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University of Maryland's Business School and Avaya Expand Research and Development Relationship and Activities

Development of virtual community prototype to enhance collaboration between alumni, students, faculty and staff at Robert H. Smith School of Business; Advancements to RFID research at school's Netcentricity Lab and Supply Chain Management Center

26 Apr 2005

Avaya Inc (NYSE:AV) a leading global provider of business communications software, systems and services, and the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business today announced an expansion of their research and development relationship with a new "virtual community" project and the extension of existing work in communications-enabling supply chains and executive mobility into new scenarios and applications.
 
Avaya and the Smith School will develop a virtual community prototype based on Avaya's industry-leading IP telephony solutions for mobility and collaboration. The virtual community will be designed to encourage greater engagement of part-time and remote campus students, more efficient and effective access to and collaboration among all students, faculty and staff, plus provide alumni with an ongoing, university-branded value. As a first step in the prototype, virtual community participants will have access to the Avaya Unified Communications Center, which provides a unified messaging mailbox with speech access capabilities to IBM Lotus Notes. Participants would be able to choose a voice interface, Web access or touchtone commands to interact with calendars, tasks, voicemail, email and faxes, plus schedule meetings and launch conference calls with other participants.

"As leaders in business education that prepare students for the rigors of a digital economy, it is only fitting that we practice what we preach and explore solutions on the cutting edge," said Howard Frank, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The Smith School and Avaya will also build on previous collaborative research to extend communications capabilities in radio frequency identification (RFID) sensor networks into supply chain management and healthcare scenarios, and into event-triggered conferencing for crisis situations. Past Avaya-Smith research in this area has resulted in significant advances in enterprise supply chains beginning with a project for the United States Air Force in 2000 as well as for the State of Maryland.

"Our relationship with Avaya has a long history that has enabled the Smith School to develop a logistics program with faculty and staff that rival those found anywhere in the world," said Frank "The transformation of the supply chain is playing an integral role in the transformation of business, and the Smith School, with the help of corporate partners like Avaya is an active participant."

"Through collaborative research, the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and Avaya are demonstrating the benefits of communication-enabling business processes - here, the business process is the supply chain," said Ravi Sethi, president, Avaya Labs. "With the virtual community project, we'll demonstrate the benefits of communication for personal productivity, of providing full mobile functionality, with privacy and security."

About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research for the digital economy. One of 13 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and part-time MBA, Executive MBA, PhD, and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in three continents including North America, Europe and Asia. More information about the Robert H. Smith School of Business can be found at www.rhsmith.umd.edu.

About Avaya
Avaya Inc. designs, builds and manages communications networks for more than one million businesses worldwide, including over 90 percent of the FORTUNE 500®. Focused on businesses large to small, Avaya is a world leader in secure and reliable Internet Protocol telephony systems and communications software applications and services.

Driving the convergence of voice and data communications with business applications - and distinguished by comprehensive worldwide services - Avaya helps customers leverage existing and new networks to achieve superior business results. For more information visit the Avaya Web site: http://www.avaya.com

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