“Avaya has today delivered on our spoken commitment to localise our business to meet the needs of regional customers, and it is our most significant launch ever in the Middle East to deliver the region’s first Arabized IP telephony solution,” said Nidal Abou-Ltaif, managing director for Avaya in the Middle East and North Africa. “Offering IP telephony solutions in Arabic helps to preserve the culture and traditions of communications in the Middle East while creating a more mobile and productive environment.
“Increased Arabisation is one of the major drivers of increased technology and Internet use across the Arabic-speaking world. The growth potential for IP telephony in the Middle East and demand for IP solutions across different industry verticals has made the need for Arabic solutions an acute one. The introduction of the Avaya one-X Arabic edition reflects our understanding of regional business requirements and the importance of delivering mobility- and productivity-enhancing solutions in our customers’ language of choice,” continued Abou-Ltaif.
Avaya believes that Arabised IP telephony offerings will have particular applicability to industries such as government, healthcare, and education, and will enable Arabic-speakers to more fully utilize the functionality of IP systems because of an increased comfort level with the user interface on the Avaya one-X deskphone and mobile editions.
“With approximately 1.86 billion speakers worldwide, Arabic is rising in the ranks of the world’s major languages – experts rank it anywhere from fourth to sixth place. Analysts based in the region have stated that approximately 65% of Arab Internet users are not comfortable with the English language and only 35% actually speak it fluently, and our experience in the Middle East region has also demonstrated that a percentage of native Arab speakers have refrained from using IP-based technology because they are not confident in English. Avaya’s one-X solution in Arabic addresses that very real market gap,” added Abou-Ltaif.
The primary benefits of the Arabised one-X solution are mobility and enhanced capabilities. The solution’s mobility applications enable users to bridge their IP phones with their mobile phones with one touch, providing constant connectivity and one-number access for regional professionals who are frequently out of the office.
The Arabic version of Avaya one-X desktop edition comes with intuitive, user-friendly prompts that enable guide users through a range of tasks, from transferring to navigating directories to creating conference calls. Enhanced capabilities, such as multi-party conferencing and mobility options, change what is possible with a desktop phone. On a multi-party conference, for instance, the user can now see all of their teleconference participants on the screen, and scroll through them to add, drop or mute individual people.
Avaya one-X Mobile Arabic Edition includes Arabic software for mobile smartphone platforms that transform a user's mobile phone into an office deskphone. Avaya one-X Mobile Edition supports the Nokia S60E series and N series mobile phones. It enables mobile employees to easily access powerful features of Avaya Communication Manager IP telephony software such as multi-party conference calling, call transfer, call coverage, and abbreviated dialing – all with an Arabic menu and prompts.
This ability to integrate mobile devices into business operations provides opportunities for regional businesses to greatly improve employee productivity while controlling communications costs.