Avaya ACE's CEBPAvaya ACE's CEBP

ACE was the missing piece of Avaya's CEBP puzzle and now it’s time to go execute on the vision. I'm expecting good things out of ACE and Aura next year.

When Avaya purchased Nortel, the majority of focus, and rightfully so, was on the installed base of customers Avaya was inheriting as well as how the two voice portfolios would co-exist. However, one of the products that went under the radar was the software platform Agile Communications Environment (ACE). For those who aren't familiar with the product, ACE is software suite that uses SOA principles and web services to tie communication services to applications, which delivers on the communications enabled business process (CEBP) vision that Avaya has been touting for several years.

Historically, Avaya had built a strong vision around CEBP and a great developer environment with DevConnect. In fact, Avaya has been the vendor most aggressive with pushing the concept of communications enabled applications. While Microsoft and Cisco have danced around the topic for years, Avaya has slowly built out a great program. The one missing piece to the Avaya puzzle is the lack of a high quality product to fulfill the vision of CEBP and DevConnect. I believe ACE is the right product that can fulfill that vision.

Last week Avaya released version 2.3 of ACE, which had many additional features, including the layering of ACE onto Aura, Avaya's next generation UC platform. The layering of ACE onto Aura allows Avaya to extend the value of CEBP. In its current incarnation, Avaya's CEBP was voice-centric only. The integration of ACE and Aura extends CEBP to all of the various communications modes that UC brings. This includes not only voice but text, chat, presence, video and other communication services. Additionally, because ACE and Aura are software platforms, application developers that wish to leverage CEBP do not have to be PBX experts. ACE and Aura are both pure software solutions and include a number of prepackaged applications as well as APIs and tool kits that software developers can use to create communications enabled applications much easier than before. Avaya has come a long way since the early days of CEBP and this latest announcement is a proof point of just far the company has come.

Additionally, ACE 2.3 includes a client-side plug in for Microsoft Communicator that enables client to call from Communicator clients (both online and premise based) and then communicate with an Avaya desktop phone. This is a good example of some of the pre-packaging Avaya has done to date. The integration could have been done by the customer but Avaya has done much of the work in preparation for OCS and Lync deployments.

I believe that, over the next few years, CEBP will become Avaya’s key differentiator. Cisco's differentiator revolves around network integration and Microsoft’s go to market revolves around the desktop. Since Avaya has only a small footprint in the network and is non existent regarding desktops, how can they compete? The answer is through application integration. On the surface, thinking of Avaya as a vendor that can build, support and leverage a developer environment seems crazy. What do a bunch of bell heads know about applications anyway? But this isn’t the same Avaya.

I mentioned this before but Avaya has been far and away the most aggressive UC provider when it comes to the concept of communications enabled applications. I remember attending the first DevConnect event many years ago and there was probably no more than about 20 developers in the room and many of them were fax board companies and other telco oriented solutions. However, Avaya stuck with the vision and methodically went about growing DevConnect and evolving it to the point it is now (several thousand developers in the program). Avaya received a shot in the arm when it acquired Ubiquity and the company was able to roll all of the Ubiquity partners into the DevConnect program.

The current version of ACE promotes the vision of "communication mashups" where a developer or ISV could take a variety of communication components, put them together and instantly create a communications based application. This will allow Avaya and its partners to develop a number of vertical applications to penetrate accounts where it might not have had a chance historically.

The big challenge for Avaya now is to "prime the pump" and work with the DevConnect community to showcase what’s possible. This will help ISVs that don't understand the concept of CEBP to see it in action and create some momentum around ACE. ACE was the missing piece of Avaya's CEBP puzzle and now it’s time for the company to go execute on the vision. Considering execution is one of CEO Kevin Kennedy's strengths, I'm expecting good things out of ACE and Aura next year.