Unified communications and virtualization platforms will be the key enterprise technologies in 2009, says Ram Kashi, senior research scientist at Avaya.
Which were the technologies you focused on in 2008?
Unified Communication and Contact centre technologies is what we focused on in 2008.
Avaya defines Unified Communications as the convergence of real-time and non-real-time business communication applications. These applications include voice and video telephony and conferencing, voice and video mail, instant messaging/presence, email, calendar and contacts, and collaboration.
Users will access these capabilities using multiple modalities including voice, data, and speech access, through telephones, PCs, web interfaces, and mobile devices.
The result is a seamless user experience across all enterprise communication solutions regardless of location, network, or device.
IDC 2007 report put Avaya's share in the Unified communication market at 29% and we shall continue to strive to increase this.
As far as Contact Centers go, we are once again clear leaders in this space and need to continue to stay focused here. We will now aggressively focus on verticals and the mid market business targeting employees from 15-2000 employees. We are also looking to increase customer satisfaction through high touch - this complements our largely indirect model by ensuring that our BPs and customers have better support from Avaya. At the same time, we are also looking to recruit additional BPs that have proven successful track records in the key verticals that we are targeting as well as continue to grow current BPs we are working with.
What would the tech focus be in 2009?
Visual communication and virtualization platforms is what Avaya believes the tech focus of 2009 shall be.
Telepresence is the latest in a long line of visual communications technologies that have promised to revolutionize corporate collaboration.
Companies are increasingly under pressure to offset the negative impact they have on the environment and containing costs. Replacing air and auto travel with network-based visual communications can go a long way toward saving on carbon emissions-a move that has PR and shareholder value, this is over and above the huge cost benefits most firms achieve in cutting down on travel expenses and man-hours lost in commuting.
The other standard forms of visual communication include Video Conferencing & collaboration solutions.
Virtual platforms that enable virtual meetings, and interactions that at par with meeting a person(s) in reality, have become very important, especially in wake of cost containment measures.
Over and above being in sync with environmental needs we shall continue to offer green technology
What will be the impact of the global recession in the IT spend in your company?
Recession has always resulted in making every penny spent count. Anything that does not seem up to the mark is done away with. So we firmly believe that this is the best time for retrospection, weeding out all wasteful expenditure, innovating to make best use of resources and exhibit to the client one's worth. We thus believe it would not be wrong to conclude that such trying times bring out the best and compel organizations to optimize the use resources that we have without any loss of productivity
Besides employing such measures at the internal level, we also aim at providing cost minimizing communication solutions to our clients that equip them to deal with the recession better.
Will the organisation increase spend on information security, security appliances to combat calamities and other acts?
Prevailing circumstances have made most organizations acknowledge the need for both information security to maintain competitive edge, and the need for security appliances to deal with imminent threats of different forms. We therefore expect spending and resource allocation in this area to increase.
One technology that did not live up to its promise in 2008?
There was hope that 3G and its associated services would be in India in 2008 to further fuel the wireless revolution but this did not happen. We have not seen wireless telecom especially with respect to internet access, become large scale. But with the news of launch of 3G services in March 2009 doing the rounds, we hope to see more action in this area
And one technology that held true to its promise in 2009?
Video as a form of communication held true to its promise due to available bandwidth and affordable devices. Infact, a Gartner August, 2008 report named Video telepresence as one of emerging technologies for 2009.
Any significant tech deployment in your organisation in 2009?
As mentioned earlier unified communications shall be our area of focus for the coming year. Within the Unified communication market too, it is felt that visual communication is one area that has the maximum potential for growth. We have therefore gone in for tech deployment in this area with a view to achieve continued innovation in visual communications for unified communications and for contact center applications
