The second speaker this morning was Scott McKechnie, Avaya’s director of application enablement services in the converged systems division.

Scott opened with a positive message. “I’m very excited about application enablement. I see a renewed excitement from not only the development community but from our customers who are building their own applications.”

McKechnie spoke of the customer drivers for applications. He touched on improved customer service, business efficiencies, worker productivity and distributing communication applications over IP.

He talked of the development of intelligent communications. Communications that would be enabled by business communication apps. Mckechnie asked, “Why can’t we link business processes and applications with communications applications? Intelligent business communications are making people more productive, processes more intelligent, and customers more satisfied.

Is there money in this market?

According to McKechnie, the answer is yes. Based on nine different research reports, he identified a $30 Billion market opportunity with a 20% CAGR.

The conversation ranged to discuss the migration from traditional business communication applications to converged applications (where we find ourselves today) to a future of intelligent communications applications embedded directly into the fabric of business.

In closing, McKechnie pointed out how customers are looking to VoIP to deliver next generation applications to the enterprise. IP PBXs are getting better by providing application enablement platforms and Web services to create business communication applications. The “killer app” according to McKechnie, is the application enablement platform. And the market is “big and getting bigger,” he said.