Avaya to sell Aura app bundles

IT companies have two ways to buy products: a hard way and a simpler way.

Recognizing that its existing model could be improved, Avaya Inc. is trying to make it easier for organizations to buy applications for its Aura unified communications suite.

Usually they are sold separately, but the company said Monday it has created three suites of bundled apps that customers can buy.

“We’ve put together a lot of our a la carte applications that work with Aura and put some attractive pricing,” explained Amir Hameed, Avaya’s vice-president of technical sales for the Americas.

Aura, is the base UC platform that includes Communications Manager, Session Manager, Messaging System Manager and other components. But customer may not have licences for more complex unified communications applications.

The three suites are bundles that Avaya hopes are logically grouped:

–Foundation Suite allows customers to get to an advanced level of collaboration with SIP-enabled desktop clients and core telephony;

–Mobility Suite, a group of mobile messaging apps that includes Foundation Suite, plus features like single number reach, session border control and licences for the one-X softphone;

–Collaboration Suite, which adds to Foundation and Mobility suites with Conferencing 7 and licences for the Scopia multipoint control unit (MCU) for video conferencing.

Each suite also includes a Microsoft Lync plug in, for connecting it using Aura as a back end.

 (The Mobility Suite includes an Avaya mobile app)

Pricing depends on whether the customer already has Aura or wants to go straight for a suite. For new customers the Foundation Suite has a list price of $225 per new user, the Mobility Suite costs $325 per new user and the Collaboration Suite is $525. These prices are subject to volume discounts.