Avaya Unified Communications Connects Athletes and Teammates at 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games

Personal video calls across three venues and additional communication advances from Avaya allow team members to visually and verbally share encouragement and excitement

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Athletes participating in the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games this week can make personal video calls to connect with teammates, coaches and support staff across different sports venues. The technology that makes this happen is part of the Avaya Unified Communications portfolio, enabling users to make high-quality video calls from a PC or notebook computer as easily as placing a phone call.

The 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games are spread over seven sporting venues in Idaho, including Sun Valley, Bogus Basin, Qwest Arena and others, with the headquarters and main festival location in Boise. The event will attract nearly 2500 athletes from more than 100 countries.

Athletes can have live video conversations with teammates and others in Olympics Towns located in Boise, Sun Valley or McCall, Idaho. Once connected, they can visually and verbally communicate their encouragement and excitement about the day’s snow shoeing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing and other events.

Making it possible behind the scenes is Avaya one-X® Communicator, a desktop application for business users that provides full telephony features, desktop video, visual voicemail, rich presence, access to email and instant messaging, conference bridge integration and other productivity tools. From a single interface, a simple click of the mouse can launch virtually any form of communication, including applications from different vendors and with different protocols. The easy-to-use one-X Communicator interface maximizes convenience and employee productivity.

Last year, Avaya along with Extreme Networks, Juniper Networks and Avaya BusinessPartner, S1IT solutions implemented a powerful network for the 2008 Special Olympics Invitational Winter Games that continues to support this year’s event. The network extends Avaya Communication Manager IP Telephony software from the event headquarters in Boise to all 28 sport and non-sport locations. The high availability network from Extreme Networks features Gigabit performance with superior quality of service for voice traffic and secure wired and wireless access.

In addition, since efficient, mobile communications are critical at an event spread over such a broad area, the mobility features of Avaya Unified Communications transform staff members’ cell phones into another endpoint on the event network. Callers simply dial the extension assigned to a staff member to instantly reach him or her whether he or she is at a desk or any other location. The software also provides built-in, Meet-Me audio conferencing, which helps eliminate or reduce the cost of using hosted or separate systems.

The communications and data networking products, solutions and implementation services for Special Olympics Winter Games were donated by Avaya, Extreme Networks, Juniper Networks and S1 IT Solutions Inc.