Avaya Virtualization Platform Reduces Cost, Complexity of Communications Software

| Oct 14, 2009 | Enterprise Communications | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Brian Riggs

Current Perspective: Slightly Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: High

Event Summary

October 12, 2009 – Avaya announced System Platform and updates to its general Aura architecture. System Platform is a single-server communications solution for businesses as small as 100 employees and scalable up to 2400 users and 250 locations. It is designed to reduce complexity, save money and puts advanced unified communications and contact center capabilities within easy reach. Avaya considers it the de facto method to deploy applications going forward. Pricing for the solution starts at $60 per user for Standard Edition licenses.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Slightly positive on Avaya’s Aura System Platform, because the new offering provides Avaya a virtualization solution for its communications software, and a competitive differentiator relative to many of its major competitors in the enterprise communications and contact center markets. However, some direct competitors are far along in marketing their communications server virtualization projects of their own, which will make System Platform less unique going forward.

• Vendor Importance: High to Avaya because the company is able to offer enterprises a highly cost-effective communications solution that Cisco, Microsoft, Nortel and Siemens Enterprise cannot presently match. This will be very attractive to SMEs and mid-market organizations that are very cost-conscious and rely mainly on Avaya communications solutions.

• Market Impact: High on the enterprise communications market, because the ability to run real-time communications software in a virtualized environment is a milestone achievement among vendors of hypervisor technology. This will be of keen interest to enterprises deploying more and more applications in data centers where their implementation and support are considerably cost effective. Low on the contact center solution market, because as yet Avaya cannot run its contact center software in a virtualized environment, whereas at least one other competitor in this market has already delivered on such a capability.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

| Client access - Full report in Enterprise Communications

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Mitel needs to complete its own virtualization solution it is developing with VMWare. Mitel’s proposed solution is expected to let VMware’s vSphere 4 virtualization software manage the Mitel Communications Director call processing software, as well as Mitel Audio and Web Conferencing, NuPoint unified messaging and Mitel Teleworker, as applications in a data center environment. However, most of the Mitel software is not expected to run in a virtualized environment until spring 2010, giving Avaya an opportunity to capture significant mind share in this particular area.

• There are rumors that support for VMWare on Cisco's Unified Computing system blade server will be part of the next release of the product, but nothing has been formally introduced. With Unity, Cisco’s unified messaging software, already capable of being deployed in conjunction with VMware virtualization technology, Cisco should consider broadening VMware support to Unified Communications Manager and other software.

• Alcatel-Lucent should note that its Business integrated Communication Solution (BiCS) has long used VMware to run call control, unified communications, contact center and system management on separate partitions on a single server platform. Alcatel-Lucent was on the forefront of virtualization technology adoption in the communications market. The company should now consider broadening virtualization support beyond the BiCS platform.

• Siemens Enterprise Communications also needs to complete its virtualization project. Early this year, the company announced plans to offer its telephony, unified communications, unified messaging and management software on virtual servers within Amazon’s data centers. However, it remains unclear when the company will finish porting its communications applications to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and when businesses might be able to leverage this as an alternative way of implementing Siemens Enterprise Communications technology.

• Aastra, Siemens Enterprise Communications, ShoreTel and other competitors in the business communications solution market should begin formalizing their plans as regards to making server virtualization generally available. This is likely to become a checklist item for enterprise customers seeking communications solutions.

Recommended End User/Customer Actions

• Existing Avaya Communication Manager customers interested in System Platform should run an analysis of the cost of migrating from one to the other. At this point it remains unclear what are the costs of replacing hardware when moving from one deployment architecture to the other.

• Avaya customers that have chosen to implement VMware for their IT server virtualization technology should get commitments from Avaya on precisely when it plans on releasing a “hypervisor agnostic” version of System Platform capable of supporting vSphere 4.

• Microsoft customers using or contemplating deployment of its unified communications software should question the company on its plans to run it in a virtualized environment. The company only recently made its Hyper-V hypervisor software generally available, but it remains unclear if it will support its real-time communications software in a way that VMware vSphere 4 and Citrix Xen can.

• Enterprises considering deployment of communications software on virtual servers in data center environments should confirm that the various virtualization solutions on the market can in fact support their real-time applications. Traditionally real-time applications have not been deployed in virtualized settings due to I/O and/or processor issues. This is apparently in the process of changing, but IT departments should remain wary of this new way of deploying communications software until they have in fact verified it.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

| Client access - Full report in Enterprise Communications

Top