As businesses, governments, schools all adjust to a new working environment in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has entire countries and states effectively shut down, the need for teleworking technologies has never been greater. In order to allow workers to remain productive outside of their normal workplaces, cloud-based technologies are helping reduce the strain on collaboration and productivity.
To ensure these organizations have the resources to manage their coronavirus response, which is necessitating new means of engagement for many employees, educators, and students, technology vendors are stepping up by making their easy-to-deploy cloud technologies available. Among them vendors are some of the leading cloud communications providers, including Avaya, which recently had its solutions on display at ITEXPO 2020 in Ft. Lauderdale.
Avaya Spaces is being offered at no cost to schools across the globe through August 31, 2020, enabling them to rapidly implement distance learning procedures to ensure students continue to be engaged and are able to continue their learning process. Avaya Spaces is a cloud-based meeting and collaborations application, built on the CPaaS technology the company acquired from Esna Technologies five years ago.
Avaya Spaces delivers the meeting and collaboration features educators need to facilitate effective distance learning environments. Since January, Avaya says it has seen an increase of more than 500% in video collaboration traffic on its platform and, in the past week alone, several hundred universities, schools and other organizations have started using the Avaya Spaces to ensure engagement continues to happen.
“Our first priority is the safety of our students,” explained Alison Dodge, Principal at Charter College International High School in Johannesburg, South Africa, one of many schools that has already transitioned to online learning. “We join a growing number of educational institutions worldwide who have had to cancel in-person classes, but we’ve worked extremely quickly to move lessons online and ensure that our students are still being provided with a top education.”
Across the globe, school systems are complying with government and health regulators’ mandates to cancel in-person education, including primary and secondary schools, as well as colleges and universities, many of which has already committed to remote learning for the remainder of the school year. The key is to get their e-learning capabilities up and running quickly and to seamlessly bridge the gap between in-person and distance education for students.
In Egypt, Orange Egypt and Avaya partnered to provider all schools in the country to manage this transition.
“It is clear that technology plays a pivotal role in our day to day lives and is an especially valuable tool in such challenging times,” said Hisham Mahran, Vice President of Orange Egypt for the corporate sector. “The solution that we are jointly offering enables educational institutions to maintain the safety of students as their top priority, while ensuring minimum disruption to their education.”
With Avaya itself faced with the same situation and, not surprisingly, it has transitioned much of its own workforce to remote environments leveraging Spaces to ensure they are able to continue to support their customers, partners, and colleagues.
“Communication and collaboration solutions are important during business as usual, but absolutely mission critical during times of crisis,” said Avaya CEO Jim Chirico. “Avaya Spaces is being used across every element of our business to support rapid response to COVID-19 related projects.”
Video collaboration, UCaaS, AI and ML, and all the latest technologies that are improving business communications and processes – including remote working – are at the core of the content and networking at TechSuperShow 2021. Coming to the brand new Miami Beach Convention Center June 22-25, 2021, TechSuperShow features ITEXPO, MSP Expo, SD-WAN Expo, Future of Work Expo, and several other collocated events, and will once again combine an unprecedented opportunity for education and networking. Enterprises and MSPs, service providers and carriers, MSPs, channel partners, will all have access to the latest content and products and services that are driving business success under any conditions.
Edited by
Erik Linask
