Avaya and Skype announce strategic agreement
Avaya and Skype have signed a strategic agreement to provide businesses with real-time communications and collaboration solutions.
In October, Avaya will start offering Skype Connect to Avaya’s community of customers based in the United States, allowing them to make outbound calls at Skype’s low rates through their existing least-cost routing setup. Skype’s connected users will in turn be able to make inbound calls at no cost to Avaya customers in the US market – and calls can be handled by the conferencing, messaging mobility and contact center capabilities of the Avaya systems, which include Avaya Aura Session Manager or Avaya Aura SIP Enablement Server, CS1000, Avaya IP Office, or BCM systems.
And there’s more to come – in the second half of 2011, Skype and Avaya plan to launch integrated unified communications and collaboration solutions for businesses within the US, which will be designed to allow Avaya and Skype users to engage and interact via presence, IM, make voice and video calls with each other. Skype and Avaya will also offer tools to allow IT administrators to manage access and privileges.
Watch this space for more details on the Avaya Skype Connect rollout in October.
