At the heart of the new VoIP offering is the Avaya Converged Communications Server, representing the Basking Ridge, N.J.-based company's foray into solutions based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a leading standard in the Internet telephony industry.

That technology also forms the basis for SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE), a protocol supported by several of the largest competitors in the enterprise IM space, such as IBM Lotus and Microsoft.

Thanks to its new SIP/SIMPLE support, Avaya's converged communications solution now incorporates user availability awareness and controls -- or "presence," in industry parlance -- into its core VoIP offerings. A new edition of its IP telephony software, Avaya Communication Manager, integrates with Converged Communications Server to support the technology, as does the Avaya IP Softphone R5 -- an on-screen call manager client.

As a result, users of the Softphone client can view colleagues' availability using a presence-enabled contact list, much like the Buddy Lists found in AOL Instant Messenger and similar programs. When integrated with the new Converged Communications Server, the Avaya IP Softphone shows friends' and colleagues' real-time statuses, such as "Away," "On the Phone," or "Busy." Users can then click their contacts to launch IM, voice, or conference calling sessions with others.

Because Avaya's IM and IP telephony are both based on the same technology, the solution also enables users to escalate text-based IM conversations to richer forms of communications. For instance, users can click on-screen controls to segue from IM to one-to-one phone calls, and to multi-party conference calls.

"By integrating into the soft phone, we're trying to make it easy for our customers to add end-user functionality that enhances their productivity," said Lawrence Byrd, convergence strategist for Avaya's enterprise communications group. "Our objective here in the shift to what we call converged communications, is about applications and integration and putting users in control and helping them manage accessibility and increasing ways to access their communications."

Avaya's recent deal with conferencing giant Polycom also paves the way for video to be integrated into the mix, later during the year.

"We're building an integrated communications platform," Byrd said. "The initial version will leverage the existing Polycom ViaVideo product, and ... the underlying support where everything is running on SIP will take time. [But] we're forcing the issue by making sure the products you have today will integrate with the softphone environment."

Another Avaya product that receives SIP capabilities is its Communication Manager, which enables end-users to set up rules regarding voice call routing or redirection to PCs, offices phone, or mobile devices. In connection with the new Avaya Converged Communications Server, Communications Manager now lets users use presence controls in connection with call rules.

The company also said Converged Communications Server-based presence would be worked into other related applications, such as the Avaya Unified Communication Center -- which currently enables users to configure e-mail, voice-mail and schedules through voice control. In future versions of the software, users will also be able to set their presence status via voice.

The offering beefs up Avaya's IP telephony offerings while giving it a foothold in the emerging enterprise IM space, near the forefront of a pack of rivals with similar aspirations.

Microsoft, which in October introduced its SIP-based Live Communications Server for enterprise IM, has plans to add greater multimedia support to the offering in later versions of the product. Smaller players, such as eDial, also offer products integrating voice telephony, presence, and IM.

Yet Avaya is taking a different approach to that market than many: A number of competitors are marketing standalone IM server products -- or, like Microsoft, are positioning IM servers in large part on their integration with enterprise software, like groupware or e-mail servers. On the other hand, Avaya is banking that enterprises will gravitate most rapidly to an IM solution that's bundled as a part of a VoIP telephony system.

"We're providing EIM, but our route to the market is making it a straightforward extension of how you're trying to improve your telephony, rather than something new and different that might require new infrastructure and new choices to be made," said Mack Leathurby, director of product marketing in Avaya's enterprise communications group. "We look at it is as evolutionary. You have to bridge the existing enterprise base of users in terms of certain communications -- make it transparent to them and that makes it easier to add these additional capabilities."

In addition to its tight integration with VoIP, Avaya's SIMPLE-based IM offers secure SIP signaling and encrypted IM using TLS, centralized user administration, IM logging, and integration into enterprise-wide management software -- all features make its flavor of IM palatable to IT buyers.

"My use of consumer IM services is not sanctioned or supported, certainly, by our IT organization, and I think that's the case in most organizations," he said. However, "I can be IMing Mack in the background while we're having this conversation, and can connect him to this conference call by just clicking a button. That's all enhancing my productivity. So we're saying IM is not this funny thing people are using without permission -- it should be something you integrate with your telephony infrastructure."

There are other benefits as well. SIP also affords users the ability to consolidate all their communications -- voice, IM, and future technologies -- into a single SIP address at their corporate domain. And because it's a standard, there exists the possibility for integration into other software and telephones in use in the enterprise, as well as linking with external companies' SIP/SIMPLE servers.

Already, Avaya said it has successfully tested the Converged Communication Server's SIP calling against third-party SIP products in the marketplace. Representatives added that the company expects to see server-to-server IM and contact list integration in the future.

"We're looking at SIMPLE as a standard, as one that will enable one to add external Buddies to a Buddy List," Byrd said.

The server also is designed to appeal to businesses migrating to SIP-based VoIP and presence through the support of legacy devices.

"We've made a bridge so people with legacy phones ... are made available to use these SIP capabilities even though [they lack] a SIP phone," Leathurby said.

Added Byrd, "the SIP world is a little like the first phone -- it's not very good till you get ... a second phone. By bridging the old and the new, we want to spread it faster. There's no point in having SIP phones that can only call SIP phones."

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.com.

How can your business integrate IM with other communications tools? Join us at the Instant Messaging Planet Spring Conference and Expo, March 3 and 4 in Boston. Sessions include: "Giving Presence to Telephony and Multimedia Conferencing" and "Integrating Business Applications: The Collaborative Workplace."