Avaya has lifted the lid on the new release of Avaya IP Office, the company's flagship comms solution for SMEs, designed to improve collaboration, increase productivity and facilitate flexibility for businesses with 20 employees or less.

Avaya IP Office 6.0 features new UC capabilities that deliver enhanced user experiences to employees in any location.

These capabilities include advanced collaboration tools using voice, instant messaging, presence and video to drive a more productive and flexible workforce.

According to Avaya, IP Office is now easier and more affordable for a key market segment, businesses with less than 20 employees, to install and use. This enables the smallest of companies to cost-effectively implement the advanced communications and customer service functions of larger systems. With this new release, Avaya claims to makes unified communications up to 40% more affordable for small businesses.

"With Avaya IP Office 6.0 in place, small businesses don't have to sacrifice easy, intuitive operation in order to get the enhanced communications features of large enterprises," said Anthony Bartolo, general manager, Small and Medium Enterprise Communications. "Our latest version provides SMEs with all the next generation collaboration tools necessary for competing more effectively today against peers and larger competitors, and for thriving as the economy recovers."

Avaya IP Office 6.0 also introduces video collaboration through a new IP Office Video Softphone application. This offers voice control features via a virtual phone or a PC or laptop supporting point-to-point video communications when visuals are required.

Other key Avaya IP Office improvements include doubling support capacity in a Multi-Site Network to 1,000 users. This enables SMEs in a wide-area network to extend the benefits of seamless communications, such as extension dialing and conferencing, to everyone across a business. Additionally, to keep essential communications running during an outage, Avaya IP Office enhances business continuity capabilities beyond telephony operation to now include voice messaging, auto attendant capabilities and other capabilities.

According to IDC, an international provider of market intelligence for information technology, companies with less than 20 employees account for more than 90% of small businesses worldwide. Avaya IP Office is now affordably available to this segment through a new ‘combination card' - providing just a single card for what used to require several cards to support digital, analog and IP devices. This, paired with a new line of phones for businesses with less than 20 employees, reduces costs without sacrificing capability.

Paul Blundell, general manager of iQual, an Avaya Partner, said: "Now, the smallest businesses can gain access to the rich capabilities that were previously only available to larger companies. And with IP Office 6.0, the savings in money and time are formidable.

"For example, the 90% price reduction in voicemail, combined with the new combination card, can make a real difference for companies with less than 20 employees. And we estimate that the programming, set-up and training time provided to this segment will now be cut by 50% - to just half a day. This and other benefits will make it much easier for business partners to deploy."