Skype, Avaya, Form Enterprise VoIP Alliance

In the new alliance, Avaya is providing enterprise level control and management around Skype so that Avaya customers can manage Skype as a fully supported enterprise communications platform.

Skype isn’t just for consumer VoIP calls anymore. Enterprise unified communications vendor Avaya and Skype today announced a new partnership that will bring Skype support to Avaya equipment.

The new Skype Avaya partnership could serve to bring Skype’s technology deeper into the enterprise while giving Avaya even more methods of communications for its new Flare platform.

“In the first phase we will deliver integration and interoperability with Skype Connect for voice services,” Avaya Senior Vice President Alan Baratz said on a conference call with reporters. “In this phase we’ll be directly connecting via SIP between the Skype application infrastructure and the Avaya enterprise systems.”

The second phase of the Skype integration will occur in the second half of 2011. Baratz explained that at that point, Avaya will be supporting all of Skype’s services including voice, video, instant messaging and presence in a fully integrated fashion.

“So when you when you go to establish a video conference from within the Avaya environment, the end point on the other side could be a Skype client,” Baratz said. “The fact that it’s a Skype client is transparent to the user. It’s just fully integrated.”

The new Skype integration with Avaya will work across a wide array of Avaya systems and not just their newer Aura SIP based platform. Baratz noted that the Skype integration will also work with the Avaya SIP enablement system which supports their legacy platforms.

Read the rest at VoIP Planet.