Avaya's Byrd Speaks to Developers

Greg Galitzine : Greg Galitzine's VoIP Authority Blog
Greg Galitzine

Avaya's Byrd Speaks to Developers

Avaya’s Lawrence Byrd, a frequent speaker at TMC events, has a new title. He is Director of Communications Enabled Business Processes at Avaya, and he is helping drive the definition and communication of Avaya’s solution strategy. A co-founder of Quintus Corporation, which was acquired by Avaya in 2001 Lawrence has over twelve years of telephony, CRM and contact center experience and over twenty-five years of advanced software and Internet experience.
 
Byrd recalled a previous talk he made to developers where he suggested two ways to fame and fortune. The low road, which was to develop a must-have application and get it to market before Microsoft (or anyone else) and enjoy the resulting financial fortune.
 
Of course not too many people are fortunate enough to develop products like the iPhone, and not too many people are fortunate enough to be Steve Jobs.
 
The high road, Byrd explained, is how we drive business transformation through new applications targeting business processes while incorporating real time communications.
 
Also developers need to have a firm grasp of SOA and Web services.
 
The combination of these three skills is not necessarily easy to come by, but whoever masters these three areas will win.
 
The opportunity, Byrd explained, is being driven by an ever more challenging environment in which we all live, work, and communicate.
 
It’s tougher than ever – we are all more virtual, flatter, we’re everywhere.
 
  • Branch offices: 68% work in a different location than their manager.
  • Home working: 40 million us worker s telecommute on occasion.
  • Mobility: by 2008 72% of workforce will be mobile and remote.
 
Byrd told the crowd of developers that they need to take advantage of SOA and Web to create applications that allow customers to:
 
  1. Optimize the connections between their people, customers and processes (IP Telephony)
  2. Optimize their people across interfaces and devices (unified communications)
  3. Optimize customer relationships globally across all points of contact (Contact Center)
  4. Optimize business by embedding communications in the fabric of business processes. (CEBP)
 
Byrd, leaned on several analysts to help define Communications Enabled Business Processes:
 
According to Nick Lippis, CEBP means “Creating a business application enabled by communications, for situational context is at the heart of IP telephony’s third phase
 
And Robin Bloor of the Hurwitz Group believes CEBP will have “A profound impact!” calling CEBP “The missing link.”
 
Developers have an incredible opportunity with CEBP.
 
CEBP builds a bridge between the stuff we know and love (SIP-based) and the customer’s business processes.
 
The promise of CEBP is that it leads to intelligent communications, by taking data and turning it into information, and then turning that into action
 
 
Byrd reiterated the following core message, that developers:
 
  • Need to understand SOA and Web services
  • Need to understand their target business processes
  • Need to understand real-time communications


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