according to an international study, voice remains the critical business tool when business is critical.

plantronics’ reverence for the human voice has led to a relentless drive to create a portfolio of advanced audio products that carry voice flawlessly and naturally.

it’s no wonder why 100% of the Fortune 100 use plantronics headsets.*

*2010 Fortune 100 ranking compared against plantronics database, august 2010.

Visit plantronics.com/VoiceBrochure to download

“How we work: CommuniCation trends oF Business ProFessionals”.

© 2010 plantronics, inc. all rights reserved. plantronics and the logo design are trademarks or registered trademarks of plantronics, inc.

T:9.75”T:10.25”


news

Unified communications in the contact centerWhen business owners first investigate unified communications, they often become so enam-ored with the benefits it can bring to their inter-nal operations, such as improved collaboration and increased employee productivity, that they overlook its potential for improving their customer service operations.

Companies that have deployed UC in their contact centers can deliver a whole new level of customer service that tradi-tional call center technology can’t match. For example, sup-pose a customer calls looking for detailed technical informa-tion about a product or service (such as an educational science kit for a high school student). The customer might have a complex technical question that the agent can’t answer.

If the call center is still us-ing traditional technology, the customer might be asked to stay on hold until the right per-son can assist, which, as we all

know, could take a while. Worse yet the interaction will “dead end:” The customer might have to wait for a representative to call back. Or worse they’re asked to call back.

But with a UC system in place, the agent can seamless-ly contact a “knowledge ex-pert” and bring them in on the call, thus resolving the cus-tomer’s issue faster and in a single interaction. Using two of UC’s most powerful fea-tures, presence and conferenc-ing, the agent is able to see the availability status of various “knowledge experts” through-out the organization and, based on their availability and “type,” can bring them in on the call to assist. These knowledge ex-

perts can be employees who work in various other depart-ments outside of the main con-tact center—including workers at remote offices or even em-ployees at partner or affiliate companies.

“Before UC, calls would often get stuck in the contact cen-ters,” says Gary Barnett, CTO and EVP of R&D at Aspect. “Call-ers would get lost in ‘transfer hell’ as sometimes their calls would get dropped and agents would have to say ‘let me get your number in case I lose you during this transfer to call you back.’ Customers would then have to repeat themselves to the person they were trans-ferred to, which added more time and annoyance. With UC, everyone from the customers to the contact center agents to the experts across the rest of the company can be connected, transferred, or brought into the same conversations seamlessly to get more accomplished.”

Brendan B. read

[email protected]

Uc savEs thE tiME yOU can’t affORD

tO WastE

1fact

Question: How can contact centers benefit with a UC system in place? answer: The customer’s issue will be resolved faster in a single interaction.

“Before UC, calls would often get stuck in the contact centers.”Gary BarnettCTO and EVP of r&d at aspect

Uc delivers ‘measurable’ results in the enterprise

For years now unified commu-nications software vendors have been emphasizing that UC offers a fast return on investment by boosting employee productivity through streamlined communi-cations and improved collabora-tion. The problem is how do you measure something so intan-gible?

So in November 2009 Aber-deen Group set out to measure UC’s impact on operations. The resulting report found that UC does in fact deliver measurable business value.

The study found that 79 per-cent of companies using UC achieved a break-even return on their investment within the first

12 months. The savings was real-ized by streamlining internal and external communications, maxi-mizing telecom spend, increasing productivity through improved collaboration, and reducing cus-tomer churn through increased customer responsiveness.

“Unified Communications holds enormous promise as a coherent approach to business communications,” said Andrew Borg, senior research analyst, Aberdeen Group, adding that UC is an ideal tool “to cut through ‘communications clutter,’ and more directly connect a customer to a company, employee to em-ployee, and more tightly bind business partners and suppliers.”

Patrick Barnard

[email protected]

nEWS In BrIEf


news

While the main reason for investing in unified com-munications is increased employee productivity, many organizations are discovering that Uc also brings numerous “green” benefits and can help reduce their carbon foot-print. Let’s take a quick look at the top ways unified communications is helping companies go “green.”

telecommutingWith UC employees can more effectively work from home or remote locations, thus taking cars off the road. With today’s IP-based UC systems, phone calls, emails, IMs and faxes can be routed to any worker with an Internet-connected PC or laptop, regardless of location. Yet these workers appear to everyone on the outside as though they are in the main office: For example out-bound calls display the employ-ee’s office number on caller ID, even though they’re working from home. What’s more “pres-ence,” one of UC’s most power-

ful features, allows home-based workers to see the availability status of all other workers on the company network.

Even companies that don’t nor-mally allow employees to work from home can green their op-erations through UC’s ability to extend employee working hours. “Sometimes an employee might not have time to complete a proj-ect in the office,” said Scott Noles, General Manager of Kinex Medi-cal, a manufacturer of medical equipment that purchased a UC system from ShoreTel two years ago. “But with a UC system, they can more easily finish that proj-ect once they arrive at home, and meet their deadline, which is a better alternative to having them drive back in.” As Noles pointed out, this too helps take cars off the road.

conferencingMany UC systems come with audio and video conferencing pre-integrated. Audio conferenc-ing allows remote and home-based workers to hold conference calls with multiple parties in on-

demand fashion—thus reducing the need for travel—while video conferencing allows for “face-to-face” communications with colleagues, partners and custom-ers. Not only does this make it more feasible to use home-based workers, it also reduces the need for business travel, as employees can now meet with partners and prospects anywhere in the world, live and in real time, without hav-ing to board an airplane. This also helps greatly reduce carbon emis-sions.

Reduced energy usageUC solutions, especially soft-ware-based ones, also help com-panies green their operations by reducing the amount of equip-ment in the server room, which in turn helps reduce energy consumption. An “all-in-one,”

software-based UC system can cut the number of server boxes by more than half, not only reducing energy consumption but also reducing the need for cooling.

“Furthermore, virtualization can be used to achieve an even smaller carbon footprint,” said Tom Fisher, systems engineer-ing director at Interactive In-telligence. “Because software is used to provide UC, servers can be virtualized so that in-stead of each server requiring its own physical ‘box,’ multiple virtual servers can be run on a single physical server. In oth-er words, the hardware to serv-er ratio goes from 1:1 to 1:many. For example, a company can buy one large server and run multi-ple instances of Windows Server on that single piece of hardware. This enables more servers to run on less hardware, thus decreas-ing the required electricity to run the server.”

cloud computingCompanies can further reduce their carbon footprint by going

with a hosted, SaaS or “cloud”-based unified communications solution. With the cloud model of software delivery, organiza-tions can essentially eliminate the need for on-premises equip-ment, as it is now located in a service provider’s data center, as opposed to their own server room.

“The same UC functionality is provided by the cloud or SaaS solution, however, the pow-er consumption for many cus-tomers can now be managed at the data center, where servers are centrally located,” Fisher said. “Since a data center man-ages many servers at a single location, it focuses on main-taining and improving efficien-cies in power consumption and cooling. So there’s an economy of scale when more customers use a SaaS solution.”

Greening your business with Uc

Patrick Barnard

[email protected]

Uc REDUcEs thE nEED

fOR BUsinEss tRavEL

2fact

scottnolesGeneral Manager, Kinex Medical

Only The Mobile Executive Will Survive

Business Mobility Systems

www.businessmobilitysystems.com1 (866) 854-7487

oCtoBer 2010 · 7AN iNdepeNdeNt SUppLeMeNt BY MediApLANet to USA todAY

news

“small businesses with fewer locations and a more centralized network have a strong ROi to bring all of their communications silos under one unified umbrella. Many are sitting on fully amortized legacy voicemail and PBX platforms, and since Microsoft software based Uc can be managed by the network administra-tor, not an expensive PBX reseller, we are finding the time is especially right for such enterprises,” says Bill vollerthum, President of Enabling technologies corp.

These businesses also need uni-fied communications solutions to be packaged affordably and deliv-ered in an integrated, easy-to-use way, Lawrence Byrd of Avaya adds.

Responding to the call, the com-pany offers the Avaya IP Office so-lution, which Byrd says helps SMBs get up and running without a lot of know-how, hassle or expense.

Another all-in-one solution for SMBs comes from Siemens Enter-prise Communications Inc. Open-Scape Office MX, designed for busi-nesses with up to 150 users, has all the UC features typically associated with solutions for large enterpris-es, tight Microsoft integration, and contact center capabilities.

“We’ve found OpenScape Office MX is straightforward and requires little training, which helped us smoothly integrate the technology

and get started easily,” says Wendy Marks, IT support and LAN analyst at Member Insurance Agency. “Even more importantly, it has helped us improve customer service in our contact center by ensuring we nev-er miss a call and customer ques-tions are routed to the appropriate person in a timely manner.”

SMBs are particularly well posi-tioned to realize the benefits of UC given how they operate, says Larry Levenberg, vice president and gen-eral manager of national channels at NEC Corp. of America. He notes

that employee roles at SMBs tend to be a lot less defined than they are in larger firms.

“By breaking down communica-tion silos, UC makes it easy for SMB employees who wear different hats to switch from one task or role to another and get more done, faster,” he concludes.

Enter cloud-based solutionsTo make UC more accessible and manageable for SMBs, hosted and cloud-based UC solutions also are becoming more common. And, ac-cording to Nemertes Research, these types of services – that involve VoIP, unified messaging, videocon-ferencing, Web conferencing, and document sharing – are expected to see significant growth in the near

future.Such services locate the UC hard-

ware and software within a service provider data center. That way, the cost can be shared among various customers, making it possible for providers to make affordable UC so-lutions available to much smaller customers.

Speaking to this trend, UC ser-vice provider Alteva this spring an-nounced a new partnership with BroadSoft and Microsoft to deliver hosted UC services for small busi-nesses. Qwest Communications this spring also introduced a new UC solution; based on Cisco tech-nology, it’s called Qwest iQ Hosted Unified Communication Service.

new offers make Uc more accessible to the smB set

Paula Bernier

[email protected]

connect. collaborate. create.In today’s global economy, businesses of all sizes can benefit from Unified Communi-cations (UC). Nexus IS, an indus-try leader in UC integration, offers these money-saving tips for small to medium businesses:

Begin with the end in mind: Identify your business goals and focus on solutions that solve your business problems.

■■ Partner with companies that work with both small and large businesses. Leverage their ex-perience to bring big compa-ny innovation to your smaller business.

■■ Reuse or repurpose as much of your existing technology as possible.

■■ Invest in the network, not the endpoints—this ensures a scalable solution that will grow with your business.

Source: nexuS iS, inc.

check out enterprise connect!At Enterprise Connect 2011, Feb-ruary 28—March 3 in Orlando, our program will reflect both our commitment to the Voice-Con heritage, as well as the new world of multi-media commu-nications. Enterprise Connect is the only conference offering in-depth information on the world of enterprise communications, even as we expand our focus to look at the larger technology trends that are shaping com-munications—including cloud-based services, social networking and virtualization.

RegisterRegister at enterpriseconnect.com/orlando with VIP Code CNWQVR01 and save $200. http://enterpriseconnect.com/orlando

Larry LevenbergVP and General Manager of national Chan-nels at nEC Corp. of america

TIPSincreased productivity is one of the key benefits of unified communications for businesses of all sizes. Now SMBs increasingly are both willing—and able—to embrace UC and take advantage of that.

Photo: © 2009 Plantronics, inc.


insPiRation

Uc solution delivers super-sized benefits for subway co-opsubway is known for its delicious sandwiches, fresh-baked bread and spokesman Jared. But for franchise owners of the popular sandwich shops, delivering food quickly and to order is more complex than your simple mustard vs. mayo decision.

These small business owners have to keep abreast of a vari-ety of issues, including various payment options and related customer loyalty programs. And unified communications has become a key ingredient in enabling them to do so.

Independent Purchasing Cooperative, an organization owned by the 24,000 North American Subway franchisees, uses the Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Center product for IP PBX, voicemail, presence, unified messaging, and softphone functionality.

James A. Esposito manag-es the Value Pay Services divi-sion within IPC that handles

electronic payments at Subway stores. When a franchisee has a question about payments using gift cards, rewards cards, or cred-it or debit cards they can contact IPC to get an answer. Given the gift card program is mandatory for franchisees, and just last year the acceptance of credit and deb-it cards became a requirement, there are plenty of such incom-ing inquiries, says Esposito.

In the past, he says, IPC had a basic key system, which sim-ply routed all calls through the receptionist. But as the busi-ness expanded it needed a more robust telephony system, and

IPC discovered that the product from Interactive Intelligence fit the bill, he says.

A big selling point of the In-teractive Intelligence solution, according to Esposito, was its ability to integrate with Micro-soft CRM. Prior to using the new call center, his reps were man-aging their CRM interactions using Excel—not a scalable so-lution. With the Interactive In-telligence solution, however, re-porting is automated and much “cleaner,” he says, noting it au-tomatically records such statis-tics as when peak calling periods take place and that data flows in-

to the CRM system. “That totally helped us with

staffing,” he says.And the ACD that IPC im-

plemented with the Interac-tive Intelligence system al-lows the organization to queue and route calls quickly and ef-ficiently, he says. Prior to the ACD caller wait times aver-aged 10 to 15 minutes each. Now they’re in the two- to three-minute range.

“That was huge,” says Esposi-to.

Additionally, he says, IPC re-cently implemented Interactive Intelligence’s IVR functional-ity. The new IVR system handles 250,000 minutes per month, and allowed IPC to see its return on investment in just six months. Esposito says the IVR, which was installed in early 2009, had yield-ed IPC more than $240,000 in savings as of the end of last year.

“The IVR was sort of the icing on the cake,” he says.

“the iVr was sort of the icing on the cake.”

James a. EspositoManager, Value Pay Services division at Independent Purchasing Cooperative

Paula Bernnier

[email protected]

What are the common mistakes that companies make when looking to incorporate Uc into the business and how can someone be a better buyer when it comes to Unified communications?

Unified Communications today is not one product. UC integrates different communications me-dia and applications—voice, mo-bility, video, collaboration, social media, etc.—through a common interface. And an open, stan-dards-based and software-cen-tric approach is critical. Unfor-tunately, most UC systems are “open” only with products from the same vendor and don’t sup-port convergence with older platforms. Look for best-in-class technology built on standard in-frastructure that offers true in-teroperability with enterprise IT applications, mobile networks and external sources such as so-cial media. the term Uc has evolved over the years. What is your vision of Uc and what does the future of Uc look like? Next generation UC integrates all communications channels—internal and external—by using an open, secure, carrier-grade IP foundation and a common user experience at the front end. Easy, uninterrupted movement across text, voice and video media supports more produc-tive collaboration while deetper integration into the enterprise business processes, for exam-ple, contact center, offers real innovation in customer inter-action. Delivery via the cloud is almost here.

Uc cUts cOsts anD incREasEs

PROfits

3fact

chris hummelChief Marketing Officer, Siemens Enterprise Communications

QUESTIOn & anSWErQuestion: How does UC fit into a sandwich shop’s strategy? answer: By saving $240,000 and 250,000 minutes worth of ordering time.


PaneL of exPeRts

Question 1:What benefits will unified communications provide to my company?

Question 2:What are the costs associated with implementing a UC solution?

Question 3:Where do you see the future of unified communications?

Renee niemiSenior Vice President, Communication Solutions, Plantronics

ajay KapoorProfessional Services Global Managing director, avaya

Philippe BabinGeneral Manager,Media5 Corporation

there are many facets of a Uc solution—Hardware, Applications, existing equipment, and the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that need to be considered, and will be very dependent on the com-pany’s current environment and requirements go-ing forward. Companies need to evaluate their needs, and carry out a Network Assessment to ensure desired Qual-ity of Service (QoS) in the new system. They need to factor in how much re-use of existing equipment is possible , how much integration is required with existing business processes, as well as the costs of training and ongoing support. Certainly the use of capabilities such as VoIP can bring cost savings, as can the use of the power of UC systems to set up workers remotely, minimizing office location, trav-el and training costs.

We have all seen the accelerating evolu-tion of telecommunications, with the advent VoIP, Unified Communications, Cloud computing, social networking, smart phones, resulting in an increas-ing level of complexity for corporate users who have been using traditional office systems but now must integrate a growing number of applications like Skype, Messenger, Citrix, GoToMeeting, Face-book, Twitter. Unified Communication will defi-nitely continue to evolve towards more and more integrated applications.We see the key factor to the future success of Uni-fied Communication as being mobility, with tools like the smart phone being the de-facto device for workers moving forward. Mobility allows enter-prises to maximize the connectivity of their work-force with their customers and other employees. It offers them the ability to reach directly any giv-en individual, regardless of where they are located in the world, enabling insight and collaboration of the employee base to help improve work processes as well as to help meet overall customer commit-ments.

Unified communications allows organi-zations to improve productivity, while reducing communication costs.An effective Unified Communications strategy en-ables an organization to streamline communica-tions by bringing together all of its’ communica-tions tools—phone, instant messaging, email, con-ferencing, and data –so that employees can com-municate and collaborate regardless of their lo-cation, while using the applications they already know, and trust. Organizations can see dramatic returns from re-duced overhead costs. Many multi-location busi-nesses report monthly savings of up to 50 percent after implementing an effective UC strategy, and some of our customers claim a return on invest-ment of six to nine months.

the obvious costs associated with de-ploying UC are the software and hardware, but the often overlooked costs are those asso-ciated with training and ensuring a great us-er experience for a UC implementation. Pick-ing the right audio and video endpoints that match a worker’s work-style is crucial as is en-suring that all workers are comfortable with UC tools. Otherwise, adoption and end-user satisfaction are negatively impacted and the expected cost-savings and productivity gains aren’t realized.

Uc will become the standard for business communications and collaboration, and in particular we’ll see huge growth in mobile UC. We no longer just go to work but rather work where we are. Voice and video will become in-creasingly important with distributed work-forces and flexible working on the rise. Lap-tops, tablets, and smartphones are the tools of choice for today’s decentralized workforce, and mobile audio and video conferencing, as well as communications-enabled mobile enterprise applications, will be standard.

Uc benefits companies in two significant ways—cost savings and increased productiv-ity. Some companies implement UC to lower mobile phone and travel costs. Others imple-ment it for better collaboration and communi-cation for existing teams. Some for a mixture of both. Whatever the key driver, companies will see both cost and productivity benefits as well as positive unforeseen improvements that come from allowing work to happen liter-ally anywhere.

Uc should be “fit for purpose” not just in design, but in implementation. If you are a small business focused on simply integrating email and voicemail, then the implementation of those ser-vices should be minimal. If you are a global manu-facturing firm wanting to take advantage of Com-munication Enabled Business Process (CEBP) and integrate your communications with your ERP systems, the integration costs should reflect the complexity. The key is to make the solution and implementation align with the user needs and not the technology obstacles. Our Self Funded Roadmap enables companies to map savings from their technology deployments to the execution timeline so that each phase funds the next phase through its accumulated returns.

People have become a slave to the very tools and technology that has been put in place to serve them. Our vision is to drive authentic and purpose driven collaboration. We can create a shift from how people operate today, going from document/task driven to people centric. We believe the next generation of contextual collaboration will bring the speed, efficiency and innovative power of human relationships back to the forefront of business activity by effortless-ly orchestrating how people communicate. And, business systems—both formal and infor-mal—will be communication enabled quickly and easily to reduce the human latency inherent in business processes.

for the end users, it is about simplifying the communications experience, and with im-proved context, so they can focus on the people they need to communicate with, instead of the devices and applications they use to facilitate those interactions. This leads to increased pro-ductivity, availability, and responsiveness. UC helps increase business agility and removes la-tency from processes. UC assists in increasing customer loyalty, accelerating workflow and de-cision making, and makes for a more effective organization. From an IT perspective UC lowers the total cost of ownership, allows users to be serviced based on need vs location, and acceler-ates the deployment of new applications to serve the needs of the business.

AVI-SPL invites you to experience the evolutionary world of Caméléon Telepresence.

Caméléon offers the versatility of Telepresence, high defi nition (HD) video conferencing, audio conferencing and multimedia presentation displays in one turnkey system that is quick, fl exible and affordable for your needs.

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Which Unified Communications system costs less to purchase and operate?

(Clue: the one with two)

Competitor A: 10

The game has changed with Avaya Unified Communications. More servers don’t add up to a better Unified Communications and collaboration system, just a more expensive one. The Avaya AuraTM system saves up to 40% on network costs, uses less energy, and allows seamless collaboration across multiple platforms–without ripping and replacing your existing infrastructure. And it delivers more applications and more ways to collaborate in real time. Which should answer any questions you might have.

Start Saving Now and Maximize your UC solution. Engage in an Avaya Discovery Day by calling 866-GOAVAYA, prompt 2 or visiting avaya.com/discoveryday.

Competitor B: 5 Avaya: 2

Above data based on internal Avaya research.© 2010 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved.

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