Avaya has concluded its annual International Avaya User's Group (IAUG) event, and one of the most noteworthy announcements was the company's strategic vision to transform its approach to collaboration. The company's strategy calls to accelerate development and integration of next-generation unified communications and contact center applications.

Two stalwarts in the enterprise IT market joined forces today to release a unified communications stack that integrates hardware from EMC, virtualization technology from VMware and communications apps from Avaya.

Avaya unified communications products can get along with Microsoft's Lync Server, and many customers will probably choose to deploy both rather than just one, says Avaya's CEO.

Despite what he sees as shortcomings of Microsoft's real-time communications platform, businesses will see value to some of its features, and supplement those with products from Avaya, says Avaya chief Kevin Kennedy.

Avaya announced additions to its Avaya Collaborative Cloud portfolio with offers specifically designed for cloud service providers (CSPs); these latest services include unified communications, contact center and video solutions for CSPs that are packaged with flexible choices and pricing models. CSPs can then help their enterprise clients offload the challenges of managing BYOD environments, widely dispersed workforces, and the shifting demands of end-customers.

Following up on its purchase earlier this year of video optimization company Radvision, Avaya announced enhancements to its Aura and Flare unified communications (UC) platforms that could signal the company's move into next generation videoconferencing for the enterprise.

Avaya announced its new architecture for virtualized unified communications applications, unveiling Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment (Avaya Aura VE). With the announcement, businesses can choose full virtualization with Avaya Aura VE, or continue with the dedicated hardware approach already offered by Avaya Aura. They can also combine virtualized and dedicated servers for application deployment.

Since publicly launching a communications outsourcing division earlier this year, Avaya says it has seen strong customer adoption, which is why the company is looking to expand its service to smaller and mid-sized businesses.

A combination of increasing complexity of contact center and communications technology within the enterprise, combined with the ability to outsource the management of those functions to third parties have been driving factors in customer adoption, says Avaya's Ed Nalbandian, vice president of managed services.

Bringing together a solution that incorporates real-time collaboration, conferencing and mobility, Avaya has a new approach designed to help with crisis management. The latest version of the Avaya Notification Solution (ANS) is at the heart of the solution that can transmit critical information and instructions in multiple formats. The ANS approach is built to support small, targeted teams or large groups.

Avaya had two announcements, unveiling new virtualization enhancements to its portfolio that build on the Avaya Collaborative Cloud, along with a new portfolio of cloud-ready, turnkey solutions codenamed Avaya Collaboration Pods.

Avaya today announced the latest version of its unified communication (UC) software, IP Office 8.1, which the company says brings UC features typically reserved for large enterprises to smaller ones.

Features in the latest version of the software include: