At an Avaya user conference in Boston Monday morning, executives outlined the company's roadmap for the future, which leans heavily on unified next-generation communications and business collaboration software. Avaya President and CEO Kevin Kennedy says Avaya will be "leading with " that allow for management of the full data center stack.

"Data and infrastructure are crucial, but the speed and veracity in the industry is in the application layer," he says. "Organizations will be redesigned by pulling infrastructure under application, which gives the network the opportunity to not just be application aware, but application sure, meaning the application configures the network to guarantee the operation of those applications."

DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT:

TECH BUSINESS:

Moving from a telecommunications and network hardware company up the stack into the application layer seems like a natural fit for the company, says Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research. "There's a sea change in IT now," Kerravala says. "More cross-function decisions are being made. It's not just one group within an enterprise making the decision, its being done at a higher level. That opens up new buyers and new opportunities." CIOs are looking for overarching management tools that allow an entire communications platform to be centrally managed to avoid silos when managing the network, data center and communications areas, he says. The challenge is that Avaya is in a crowded market space, with the likes of , , HP, Dell and Juniper also looking to grab share.