AVST has just unveiled a new product line, the AVST CX-S. CX-S is the perfect solution for SMB’s looking for enterprise-class UC solutions. Not only is it delivered on the industry’s most interoperable platform, it’s jam-packed with feature rich mobility solutions. And, to add icing on the cake, it’s available at an incredibly low price. When we sat down to design the CX-S, we first asked customers what they were looking for. Their feedback was extremely important on the design of this new product line.

The CX-S solution comes standard with all of the best technology AVST has to offer including:

• AVST Mobile Client for iPhone and Android
• Unified Messaging
• Personal Assistant (Speech and DTMF)
• Speech
• Single Number Reach
• Mobile Number Protection
• Web PhoneManager
• Voicemail
• Automated Attendant (Speech and DTMF)
• Message Notification
• Single IP Integration
• English, NA Spanish, and Canadian French Pre-installed Voice Prompts

All CX-S software is pre-installed on a Dell server and comes packaged with a three year “bumper to bumper” hardware warranty. We’ve also included 3 years of XpressCare.

View this one minute video for more information.

We’re delighted with the CX-S addition to our AVST Unified Communications solutions family and we are confident you will be as well.

Here’s a quick overview:

• New Messaging and Navigation
• New AVST Corporate Overview
• How AVST Resolves Key Business Challenges
• Focused Solutions – UC-Interoperability, UC-Voice, UC-Mobile, UC-Business Process

We encourage you to take a tour and tell us what you think.

According to eWeek.com; “The whole implementation process should take anywhere from 15 to 22 months, depending on your network readiness, extent of projects and planning expertise. Unified communications and collaboration are not new technologies. Rather, there are ways to get more “bang” out of existing communications and data channels—to squeeze more value out of everyday interactions among people and to make people more operationally efficient, and improve productivity everyday!”

Through AVST’s interoperability, enterprises can gain an understanding of exactly how to get more “bang” out of their existing infrastructure. With AVST’s platform, CallXpress, organizations can be more cost-effective, scalable, flexible, secure, and reliable with the ability to implement UCC. By taking our “a la carte” approach, organizations can move at their own pace, and easily add features that are specific to their current needs, eliminating any overspending and giving them the flexibility to make changes in the future.

Is UCC in your future? Let AVST help you get there – we believe in helping customers own their own future. Contact one of our sales representatives for more information.

According to feedback acquired, this year’s Oasis was a great success. We received 100% positive response from our follow-up customer survey. One customer said, “What you put together at this year’s conference would have been hard to improve upon; great job!”   Another commented, “You packed a lot into the conference- it worked really well.” Throughout the conference AVST heard directly from customers on what their concerns were, ways they were implementing CallXpress, some of the challenges they faced and product development suggestions for the future.

Attendees were impressed with all the capabilities CallXpress provides. During the customer panel session, users discussed the value of CallXpress feature sets and the increased efficiency and productivity it provided their companies. Features such as personal assistant, unified messaging, single number reach, speech automated attendant and customized CEBP, were revealed to be highly effective tools in their organizations’ environments. During this particular session, a customer who was sitting to my right (and feverishly taking notes) turned to me and said, “This is going to be SO good for my job! I did not realize CallXpress could do all these things.” Another user was very impressed with the interoperability of CallXpress into a Microsoft OCS/Lync environment and shared this: “We are moving to an Office 365 / Lync environment this Fall so, the Lync integration session was very interesting”.  The ability to use CallXpress 8.2 as an Intelligent Gateway for those looking to integrate Microsoft OCS / Lync with their existing telephony infrastructure was seen as a very valuable tool.

Premium XpressCare and mobility were also discussed. Premium XpressCare entitles AVST customers who qualify, to receive direct technical support from AVST. Users talked in more detail about this during the roundtable sessions, as many were planning on purchasing it for their organizations. With various, new mobile features coming soon, customers were excited about the efficiency it would provide. As our President & CEO, Hardy Myers states, “Mobility is accelerating the deployment of UC.”

Attendees reported the roundtable sessions were the most beneficial. During this time users had the opportunity to discuss one-on-one with our Product Management, Professional Services, Sales Engineering and Executive teams. By asking questions, explaining their diverse situations and voicing opinions to AVST staff, a personal collaboration was created between the customer and the company. In addition to the customer panel and roundtable sessions, the conference also provided a networking lunch and two networking dinners. With all the opportunities to come together, we heard a lot of customers asking questions; who was using what, how they could implement it and how it was effective in their companies. From Web PhoneManager to UM to Speech (and much, much more) the power of CallXpress was understood and users were infused with a renewed excitement for what they could implement once back in the office.

The ability to provide customers specific solutions to be innovative influences in their organizations is a direct result of the interaction at the Oasis conferences. It allows AVST to better understand customer needs and  focus on products that will help organizations achieve greater productivity and efficiency in the future. Our hope is that by doing so attendees will become champions in their own companies.

What were the key factors that led Aims to choose CallXpress out of the many other solutions available? First, with an Octel telephone user interface emulation, CallXpress makes upgrading any system seamless for all end users. According to Aims’ Telecommunications Manager, Deb Martinez, “One of the main selling points for CallXpress was the fact that I did not have to retrain our users on a new system, and, thanks to AVST’s Octel TUI emulation, there was no retraining at all – it was an extremely smooth process for our faculty and staff. This was by far the easiest conversion I have ever made.”

Secondly, CallXpress is also a leader in speech capabilities. Aims is currently using the speech-driven directory which has reduced their inbound call traffic by 30 percent! In addition, CallXpress offers a unified messaging solution that is best-in-class. Unifying their messaging has greatly increased productivity and efficiency.

Lastly, CallXpress supports a mixed telephony environment made up of Avaya IP and digital systems across six locations. CallXpress enabled Aims to centralize administrative functions while also helping to protect against critical network failures.

AVST’s CallXpress has been deployed by more than 1,000 educational institutions. With all this experience and productivity features one could say that AVST is the “guru” of upgrading legacy voicemail systems to next generation UC solutions. So, let us help you aim your communications goals in the right direction by upgrading to CallXpress today. Read more about Aims transition to CallXpress here.

Compliance

Existing Federal and State regulations regarding the retention and storage of electronic information means that it is critical to pay close attention to corporate compliance issues when considering the various UM solution architectures.

AVST’s Recommendation: Consult with your corporate compliance officer or legal counsel to ensure you pick the UM architecture that best meets your organization’s compliance requirements.

Confidentiality

Preventing the external distribution of confidential corporate voice, e-mail and fax messages is, in many cases, as critical a consideration as compliance when evaluating UM solutions.

AVST’s Recommendation: Thoroughly understand your organization’s requirements for protecting the confidentiality of corporate data to ensure you select the correct UM architecture for your business.

Configuration

Selecting a UM solution that has the architectural flexibility to future proof your investment is another critical consideration. Do you want to store your messages on the email server or not? AVST uniquely offers four different architectural options in its Unified Messaging solution to ensure your organization has the maximum deployment flexibility today and, just as importantly, the ability to change the configuration of your UM solution, on a per user basis.

AVST’s Recommendation: Attend an AVST webinar on Unified Messaging to ensure that you fully understand the implications of deploying every different UM architecture.

Capability

Understanding the capabilities of each Unified Messaging solution you are evaluating is another critical consideration. What are the features and flexibility of the solution? Does it meet the requirements of your users that will be accessing the solution via the desktop, web, phone and/or mobile device? Can you deploy different feature sets for different users?

AVST’s Recommendation: Click here for the Unified Messaging checklist to ensure that the Unified Messaging solutions you are evaluating have the features and flexibility your organization demands.

Cost

Understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO) for each Unified Messaging solution you are evaluating is another key consideration. Some questions to consider (and quantify) are:

Do I have to buy licenses for all employees in my organization?

How much will it cost me to add additional users in the future?

How much is the annual maintenance?

What additional hardware and software is required to deploy?

Do I need to upgrade or replace my groupware solution to get UM?

Will the UM solution integrate with my existing and future telephony infrastructure?

How much additional cost is involved if I decide to switch groupware solutions in the future?

How much will it cost to implement the UM solution?

AVST’s Recommendation: Develop a clear set of pricing, configuration and support guidelines and apply it to each UM solution you are evaluating. Consider a five year TCO timeframe to ensure that you have the whole picture.

So, when you’re deciding on a UM solution for your organization, remember the five C’s: compliance, confidentiality, configuration, capability and cost. Happy hunting!

Enter…Voicemail-to-Text! Have you ever been so busy that by the end of the day you have numerous, unheard voicemails?  Would the ability to quickly scan through and read those messages be enticing? That question led James Siminoff down the path to developing Voicemail-to-Text software.

Thanks to Ditech’s PhoneTag technology, AVST offers that option. Here’s an excerpt from Phone Tag’s website: “While on a business trip in 2003, James Siminoff was out to dinner with friends: William Wachtel and his son, Jesse Wachtel. Before they could sit down, William had to sort through a 20 minute backlog of voicemails gathered during a day filled with meetings. Jesse commented to James, ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just read your voicemail?’ At the time, James was working with voice recognition technologies and had a creative idea on how to build a system that would enable people to stop listening to voicemail and READ IT and with that, PhoneTag was born.”

Voicemail-to-Text is a great solution for business professionals. Imagine being able to read the content of your voicemail when listening just isn’t an option, such as when you’re in a meeting or in a noisy environment like the airport. Now, with Voicemail-to-Text, you can “visually” manage your voicemail messages easily and quickly, giving you the ability to accomplish more during your workday.

Here’s how it works. Using CallXpress notification, voice messages are forwarded to Ditech PhoneTag via SMTP. Ditech PhoneTag transcribes the voice message and converts it to text. Ditech PhoneTag sends the text along with a compressed MP3 file to the user’s e-mail address. It’s that simple- you can read your voicemail!

How will this benefit you? We want to hear your thoughts and ideas.

Read more about AVST’s partnership with Ditech Networks and Voicemail-to-Text.

DiTech PhoneTag’s mission is to bring freedom from listening to voicemail and back it with premier support and service. Every day is dedicated to supercharging customers’ communications experience.

Amerisure

As discussed in recent blog posts, AVST’s interoperability and investment protection are exactly what customers need, especially since major legacy voicemail systems are fast approaching their end of manufacturing support by this summer. Lori Wodrich, Voice Communication Analyst for Amerisure, noted that, “Amerisure differentiates itself on our exceptional customer service; in order to maintain this level of service our employees must be able to respond to anything, from anywhere and at a moment’s notice.  CallXpress has greatly increased the mobility and efficiency of our workforce through unified messaging.  Our employees rapidly embraced the unified messaging functionality in CallXpress and reported they hope to never go back to the old way of conducting business. Unified messaging has spoiled them!”

Amerisure also learned that with AVST, it’s about choice. Most messaging providers require customers to store all their messages on a voicemail or email server and if there is a change in the future, it can be expensive. With AVST you can do a combination of both and if you decide to change in the future, no additional costs will be incurred. That means a lot to our customers.

Not only does AVST excel in flexibility, it can also offer a seamless Private Cloud solution for enterprises. “CallXpress 8 provides us with the perfect private cloud architecture, including survivability,” continued Wodrich.  “The ability to have a centralized server at our main site and remote survivable Call Servers across four of our other offices provides us with a highly resilient communications platform. Because this architecture has been so successful, our intent is to migrate other locations as well.”

While we’re on the subject of upgrading infrastructures, be sure to check out our webinar next week entitled, “Beyond Voicemail- Preparing for the Future.” Learn how AVST is helping companies keep up to date today and into the future.

We encourage you to read more about Amerisure’s experience with moving to CallXpress.

How will we transform your communications?  Contact us today and find out!

We’re gearing up here at AVST to visit the great city of Orlando, Florida, once again and we’re excited about it. The annual conference and exhibition is entitled, “Succeeding in the New Reality”, and AVST knows just how to educate colleges and universities on accomplishing that.

We will be showcasing an all-new, theater-style booth (fancy!) and addressing key IT trends for colleges and universities today, including mobility, centralization, virtualization, and deploying private cloud to public cloud UC solutions. We’ll be located in booth #401 on the show floor at the Hilton Bonnet Creek Resort, and will hold ongoing, live presentations on how to mobilize, consolidate and centralize an institution’s voice infrastructure and virtualize communications.

Please come by and visit us. We have some new videos and exhibits you won’t want to miss out on. Plus we will be offering a FREE iPad for one lucky winner, each day. Just attend one of our presentations to be entered to win.

ACUTA, which stands for the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, is an international non-profit educational association serving colleges and universities. Representing over 1,700 individuals at nearly 750 institutions of higher education with members ranging from small schools and community colleges to the 50 largest U.S. institutions, ACUTA’s core purpose is to support higher education institutions in achieving optimal use of communications technologies. AVST is a corporate affiliate of ACUTA and has been acknowledged for its support of ACUTA’s regional and national events over the last six years.

Come join us for the fun and some free earbuds. We’ll see you there!

In the present IT world, cloud seems to be the “secret word of the day” that gets a lot attention because people recognize how important it is to their IT strategy. There is so much talk about what it is, what the benefits are, when it will be available and who will use it. When cloud is mentioned the general reaction is: I don’t understand exactly how it works or when our enterprise will deploy it – but I want it! Tom Bittman of Gartner said, “I continue to talk with clients who understand the concept of private cloud computing, they think they know it when they see it, but they can’t quite explain it in words.”

Chris Preimesberger of eWEEK.com defined the two types of cloud; public and private. “Cloud, or utility, computing serves up computing power, data storage or applications from one data center location over a grid to thousands or millions of users on a subscription basis. This general kind of cloud — for example, services provided online by Amazon EC2, Google Apps, and Salesforce.com — is known as a “public” cloud, because any business or individual can subscribe. Private cloud computing is a different take on the mainstream version, in that smaller, cloudlike IT systems within a firewall offer similar services, but to a closed internal network. This network may include corporate or division offices…”These smaller cloudlike IT systems are owned by enterprises and are known as “Corporate Cloud.”

AVST is right there in the mix. In fact, we have hundreds of large enterprises already deployed on Private Cloud, participating in all the benefits it offers. CallXpress 8 provides them with the perfect architecture for Private Cloud. Companies are able to manage CallXpress services within a corporate firewall and network that are dedicated to their organization. With the CallXpress platform, customers have a highly available solution with Neverfail™ and survivable Call Servers within their private cloud that assures security and disaster recovery. Customers can also implement virtualization through VMware® vSphere™ 4.There are many benefits to Private Cloud including; centralizing applications within a datacenter, providing remote survivability and having peace of mind knowing your network is secure. Private Cloud is definitely a must for enterprises and companies alike.

So next time you hear “the secret word of the day” remember that the real secret is- AVST can move your company to Private Cloud today! We have hundreds of deployments and all the capabilities available to make it a smooth and easy transition. Now is the time to move to Private Cloud. Once you do, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.