SPONSORED: Three key tech announcements from Avaya's partner conference

Avaya introduces initiatives around WhatsApp and social media to partners

Avaya used its first channel meet of the 2019 financial year as a platform to launch a number of new innovations powered by emerging technologies and aimed at driving growth for channel partners.

The demonstrations and announcements at the Avaya Partner Summit 2019 ranged from the world's first social network for chatbots to Amazon Alexa integration into the customer journey.

Launching these solutions, Avaya executives told the 450-plus delegates from the EMEA and APAC regions that they came in response to customer demands for greater flexibility and intelligent experiences built on its platforms.

Avaya's communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) is an initiative that the vendor claims will "transform the way in which Avaya services are delivered to customers".

It says the new portal is a milestone in the company's commitment to the API economy, supported by its open communication platforms and continued investment in expanding the capabilities of both its own APIs and external APIs, which are now easily consumable on an as-a-service basis.

"We're showing our partners how to build use cases with our technologies, using various components from Avaya's UC and CC platforms, integrated with innovative CPaaS-based APIs that enable our customers and partners to easily embed new communication capabilities into their UC and CC platforms," said Avaya senior director of advanced solutions Ahmed Helmy (pictured).

"This brings new and exciting dimensions to the industry's responsiveness, relevance, and creativity in finding new solutions to emerging business problems."

The first API to be launched through this portal is dubbed Avaya Communication Intelligence, which can be used to extract information such as customer sentiment, live transcriptions, live conversation analytics and other identifiable attributes, from voice interactions on Avaya's communications platforms. Avaya says this data complements other channels such as instant messaging and email.

Helmy also announced that Avaya would be introducing an API for WhatsApp integration in March 2019.

Elsewhere, Helmy elaborated on the industry-first communication platforms that are converging UC and CC, providing several use cases demonstrating connected enterprises that leverage the seamless transition of context-rich communications between customer-facing employees and internal teams for a truly personalised customer experience.

Helmy also treated Avaya's channel partners to a deep dive on the world's first social network for chatbots, hailed by Avaya as a giant leap forward in customer self-service.

Avaya said this innovation provides a structured platform for bots to engage each other in a secure and controlled manner with the intent of extending the expertise and effectiveness of each individual chatbot. As technology buyers increasingly demand more sophisticated chatbots, Helmy advised Avaya's partners that this solution could provide the answer.

"What if we could enable chatbots from different domains and industries to collaborate and exchange information via a highly regulated platform, and find answers from other chatbots, not just humans?" Helmy said.

"We could, in effect, securely link enterprises, significantly expanding the efficacy and expertise of any single bot, thereby enabling organisations to deliver an exceptional level of customer service, reducing the need for human intervention and enabling deeper self-service, as well as reducing the need for supervised learning."

Later on during the summit, Avaya executives provided a rundown of the possibilities afforded by the Avaya client SDK on its Equinox and Oceana platforms, which enable channel partners to create incredible new use cases using emerging technologies such as AI and voice biometrics. On show were solutions from ecosystem partners and internal developers incorporating conversational AI, natural language processing, analytics and cognitive machine learning into the platforms to provide enhanced customer experiences.