Communication Manager delivers on the promise of IP by offering a no compromise approach to convergence in terms of reliability and functionality. Designed to run on a variety of Media Servers, Communication Manager provides centralized call control for a resilient, distributed network of media gateways and a wide range of analog, digital, and IP-based communication devices. As the core telephony software for Avaya MultiVantage™ Communication Applications, it gives enterprises the flexibility to introduce advanced IP telephony solutions as needed while leveraging their existing infrastructure investments.

Avaya Communication Manager features are delivered over IP. The software can be managed through the server's existing system administration tools, and which is made easier for multi-location enterprises by taking advantage of the Communication Manager capabilities like call routing, cost accounting, self-diagnostics, security, toll fraud protection, and remote access applications.

Communication Manager allows you to centralize call processing and administration onto powerful servers while at the same time extending the full breadth of applications to survivable gateways at other locations. Customers that have campus environments and multiple branch offices will benefit by building flexible communications networks that can be centrally managed.

Applications like IP Softphone and IP Agent, which are utilized to create a distributed Call Center, bring the power of Communication Manager to users whether they are in the office or working remotely. The distributed switching and call processing capabilities of Communication Manager allows switching at all levels of the network. Communication Manager supports open standards such as H.323 Call Control, SIP and H.248 Media Gateway Control.

Enterprises require a flexible approach to voice convergence in which a mixture of packet and circuit switched technologies is applied in ways that are best suited for the customer endpoint, application or trunk needs. Communication Manager is designed to provide interconnection of both traditional analog, digital, and IP communication devices in a single communications environment. Enterprises are given maximum flexibility to implement convergence Communication Manager even allows separation over circuit switched networks and signaling (call control) over IP networks between servers and communication devices, and between servers and port networks.

Benefits

• Increases Class of Restrictions (CORs) capacity from 100 to 1000 to provide increased flexibility for Call Center implementation, improve troubleshooting, and add increased scalability to tenant partitioning.
  
• Increases the number of IP trunk members in a single signaling group from 31 to 255 for simpler administration and providing better utilization of CLAN circuit packs.
  
• Permits users the ability to associate the buttons and features of their primary telephones to other telephones of the same type anywhere within the company’s enterprise.
  
• Permits configurations where H.248 Media Gateways (G700, G350, G250) may communicate with a S8500 server directly, eliminating the requirement for a Port Network (G650, IPSI, CLAN) to act as a "proxy" for Communication Manager signaling.
  
• Enhances high reliability configuration options by allowing the S8500 Media Server to be used as an LSP.
  
• Introduces the new S8720 Media Server which can be configured with hardware duplication (requires DAL1 duplication boards) or with software duplication (no DAL1).
  
• Allows the TN2602AP Media Resource to be duplicated and operate in an Active-Standby mode for critical-bearer reliability.
  
• Provides security functionality beyond that of the Enterprise Linux operating system to detect and expose unintended changes to system files.
  
• Improves Enterprise survivability and availability by protecting it from network fragmentation and/or catastrophic server failures. Provide customer full feature functionality as the primary server when Enterprise Survivable Server or Local Spare Processor takes over.
  
• Inter Gateway Alternate Routing & Call Admission Control help ensure high quality & availability voice traffic on converged networks.
  
• Enhances business continuity for branch office by preserving the voice paths on calls when control is transferred from the primary server to Local Spare Processors or vice versa.
  
• Replicates multiple sources of the same announcements and music to the gateways and port networks and au  tomatically select the closest source to play announcements & music.
  
• Signaling and media encryption provides the highest levels of encryption for secure IP voice calls.
  
• Expanded Meet-Me Conferencing provides a basic and low cost conferencing solution for up to 300 parties.
  
• Extends the support of Unicode to enables IP telephones to display in local country language for trunk calls.
  
• Improves Robustness - New flow control and configurable traffic shaping capabilities allow IP interfaces to pro-actively respond to changing traffic conditions or Denial of Service attacks.
  
• Improves Diagnostics - First introduced on S8300, now expanded to S8500/S8700 with port networks.
  
• Helps determine location of network outages by launching a trace route command from server when IP connectivity is lost.
  
• Supports a low bit-rate modem over IP - Developed for Government sector to use with specific analog telephones used as Secure Telephone Units (STUs).
  
• Accessibility enhancements deliver on the Avaya commitment to enable all employees with the tools needed to communicate effectively.
  
• Extension to Cellular provides one-number accessibility by bridging calls that come to an office extension to any digital cellular telephone.
  
• SpeechAttendant enhancements enable voice command controls for many standard telephony capabilities, such as drop, transfer, conference and hold.