Saturday, February 24, 2007

Google, Avaya Aim at Enterprise


Avaya is supporting and joining the Google Enterprise Professional program to develop new capabilities for small businesses around Google's enterprise products. Under terms of the agreement, Avaya will develop, market and support offers that integrate Avaya's advanced communications solutions for small businesses with the new Google Apps Premier Edition, the subscription services solution for email, instant messaging, calendar and Web publishing services.

Examples of the open standards-based capabilities on which the solutions will focus include: enabling subscribers to easily share contact information, presence information and alerts; enabling a single in-box for voice mail, email, instant messages and fax messages; and enabling web calling over the Google Talk instant messaging service network. The companies' collaborative efforts will initially focus on Avaya IP Office, Avaya’s flagship IP telephony communications solution for small and mid-size businesses, with availability planned for fall 2007. Further solutions are expected to continue the emphasis on productivity-enhancing and cost-cutting capabilities for small and mid-sized companies.

The first integrated solution, which Avaya expects to deliver later this year, will be sold through Avaya's global network of resellers and distributors, providing customers with a single point of contact for sales, installation and support.

According to Google, Google Apps has been used until now by more than 100,000 small businesses and hundreds of universities. But not just small businesses.

“So much of business now relies on people being able to communicate and collaborate effectively,” says Gregory Simpson, CTO for General Electric Company. “GE is interested in evaluating Google Apps for the easy access it provides to a suite of web applications, and the way these applications can help people work together. Given its consumer experience, Google has a natural advantage in understanding how people interact together over the web.”

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