Avaya and Skype Finally Unveil a Partnership the Industry has Pondered
This morning Avaya and Skype went public with a partnership they term “a strategic agreement to deliver innovative, real-time communications and collaboration solutions to businesses of all sizes”. The output of the agreement will come in two phases. The first is centered on integration of voice, and the second, integration of video and other unified communication capabilities. The output of the agreement will be development around integration as well as a combined go to market strategy.
In Phase 1, Avaya’s US customer base will have access to Skype ConnectTM, allowing customers to communicate via SIP between Avaya communication systems and Skype. This will be available to customers with Avaya AuraTM Session Manager or Avaya Aura SIP Enablement Server, CS1000, Avaya IP Office, or BCM systems. Avaya cited that calls will be handled using Avaya’s routing, conferencing, messaging, mobility and contact center capabilities, and collaboration services.
In Phase 2, which is slated some time off in the later part of 2011, the two companies promise to deliver integrated unified communications and collaboration solutions to enterprises, including video. The companies claim that the integration will establish federation between Avaya Aura and Skype communications platforms, and through that, will bring together the business and consumer side.
This union is interesting and promising from two perspectives. First, the two companies have offerings that complement each other. Avaya, focused on communications for government and the private sector businesses, seeks to round out and expand its communications offerings. This builds on their UC and collaboration offerings, including this month’s Flare Experience announcement, and it provides benefits to Avaya customers by helping reduce communication costs. Skype, built its popularity among consumers, but seeks to attract more businesses by expanding capabilities attractive to the enterprise, and this will enable them to do that. Second, is the promise that this union will provide federation of some applications, including presence, voice, video and IM, between businesses and consumers. The later could produce some interesting customer service business benefits, and is something we have all been waiting for.
A small note, even though Skype’s growth has hinged in part on being available to users internationally - part of its appeal - this announcement was focused solely on the US. Plans to expand internationally will be rolled out as the partnership and offerings are developed. Also, complete plans for the product roadmap won’t be made available for a few weeks yet.
In all, I really like the promise of what this partnership will bring, especially as both integration and federation have been two sore spots that have had a lot of lip service given them, but not a lot of concrete work done yet. However, although there are solid plans in this agreement to do so, Avaya still hasn’t extended that intent by joining up with the UCIF just yet. During the Q&A part of the analyst call on this, Jim Burton asked if Avaya would join the UCIF for interoperability. Avaya’s answer was very politely that there is some governance challenges associated with joining that they are trying to work out with the companies involved. They added that the way that the effort is structured raises concerns if the UCIF is truly an open and peer-based organization. More to come on this, I’m sure.