Avaya's Flare Experience pushes integrated communications via video, voice, text

Avaya, a provider of communications systems for the enterprise, today released a family of real-time video communications and collaboration products and services, including a video/voice/text offering called Avaya Flare Experience.

Avaya has been rolling out new offerings all year as part of a multi-phase strategy that has included product enhancements for small- to medium-sized enterprises and call centers, for example.

And the timing appears to be on-track. As companies struggle with the impact of economic forces, they are looking for ways to save money without compromising the ability to conduct business globally and in real-time. As part of that, there's also a push to integrate communications tools into one offering, rather than fragmented products.

Previous coverage: Avaya rolls out more Millennial friendly customer contact suite

At the heart of today's announcements is the Avaya Flare Experience, an offering that ranges from personal desktop systems to multi-screen room systems and promises to use less bandwidth - all for about one-third of what competitors are charging, the company said. In a statement, company president and CEO Kevin Kennedy, said that simplicity is key.

To be fully productive, employees need to simply connect via easy-to-use, fully integrated video, voice and text capabilities. This is the heart of Avaya's people-centric approach to collaboration and the means to faster, better results with less effort and a lower total cost of ownership. We're delivering a more potent collaboration experience at one-third the cost using substantially less bandwidth over other solutions on the market today.

The Flare Experience, which runs on the Android OS, offers an on-screen central dashboard that highlights active or in-progress communications. Among its features:

• A touch and swipe user interface that allows workers to communicate in any mode, check messages, schedule meetings and appointments, and receive alerts or reminders.
• Drag-and-drop voice and video calling and conferencing, which has a cool feature of allowing users to separate from a call to engage in side conversations - either through voice, email or IM - without interrupting the original call.
• A virtual 'Rolodex' that allows users to scan their corporate and personal lists of contacts - including those from social networks - and find out whether that person is available and how he/she prefers to communicate and initiate a connection.
• Download and install Android-based tools.