Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications

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1 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications December 2014 Prepared by: Zeus Kerravala

2 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications by Zeus Kerravala December 2014 º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º Introduction: New Business Trends Drive Unified Communications Evolution ZK Research A Division of Kerravala Consulting Legacy unified communications (UC) tools were developed in an era when workers were primarily deskbound and collaborated mostly with internal employees. Because of this, communications and collaboration tools existed as standalone applications. Workers used business applications to conduct day-today work, and then UC tools were used for collaborating with other workers. Although this process wasn t optimal, businesses were able to build effective workflows around the different applications and UC tools. However, the nature of work has changed. Competitive advantage is no longer about a business having a single core competency. Today, competitive advantage is based on making quick decisions while involving the best people both inside and outside the organization. Also, technology trends such as mobility, social networks and cloud computing have created a highly connected world where people can access a wealth of information instantly. But for many businesses, a key challenge has arisen: How can employees have real-time access to the information they need to perform their jobs faster? This includes the ability to make quick decisions but also be able to respond to co-workers, customers, business partners and other members of the extended enterprise at the speed the business dictates (Exhibit 1). [email protected] Cell: Office: In reality, bringing communications and applications together isn t a new concept. A handful of leading organizations have already created communicationsenabled business applications (CEBA) that integrate UC tools and information. The evolving business climate has made CEBA a top priority for all IT and business leaders. The following are the key drivers for CEBA today: Improving customer satisfaction and advocacy: The battle for the customer has never been tougher. Businesses of all kinds are looking to secure the loyalties of profitable, savvy customers. They can do this by rolling out communications-enabled applications that deliver highly personalized experiences. Increasing worker agility and effectiveness: Workers need faster access to enable them to respond, collaborate and continually learn on the job. Communications-enabled business processes can effectively eliminate all of the human latency involved in processes today. Improving profitability: Every organization strives to maximize profitability, and many try to do so by cutting costs. However, CEBA can lead to differentiated services that drive additional revenues and repeat business. Also, profitability can be increased through a more efficient workforce that can make decisions faster with fewer people involved. Influence and insight through social media

3 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 3 Exhibit 1: The Diverse Communication Needs of the Extended Enterprise Source: ZK Research 2014 Unified Communications Purchasing Study Any organization that wishes to maximize worker productivity, improve customer service and leverage the power of social and mobile communications should now make communications-enabled applications a top priority. However, legacy UC platforms are not well suited to making the process of developing communications-enabled business applications fast and simple. It s time for UC platforms to evolve to meet today s business challenges. Section II: The Challenges with Legacy Unified Communications Platforms The value proposition of UC is multifaceted. Most organizations look to UC to reduce the cost of collaboration and communication costs (Exhibit 2). However, IT leaders recently have been using UC to improve customer service, enhance mobile collaboration and create a competitive advantage. These benefits cannot be achieved if UC remains isolated from other business applications. To combat this, some developers and software vendors have attempted to integrate UC capabilities into applications. However, they ve had limited success for the following reasons: Legacy telephony knowledge is required. To build communications-enabled applications, the developer usually must have deep knowledge of computer-telephony integration (CTI). Very few developers understand modern programming languages and have programming knowledge of legacy telephony environments. The lines between the contact center and unified communications are blurring. Almost every employee plays a role in customer engagement. This has blurred the lines between contact center tools and unified communications as the information between customer service agents and other employees must be consistent and shared. Consequently, the complexity in building communications-enabled applications has increased.

4 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 4 Exhibit 2: The Value Proposition of UC Is Multi-Dimensional Source: ZK Research 2014 UC Deployment Survey The developer environment is fragmented. Because UC has evolved through the integration of several discrete technologies, developer tools for UC tend to be fragmented. A developer looking to build a UC-enabled application would have to work with a number of loosely coupled tools such as web services, mobile SDKs and contact center SDKs (Exhibit 3). This makes integrating UC and business applications extremely difficult. Data overload is prevalent. Businesses are capturing more and more data from an increasing number of sources including traditional business applications as well as social media, mobile information and collaborative applications. However, many organizations lack the ability to convert the data into something that s actionable by the business. UC platforms were built for traditional computing devices. The majority of UC development platforms were built in an era when desktop computing was the norm. The ZK Research 2014 Enterprise Mobility Survey revealed that almost 90% of knowledge workers carry a smartphone or tablet, and many carry both today. UC platforms must evolve to enable workers to take full advantage of smartphones and tablets. UC platforms are not aligned with current business trends. UC development platforms need to marry social media and mobility with customer engagement. This will help organizations respond to customers faster and more accurately. Development cycles are long and costly. Because of the fragmented tool kits and the need to understand CTI, organizations would need large developer teams to build even simple applications. This fragmented approach would lead to application development times of several months, which could cause organizations to miss or be late to benefit from key market opportunities. Although the value proposition of communicationsenabled applications is well understood, the efforts required by developers are far too great for businesses to capitalize on the opportunities. What s required today is a developer environment that is aligned with today s market.

5 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 5 Exhibit 3: UC Development Is Composed of Fragmented Tools Source: ZK Research 2014 Unified Communications Purchasing Study Section III: Avaya Engagement Development Platform Advances Communications Enablement The Avaya Engagement Development Platform (EDP) was created to address the specific problems involved in developing communications-enabled business applications. It is integrated into the Avaya Aura Platform and shifts it from a UC suite to an applications development environment in which organizations have the ability to create communications-rich business applications. Avaya EDP can enhance the responsiveness and efficiency of employees while building on existing investments. Avaya EDP is a development platform that brings together the customer experience management found in call centers and the UC tools used by knowledge workers to create enterprise-wide solutions. The platform easily integrates communications technologies into any business application or sequence of applications, making it quick and easy to develop and deploy vertical applications. Avaya EDP is a true breakthrough in UC application development because of the following attributes: Uses modern programming languages: Avaya EDP is aligned with programming environments that social, mobile and cloud developers use today, including JSON, XML and REST. No knowledge of CTI or telephony required: Most cloud, mobile and social developers have little to no knowledge of legacy communications. Avaya EDP is designed to require no telephony or CTI skills, but it still provides a rich set of enterprise-grade communication capabilities. Cloud-ready: Avaya EDP is completely virtualized, meaning developers and ISVs can build applications ready for the cloud. Multichannel capabilities: Avaya EDP was designed with full multimedia capabilities, including traditional voice, mobile, , SMS and video functionality. Single developer interface: The Avaya EDP Software Developers Kit provides a single interface into all of the Avaya Aura capabilities and has a complete range of modalities and applications. Exhibit 4 illustrates how Avaya EDP functions. Inputs are generated from any interaction through any medium including voice, web, mobile devices, social media, video and . Avaya EDP interfaces with the Avaya Aura Platform and its applications, manipulating the inputs in a way that improves the flow of information.

6 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 6 Exhibit 4: Avaya Engagement Development Platform Source: Avaya and ZK Research, 2014 For example, with Avaya EDP, an event could be intelligently routed to a specific area for response such as an outbound multimodal broadcast to create awareness. Regardless of the application created, the results are improved customer satisfaction, better use of employee time, and faster responsiveness to issues and requests. Recently, Avaya released its 3.0 version of the Engagement Development Platform. The 3.0 release added a set of snap-in modules to further simplify the development process, speed up time to market and make advanced capabilities accessible to every application. Snap-ins can be thought of as modular, re-usable code that connects or enables a specific outcome. The Avaya EDP snap-ins can be used across multiple applications either alone or in conjunction with other snap-ins. The snap-ins include the following. Avaya WebRTC Snap-in WebRTC gives any user using a PC, smartphone or tablet click to call capabilities within a web browser. When used in conjunction with other Avaya EDP snap-ins, customer behaviors, preferences and browser history can be captured and integrated into a single experience that quickly gets customers and agents into the right conversation to resolve issues fast. Avaya Real-Time Speech Snap-in This snap-in integrates real-time speech into business and contact center applications and workflows, which gives organizations the ability to develop and deploy speech services across the company. Through these services, developers can manage and use speech technologies to create interactive speech search applications. Avaya Context Store Snap-in The Context Store simplifies the tracking, collection and sharing of customer and business information used to improve real-time collaboration and customer engagement. This snap-in simplifies the aggregation of information across various enterprise and public sources, which ensures that workers can make the best decisions in real time.

7 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 7 Avaya Work Assignment Snap-in This snap-in is a work distribution system that leverages real-time data to customize customer engagements and optimize the use of business resources. It gives businesses the ability to create communications-enabled applications that can respond and react in real time based on business goals and desired outcomes. An example of this could be applying rules to optimize sales opportunities by routing high-value customers to an organization s best salespeople. In addition to the snap-ins, version 3.0 includes the Avaya Engagement Designer, which enables a user to build applications without the need to write Java code. Avaya Engagement Designer provides a wide range of preconfigured capabilities that can be mapped out so that non-developers can create process flows and applications. This simplifies the process of application development. Also new in version 3.0 is the AvayaLive Collaboratory, which helps facilitate rapid application development. The Collaboratory is a virtual instance of the entire Avaya Aura Platform including EDP (Exhibit 5). It enables developers and customers to try the application development process without requiring up-front investments or upgrades. Section IV: Avaya Engagement Development Platform Case Studies Case Study 1: Esna Accelerates Workflow Creation Esna has a goal of providing the best communications solution with an unparalleled user experience to help people maximize productivity and get work done quickly. Founded in 1989, Esna s early success was based on software solutions that included voic , chat, click-to-call, auto attendant and message broadcasting. Today, the company has a broad collaboration framework that lives and breathes through workflows built into applications such as and CRM. One of Esna s challenges is that it requires a large overhead to create the connections it needs when developing workflows as the company talks to Avaya servers through proxies. Exhibit 5: AvayaLive Collaboratory in Action Source: Avaya and ZK Research, 2014

8 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 8 Previously, Esna had to create redundant servers to handle the proxy capabilities. There was an Esna server talking to an Avaya server, so the developers had to build everything twice once for each server. Avaya s EDP takes care of all the communications plumbing and allows Esna developers to focus on application creation. This provides the benefit of being much easier and more cost effective for Esna s customers there s no requirement to buy multiple servers for different divisions because the Avaya EDP acts like a communications bus. ESNA is leveraging the Avaya Engagement Designer. This module speeds up the collaboration process. For example, if six individuals were tied to a certain document, Avaya EDP can automatically invite all the document owners to a video meeting. Joining this meeting only requires one click by the invitation recipients. ESNA is also leveraging the WebRTC snap-in. This snap-in enables Esna to initiate calls or videos directly from the browser. This is important for SaaSbased applications such as SugarCRM and Salesforce.com. Esna customers can now start with small browser-based meetings and quickly extend them to a larger group. Case Study 2: Datapoint Creates Game- Changing Applications Datapoint is a European Avaya integration partner that specializes in the contact center. The company s customer base consists of primarily large enterprises with a multicountry footprint, and it specializes in building unique features for its customers that run on top of the Avaya contact center software. Datapoint also excels in connecting CRM applications to Avaya contact centers to create another layer of application intelligence above the basic contact center software. Datapoint also prides itself on having very sophisticated developers. Instead of having an army of hundreds of developers, the company only has 20. Therefore, its technology partners must provide platforms that can maximize the productivity of this small group of developers. Historically, Datapoint found the communications between Avaya products to be good but very limited. For example, CTI integration was possible, but web integration was not possible. And with the world moving to the web, this was proving to be a limiting factor. With other platforms, the cost to build is low but usage costs can be very high. With the Avaya Engagement Development Platform, the cost to build is also very low but the cost to run is also very low since the environment is well integrated. Also, Avaya is the only development partner that gives us the capability of creating pure browser-based collaborative applications. Davide Petramala, Executive Vice President of Business Development and Sales, Esna The 3.0 release of Avaya EDP has removed the limitations of the older development platform. Datapoint is currently building a communicationsenabled application for one of its customers: a large, global insurance company. The advanced application has the capability to understand what topics customers have been looking for on the web when they call in. Now, when a customer phones the insurance company, the agent knows who is calling and why the person is calling, and the agent can quickly offer help. Datapoint has created a game changing application that moves its customer from being reactive to being proactive through a new predicative model. Historically, customers would call in and the agents would need to ask a series of questions to gather the required information. Now, most of the information is gathered automatically. Datapoint was able to build this application because all of the information is available in the Context Store snap-in. The snap-in is effectively a huge database to store all telephony, mobile and web events. The snap-in model gives Datapoint more flexibility and more time to be creative. The company can now go to any of its customers and give them exactly what they are asking for quickly. The combination of the snap-ins enables Datapoint to connect the right people to the right information or customers in real time.

9 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 9 The Avaya Engagement Development Platform allows us to differentiate ourselves from other Avaya dealers as well as other contact center vendors. We can now go to customers with a highly consultative approach with no limitation on creativity. We are now competing on new ideas rather than on price. Arnaud Pigueller, Country Manager for France, Datapoint Case Study 3: Plantronics Demonstrates Ecosystem Strength Plantronics has focused on building lightweight, high-quality audio headsets since it was founded in Since then, Plantronics has continued to build innovative products that improve the audio experience through noise reduction, call clarity and unique ergonomics. As part of its overall vision of building a unified experience, Plantronics is continually improving users experience as they move between mobile devices and desktop phones. Ultimately, it would like to enable bidirectional movement of calls, but it chose to start with mobile-to-desktop call movement. Avaya and Plantronics have worked together to make Plantronics headset APIs available through Avaya snap-ins. Plantronics collects a wealth of contextual information about users of its technology to make UC applications smarter. This includes the following: The Don/Doff wearing state indicates whether a headset is being worn or not. It can be used to route audio or help increase presence robustness. Proximity indicates a near or far event to connect devices such as a mobile device or PC. This is how seamless transfer can be enabled. Mobile caller ID provides information to a PC or an ecosystem. A head gesturing feature to indicate movement or direction facing is forthcoming. Plantronics also provides a number of contact center APIs such as: Quick disconnect make or break indicates whether the agent is available at his or her desk. Mute status indication helps the agent reporting system know the agent has put a caller on mute. Future features include audio quality alerting, asset tracking and acoustic event logging. The partnership between Plantronics and Avaya shows the power of Avaya EDP and its ecosystem. The integration enables Avaya developer partners or customers to choose the elements of the Plantronics APIs they need, develop a solution and then continually reuse it. Case Study 4: WEBTEXT Brings Mobility to Developers WEBTEXT is an Avaya DevConnect technology partner that has won a number of innovation awards. The company is the only development partner to win two innovation awards in back-to-back years. WEBTEXT developed a two-way SMS snap-in for the Avaya Engagement Development Platform. The snap-in is a cloud service that enables IVRs to detect whether a person is calling from a cell phone. The IVR offers the caller the choice of being put on hold or communicating via SMS. If the caller chooses SMS, a welcome message is sent. When the caller posts a response, the text goes into the webchat for the agent. The agent sees the communications as a chat, but the caller continues to see it as SMS communications. Now, the contact center agent can handle five to 10 calls at a time There are different approaches to UC development that the various vendors take. The Avaya Engagement Development Platform enables anyone to use whatever pieces they require to build an application. The program expands on the creativity of developers. Christopher Brady, Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships, Plantronics

10 Avaya Engagement Development Platform Fulfills on the Vision for Communications-Enabled Business Applications 10 instead of one or two, which significantly increases the effectiveness of the agents. WEBTEXT chose to develop the two-way SMS snap-in for two reasons. The first is that it decreases the amount of effort required to integrate WEBTEXT into Avaya applications. Before EDP, a developer needed to understand all of the unique APIs within each Avaya product. Now, developers can write once and let EDP act as a translator for the different Avaya systems and third-party members of the Avaya ecosystem. The second reason is to make WEBTEXT services available to the entire Avaya development community. The EDP marketplace has effectively become an incubator for innovation, and it provides great value to companies such as WEBTEXT by enabling it to combine its services with Avaya s capabilities and those of other third-party providers. WEBTEXT is a cloud services company, and it has a limited number of developers and engineers. The company leveraged Avaya s Collaboratory following the development of the snap-in. Instead of having to buy a significant amount of hardware and software to get the products up and running, everything was done online. It took only two weeks for two WEBTEXT developers to create and test the application. With traditional development methods, it would have taken at least three to four weeks to get the hardware installed and another three to four months before anything would have been up and running. Section IV: Conclusion and Recommendations Mobility, social media and the cloud are changing the way people work and the way businesses compete. Enabling collaboration among the extended enterprise so that businesses can make decisions rapidly is now the basis of competitive advantage. IT leaders must create unique customer experiences that differentiate themselves from the competition in order to dominate their markets. For this to happen, business applications, contact centers and communications technology must come together. These areas of IT have lived in silos for decades, making it almost impossible to create true communications-enabled applications. To raise productivity and lower costs, IT leaders must make communications enablement of business applications a priority. To help them get started, ZK Research recommends the following: The value of Avaya Engagement Development Platform to developers is clear. Developer partners, like us, can write one set of code and not worry about integration of the backend systems. Also, through the marketplace, others can use our services to innovate in ways that are beyond our resource limit. Avaya Engagement Development Platform is a force multiplier for WEBTEXT. AJ Cahill, CEO and Co-Founder, WEBTEXT Make communications-enabled applications a top priority. Integrating communications with business applications was a difficult, timeconsuming and expensive process. Development platforms such as the Avaya Engagement Development Platform can remove many barriers to building these types of applications and allow application developers to focus on the user experience instead of technical integration challenges. Developers should embrace the concept of snap-ins. With the brisk pace of business today, developers can no longer afford to spend time writing the same code over and over. Snap-ins enable the re-usability of modular software that can be leveraged in a number of applications. This concept is standard in business applications but is new to the communications world. Make multi-modality the norm. The rise of mobile platforms and social media has eradicated single-mode communications. Developers should focus on solutions that incorporate voice, video, , messaging and other forms of communications. Multi-modality can fully uncap the potential of social and mobile communications. : A Division of Kerravala Consulting All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without the express prior permission of ZK Research is expressly prohibited. For questions, comments or further information, [email protected].