Today nearly every company relies on audio and web conferencing to maximize productivity. As a result, outsourced conferencing services are becoming a significant expense for many organizations. Avaya Meeting Exchange in-house audio and web conferencing solution can help your company:
- Reduce monthly conferencing expenses
- Realize a return on investment in six to nine months
- Increase your team's overall productivity

 

There are several myths around in-house conferencing. We thought we'd dispel some of them for you...

 

Myth 1: I can't afford it.
Reality: The fact is, your company can realize significant cost savings with Avaya Meeting Exchange. With a payback period of 6 to 9 months, within a year those savings go straight to the bottom line! With pure IP deployment options, cost savings are even more impressive.

 

Myth 2: It's going to require a dedicated IT person.
Reality: Current in-house solutions are easy to manage and don't require dedicated IT resources. Most of our customers spend fewer than 8 hours per month maintaining their conferencing solutions. After our engineers install it, customers can essentially "shut the lights", close the door, and walk away. Support issues can be handled remotely. Additionally, Avaya offers a variety of managed and hosted services options made available through our network of service provider partners.

 

Myth 3: My employees will find it too difficult.
Reality: With reservation-less conferencing, employees receive a dial-in number and access codes to initiate conferences anytime, without an operator or advanced reservations. Using simple touchtone commands, moderators can control the call including muting all participants, dialing out to bring additional people into the call or locking the conference.

 

Myth 4: The number of users will be limited.
Reality: Avaya in-house conferencing solutions are highly scalable - from 24 to 2016 simultaneous users. In the rare event you exceed your capacity, Avaya can arrange for a Service Provider partner to automatically and seamlessly manage the excess traffic, keeping it invisible to users.

 

Myth 5: I'll have to choose between TDM and IP conferencing.
Reality: Avaya's flexible open solutions provide customers with several deployment options. In fact, Avaya offers a mixed TDM and IP environment, as well as pure TDM or IP bridges. And it's easy to migrate from TDM to IP-based solutions if you prefer a pure IP infrastructure.

 

Myth 6: Outsourced web conferencing offers more robust features than I can get in-house.
Reality: Avaya Web Conferencing offers all of the features that you and your users have come to expect from a top-notch web conferencing solution - all with the added security and control of in-house deployment. Features include integrated audio and web conference management, polling, whiteboard, chat, application sharing, conference recording and playback, annotation tools, slide save, and more.

 

Myth 7: Training users on this web conferencing solution will be difficult and time-consuming.
Reality: Avaya Web Conferencing is one of the most intuitive solutions in the industry. Our customers have consistently raved about its reliability and ease-of-use. For large solutions, Avaya offers implementation services, which may include everything from installation, to on-site training, to desktop reference cards tailored and branded exclusively for your company.

 

Myth 8: The Avaya conferencing system will not be integrated with my other applications
Reality: Avaya offers powerful API-based Developer Tool Kits that allow customers to develop custom applications or integrate existing applications with their conferencing solution. Customers can integrate most existing scheduling applications with Avaya's solutions, with no disruption of service to end users.

 

Myth 9: An in-house conferencing system will require me to manage another database
Reality: No you won't. We use LDAP to integrate your existing databases and directories so you can automatically assign conferencing accounts for new employees or immediately disable accounts as needed. No additional management is required.

 

Myth 10: If I buy an in-house conferencing system and later decide to migrate my network, my investment in the Avaya system will be wasted.

Reality: Avaya Meeting Exchange is flexible and open, using standards based technologies so you can leverage all existing technology as networks evolve.