Thursday, September 19, 2002

BASKING RIDGE, N.J/WILMINGTON, NC – Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV), a leading global provider of communications networks for businesses and organizations, today announced that it has teamed with Convergion LLC, a member of Avaya’s BusinessPartner program, to upgrade an Avaya communications network at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW).

The initiative is part of a broader university information technology (IT) strategy spearheaded by Dr. Robert E. Tyndall, UNCW vice chancellor for IT systems.

The upgrade provides the 10,000-student campus with the infrastructure it needs not only to converge its voice and data networks, but also to expand the capabilities of its existing circuit-switched voice applications. For the first time students and faculty will have campus-wide access to features such as six-party conferencing, caller ID, integrated wireless capabilities and enhanced 911 services for campus security.

In addition to serving the university’s main campus in Wilmington, N.C., the new network supports a number of remote facilities, including the UNCW Center for Marine Science at Myrtle Grove Sound, and the UNCW/NOAA National Undersea Research Center at Key Largo, Fla.

“UNCW had a 10-year-old Avaya communications network that needed a facelift, not a forklift replacement,” said David Brick, Convergion account executive for the project. "Avaya’s software-based approach to call processing allowed our engineers to reuse existing communications cabinets, interface cards, phones, fiber and copper cable infrastructure – protecting the university’s existing investment while delivering the state-of-the-art features and performance they needed to evolve to a converged environment.”

The UNCW upgrade is based on Avaya MultiVantage™ Software, a highly reliable voice application that supports more than 500 telephony features and gives organizations added flexibility in implementing Internet Protocol (IP) telephony to reduce costs and enhance productivity.



Avaya S8700 Media Servers provide call processing capability and distribute Avaya MultiVantage telephony features across the UNCW network. The university is the first in the South to deploy the products, which bring the full functionality, scalability and reliability of voice communications to an IP environment.

UNCW also has implemented Avaya™ EC 500 capability that will allow students and faculty to have calls made to their desktop telephone extended to their cellular phone – whether they are on or off campus – essentially giving them “one-number reachability.” In addition the university is standardizing on Avaya’s Systimax GigaSPEED® Structured Cabling Solutions to meet the speed and bandwidth requirements of a converged network.

As part of the upgrade, Convergion worked with the State of North Carolina IT Division to redesign the university’s local exchange service, saving UNCW money. Convergion engineers also managed installation of the project, supported by university telecommunications engineers and the Avaya global services team.

Evolving toward a “blended” network



“One of the university’s technology objectives is to evolve toward a ‘blended’ infrastructure that merges voice, data and even video – giving us the resources we need to support an extended campus and to take a leadership role in providing high-speed access to the university community,” said William Vereen, UNCW director of telecommunications. “With the Avaya solution in place, we now have the infrastructure we need to begin that evolution.”

According to Vereen, the university’s coastal location played a critical role in the university’s decision to take an evolutionary approach to convergence.

“We’re located in a region where hurricanes are inevitable and planning for disaster recovery is imperative,” Vereen said. “As a result, reliability and redundancy are extremely important to us. We know that over time we will transition our voice network to IP, but we’re not yet ready to eliminate the redundancy we get by maintaining our circuit-switched network.”



As a step toward convergence, UNCW is installing Av