Miercom, the independent testing company, and Nemertes Research, a research advisory firm specialising in understanding the business value of emerging technologies, named Avaya Enterprise Unified Communications as the best solution for reliability, security and survivability, and for delivering solutions that fit the particular needs of specific industries, respectively. The awards were recently presented at VoiceCon San Francisco 2008.
The Miercom "Rated Best" award comes following extensive, benchmark testing of Avaya Communication Manager software, servers, gateways and Avaya one-X clients and endpoints against competitive offers. Focusing on the resiliency, reliability and security of a typical Avaya installation, Miercom found that it "proved highly-immune against purposeful network and power outages as well as a battery of attempted security breaches.
In presenting the award, Robert Smithers, CEO of Miercom said: "The Avaya solution rated Best Survivability for Large Enterprise UC Solution. We were impressed by the high level of reliability offered by Avaya Communication Manager running on the S8730 server, with its co-resident SIP Enablement Services (SES) that improve remote survivability. In spite of all attempts to interfere with the solution's functionality by disconnecting power, disabling drives and severing network links it effortlessly bounced right back just as designed. The SIP functionality remains intact even when the main communications server is removed."
In addition, Nemertes Research provided Avaya Unified Communications with a PilotHouse award for Best Overall Vertical Solutions. The award is based on a survey of more than 500 IT decision-makers using Unified Communications who rated vendors in a variety of areas, including product features, vision, customer service, value, etc. Avaya earned the highest overall score among customers in eight vertical markets.
According to the report, Avaya's industry-based solutions have created a solid customer experience through a focus on pulling together the right partners, products and services to create solutions designed for their needs.
Across the board, Avaya received some of its highest scores in technology and solution experience, according to the report. The technology rating evaluates the sophistication of the underlying technology and operating systems and includes underlying software, platforms, intelligence and standards compliance. Solution experience is the vendor's ability to understand business requirements and craft solutions that meet customer needs.
"IT practitioners say Avaya does a good job pulling together IT components, creating solutions that help them resolve business problems specific to their vertical industries," says Robin Gareiss, executive vice president of Nemertes Research. "Among several rating categories, Avaya's customers gave the highest marks in technology, value, and solution experience."