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Avaya
Phone Systems - Converged Network Upgrade at
Southern Florida Universtiy
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| University
of South Florida, One of the Nation's
Largest Universities, Receives Converged
Network Upgrade from Avaya |
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| Revamp
Readies School for Future Growth and
High Technology Corridor Efforts |
| For
immediate release: Tuesday,
September 16, 2003 |
BASKING
RIDGE, N.J. , US - Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV),
a leading global provider of
communications networks and services for
businesses, today announced that the
University of South Florida has upgraded
its communications network with the
latest in Internet Protocol (IP)
telephony solutions. The new converged
network is enhancing services and
lowering operational costs for
university faculty, staff and over
40,000 students.
The University of South Florida holds
the distinction of being the nation's
twentieth largest in the country, the
twelfth largest research university in
the nation and the second largest
university in the state of Florida,
according to school officials, with
several regional campuses and other
remote sites. With the upgrade, the
Tampa Bay-area school extends Avaya
MultiVantage™ Communications
Applications — including telephony,
messaging and contact center
applications — to any location, and
represents one of the largest
deployments of an IP telephony network
at a university.
IP telephony provides a collaborative
framework that delivers a seamless
coexistence of voice and data
applications allowing users to access
next generation communications on a
converged network. Avaya is number one
worldwide and in the U.S. in IP
telephony, according to InfoTech.
"The beauty of our upgrade from
Avaya is that we did not have to
forklift our existing configuration, but
just leveraged our current investment
while migrating toward a fully converged
network that is very reliable,"
said Kate Nidasio, director of
Telecommunications and Customer Service
at the university. "The platform
upgrade delivered reliability and
increased processing power while
enhancing our voice over IP telephony
capabilities. We're also benefiting from
new applications of unified messaging
that help increase productivity."
The upgrade to a converged voice and
data network allowed school officials to
reuse nearly 95 percent of its existing
network infrastructure to support more
than 16,000 IP, digital and analog
phones, at its Tampa, St. Petersburg,
Sarasota-Manatee, Lakeland and Tampa
Port Authority campuses. Avaya Global
Services provided design and
implementation services for the new
network, including extensive project
management to ensure that the large
voice and data network would perform at
optimal levels.
Nidasio said the emergence of IP-based
voice response, speech recognition and
voice storage capabilities makes IP
telephony easier and less expensive for
the university to deploy and operate.
The network upgrade will support the
future growth and technology efforts of
the university.
The university has been at the forefront
in contributing to the state's
technology growth and was key in the
creation and development of the Florida
High Technology Corridor, from Florida's
East Coast along Interstate 4 to the
Gulf coast. This area has become the
state's high-tech leader, encompassing
some 60 percent of Florida's high-tech
industries.
The new network is powered by Avaya
Communication Manager, the company's
flagship IP telephony software that
operates in an open, multi-vendor
environment. The Avaya software provides
more than 700 features and includes
advanced communications capabilities
such as reliable call routing,
conferencing, transfers and a unique set
of media encryption, scalability
applications and simplified network
administration tools.
The Avaya Communication Manager allows
the university to save conferencing
expenses rather than paying costs to
conference service providers. It enables
owners of multiple line-appearance
phones to use other line appearances to
dial out from a meet-me bridge and
conference on other participants as
necessary, including the ability to
chain multiple meet-me conferences
together.
Several departments within the
university will utilize the Avaya
Extension to Cellular feature of the
Avaya Communication Manager. This
mobility solution enables the staff to
have business calls that come into their
desk phones migrated directly to their
cellular phones, whether they are on or
off campus. University officials said
this feature will be particularly useful
for staff in its athletics department
when they are out of the office or on
scouting tours and want to be easily
reached via one telephone number.
Other divisions that are planning to use
the feature are the university's alumni
association, whose highly mobile workers
need to remain in contact with their
constituents without having to leave a
trail of phone numbers where they
"may" be reached. Now,
critical business decisions can be
discussed and made on-the-spot with the
Avaya Extension to Cellular offering.
The university also expanded its voice
messaging system and its 10,600 voice
mailboxes that are being used in student
dormitories as well as the rest of the
campus. As part of the Avaya
MultiVantage™ Communications
Applications suite, the university has
new messaging features such as fax
messaging, message manager, voice
messaging management and internet
messaging via the Web.
The university's contact center, which
is utilized for its medical clinics,
registrar, admissions and financial aid
offices, was also upgraded to help
improve operational efficiencies and
productivity. Patients and students need
dial only one number instead of multiple
ones in seeking the correct department
from the contact center's prompt.
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