Experiential Learning

Toolwire to Deliver Virtual Hands-On Learning for Avaya

Pleasanton, CA (USA)/London (UK), June 2009 - Toolwire, a provider of experiential distance-learning solutions, has announced an agreement with Avaya Inc. to develop and deliver a virtualized, on-demand lab environment to train Avaya solution partners worldwide.




With major changes occurring almost daily in the IP telephony and Unified Communications (UC) markets, the company's global ecosystem of partners and resellers needs to remain highly competitive in the dynamic IP and messaging marketplace as Avaya moves to a whole new generation of products and programs.

"Working with Toolwire to develop and deliver an experiential training solution to meet the objectives of our Avaya global partner network enables us to extend our training footprint cost effectively", said Rick Romine, Director of Technical Training. "We see on-demand, hands-on education as added value for our partners and a differentiator that will contribute to an increase in our global IP telephony and UC market share as we move into our next generation of product offerings."

Toolwire was chosen to participate in "The Art of Evolution", the 2009 INAAU worldwide partner event in Orlando FL, to demonstrate this innovative learning technology to over 3,300 attendees. The program developed for Avaya utilizes Toolwire's unique Enterprise Live Labs OnDemand (ELO) solution.

Authorized users sign into a dedicated Communication Manager 5.1 environment on the Toolwire platform, which provides hosting and delivery for the IP telephony and soft-phone software environment and access to hands-on Live Labs for the CM product suite. Avaya systems "powered by Toolwire" are identical in functionality and operation to hardware-driven systems, without the overhead and hardware footprint required by traditional systems to achieve global scale.

Integrating Avaya CM within its platform, Toolwire provides each user with the ability to access physical devices and virtual "sandbox" practice sessions. Each session includes labs focusing on a range of technical topics within the Avaya certification pathways. For instance, users have the ability to install and configure phone switch and IP-messaging-system components on a physical device as well as on a virtual machine image as needed.

Additionally, Toolwire has created an Avaya University Sandbox Environment for users to return to after the initial training so they can access the same capabilities to refresh, reinforce, explore, and practice critical Avaya CM and Unified Communications and Messaging learning objectives. Upon achieving technical certification, Avaya University will be providing their certified partners with access to this environment based on their partner role within Avaya's global ecosystem.