In concrete terms, the deal with Nokia means its Series 60 smart phones will feature Avaya Communication Manager functions such as transfer, multi-party conferencing, and abbreviated dialing, as menu options.
Caroline Nguyen, director of mobility strategy at Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based Avaya, said the integration work with Nokia will also make single-number functionality possible so corporate users will be able to use a personal mobile phone as a transparent extension of their desk phone while keeping their personal number private.
The company will also be able to record calls for compliance purposes, in sectors such as financial services where it is a requirement when a stock transaction is the subject of the conversation, she said. Companies will also have call detail records consolidation, since the mobile calls will now appear on the same list as the fixed-line ones.
Avaya has already done work with companies producing devices running other OSes such as PocketPC from Microsoft, but the Symbian move is significant said Nguyen because it is the OS on 85% of the smart phones sold today, while the choice of the Nokia platform as a point of entry into the Symbian world is a logical one, because it is responsible for about 80% of the Symbian phones sold in EMEA.
