Unified Communications offers many features and benefits:

Integrated — The capabilities of formerly disparate applications are brought together into unified interfaces.  The functionality is integrated.  For instance, you can click to call the sender of an email, move from an instant message to a call or a conference call, or reply to a voice message with voice or text.  The modalities will be brought together so users can seamlessly shift between their mobile phones and their desk phones in any order while a call is in progress and access the same directories and applications — regardless of their locations or devices.
Multi-vendor — Unified Communications is not an all-in-one solution from a single vendor.  We offer customers robust interfaces to market leading communication servers in IP Telephony, Messaging, and Conferencing.  We ae committed to supporting standards and integrate our solutions to add value to third-party solutions from Microsoft, IBM and others. 
Reliable and Secure — Demonstrating the capabilities of Unified Communications is one thing.  Banking on the use of these capabilities across the enterprise requires reliability that ensures they’ll be working when required.  We provide choices to make the infrastructure as resilient as desired and to support the scale required to meet enterprise security standards.
Seamless user experience — Employees today have too many devices and communication applications to manage.  Users are bombarded with phone calls, email, voice mail, fax and instant messaging.  They participate in a variety of conference interactions including audio with or without video or enhanced by the web.  With all these tools, employees spend too much time managing devices and operating the tools, which diminishes the time and quality of communicating and interacting with business associates.  Avaya Unified Communication solutions bring these applications into consolidated easy-to-use interfaces to provide Intelligent Access — embedding communication into what people do as they do it.
Independent of location, network or device — Workers today operate in a number of modes.  

• “Desk workers” spend considerable time working at their desks.  Their primary tools are computers and desk phones. 
• “Campus Roamers” are at their work locations, but are roaming the office or the campus.  They depend on mobility devices such as a PDA or mobile phone.  They need in-building wireless over WiFi networks or dual mode phones that can be used on both public mobile and enterprise WiFi networks.  They may use any available computer or phone not necessarily assigned for their primary use.
• “Road Warriors” are found travelling either locally or globally.  They remain connected using mobile phones, PDAs, speech access from any phone to communication applications, public computers connected to the Internet or their computer using wireless broadband facilities. 
• “Remote” workers may be formal telecommuters or casual work-at-home associates. They could be working from their hotel rooms, or they could be a sales, service, or professional associate working at a customer's location.  They could be groups of employees directed to work at a temporary or emergency locations. 

While job types or specific individuals may predominantly operate in one of these modes, most workers today need to communicate in any and all of these modes.  Unified Communications is designed to allow workers access to the communication tools they need – regardless of location.

Business Benefits

• Simplified interactions with customers through single number access to people and resources
• Increased availability of associates using features such as find-me/follow-me services or simultaneous ringing of desk and mobile phones
• Greater responsiveness with real-time and non-real-time communications from anywhere
• Speed and improved execution with enhanced access to associates
• Increased effectiveness and efficiency from expanded communications capability