Avaya to Participate in Development of Industry Standards for Seamless

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., May 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Avaya Inc. , a leading global provider of business communications applications, services and systems, today announced it has expanded its membership in the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Consortium by becoming a member of the OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language Technical Committee(1) (WSBPEL). OASIS is developing industry standards for business process Web services; WSBPEL is a business process language.

As a member of the technical committee, Avaya will collaborate with other members to enhance WSBPEL to enable real-time communications to be easily embedded in business applications and processes. By joining this Technical Committee, Avaya will be collaborating with over 40 other companies actively working the BPEL specification.

"We welcome Avaya's participation in the OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee," said Diane Jordan, OASIS WS BPEL TC co-chair and program manager, Emerging Internet Standards, IBM. "Their contributions will help advance WSBPEL as a method for users to sequence and coordinate internal and external Web services to accomplish business tasks.

The value of communications-enabled business processes is the competitive advantage gained by using real-time communication to bring people into transactions intelligently when needed, thereby reducing delays while increasing the human touch. The resulting business benefits include increased customer satisfaction through faster, more personal handling, better decision-making when the right people are engaged at the right time with the right information, and greater control and ease of use for both businesses and end users. For example, stakeholders who need to take action on an issue can be automatically located, notified and conferenced to keep a process on track. In another example, employees can initiate business processes through voice activation of business applications.

For example, a customer is browsing a web site for a discontinued part that they would like to purchase at a local store. Embedding real-time communications into business applications and process could add value in several ways:

-- A customer, in need of immediate help, could click on the website and be connected directly to an agent, either in a contact center or at a retail branch based on skill matching and presence. -- Just before connection is made, the store agent receives situational context -- web content pushed to their handheld device. -- With a single click, the agent can conference in a supply manager to get confirmation of a rush order, then return to the customer to close the transaction.

In the end, the store manager locates the part that the customer needs and holds it for the customer to pickup. This is only one example, out of the many possibilities, where embedding real-time communications into business applications and processes can make people more productive, processes more intelligent, and customers more satisfied.

"Avaya has been clear in our forecast of how the communications industry will evolve to converged communications," said Ravi Sethi, president, Avaya Labs. "Enhancing WSBPEL will help accelerate the embedding of communications into business processes, which has the potential to transform business by creating significant new value and redefining the way we work."

For applications developers, enhancing standards to enable more efficient connection of people and processes will make it easier to write software programs that provide value-added benefits for specific customer or industry requirements and opportunities.

"IT does not matter -- it is what you do with technology that matters," said Jim Metzler, vice president, Ashton Metzler Associates. "BPEL represents the first time that key industry leaders have come together to focus on enhancing business processes. Avaya is uniquely positioned to ensure that PEL adequately accommodates voice and related technologies and hence guarantee that BPEL does indeed enable business agility."

About Avaya

Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than 1 million businesses worldwide, including over 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500(R). Focused on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable Internet Protocol (IP) telephony systems and communications software applications and services. Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications -- and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services -- Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to achieve superior business results. For more information visit the Avaya website: http://www.avaya.com/ .

(1) OASIS is an international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards, with an emphasis on Web services. The WSBPEL technical committee within the consortium is dedicated to describing business process activities as Web Services and defining how they can be connected to accomplish specific tasks. Web services typically include a combination of programming and data, which are made available to serve other Web-connected programs or users. Web services can help support more productive workplace response via intelligent resources supported by workers.