Sunday, November 09, 2025
In this edition of the Contact Center Technology Top Voice Interview series, we sit down with David Funck, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Avaya, a global leader in enterprise communications and customer experience solutions. David has spent his career driving innovation in the contact center industry, holding senior technology leadership roles at Edify, Aspect, and Alvaria before taking the helm of Avaya’s technology vision.
In our conversation, David shares how Avaya is transforming contact centers into “connection centers” with its flagship Avaya Infinity™ platform and upcoming support for Model Context Protocol (MCP). We explore how MCP is poised to become a “smartphone moment” for customer experience, unlocking data from silos, enabling AI-human collaboration, and delivering seamless, personalized, context-rich interactions at scale.
David also discusses the challenges enterprises face with fragmented systems, agent burnout, and personalization gaps, and how Avaya’s hybrid, open-standard approach is helping solve them without forcing costly infrastructure overhauls. From empowering agents with real-time insights to enabling enterprises to orchestrate AI-powered workflows across cloud and on-premises environments securely, David outlines Avaya’s vision for the future of contact centers in the age of AI.
About David Funck: David Funck is the Chief Technology Officer at Avaya, where he leads the company’s global technology strategy and product innovation roadmap. With decades of experience shaping enterprise communications and customer engagement solutions, David is a recognized thought leader in contact center transformation and the application of AI, machine learning, and orchestration technologies to improve customer experience.
About Avaya: Avaya is a global leader in customer experience and enterprise communications, delivering solutions that help organizations transform customer service into a competitive advantage. Its Avaya Infinity™ platform offers enterprises the flexibility to deploy cloud, on-prem, or hybrid contact center environments while integrating advanced AI, orchestration, and automation capabilities. Avaya’s open approach, now with native support for Model Context Protocol, empowers organizations to unify systems, unlock contextual data, and deliver highly personalized, real-time experiences that strengthen customer relationships.
David: Hi, Sudipto. I’m looking forward to responding to your questions.
I've spent my career immersed in enterprise communications and have been fortunate enough to collaborate on remarkable innovations in the contact center industry. With leadership roles at Edify, Aspect, and Alvaria, I spearheaded major shifts toward cloud-based solutions and delivered intelligent customer engagement platforms.
It's been an incredible journey watching contact centers evolve into what we at Avaya call "connection centers", dynamic communication hubs that foster authentic, personalized relationships between brands and their customers.
As CTO of Avaya, I have the privilege of leading our technology vision for the future of customer experience. What excites me most about this space is our opportunity to unlock a treasure trove of transcription and low-level event data in contact centers. When we apply the convergence of AI, machine learning, and intelligent orchestration to this data, we can unify fragmented interactions and deliver seamless, personalized experiences. Our launch of the Avaya Infinity™ platform provides that powerful convergence in a unified platform, enabling enterprises to blend AI with business data to empower agents and enhance customer experience.
David: We support cloud, on-prem, and hybrid deployments for the contact center, offering flexible choices to meet enterprise needs. With our Avaya Infinity™ platform, organizations can evolve their contact center into a connection center, strengthening their most important relationships.
Some of the key themes for our product roadmap include:
We are particularly excited about delivery in the coming months of Avaya Infinity™ support for Model Concept Protocol (MCP).
David: It’s a major step down the maturity path for AI business value. Model Context Protocol is a new, open interoperability standard that fosters the creation of AI assistants by empowering AI Large Language Models to securely connect with and use external tools, data sources, and real-world context. With MCP, AI systems can learn from and modify the real world through seamless connections with a wide variety of software applications. It replaces a fragmented landscape of custom-coded, brittle API integrations with an open, flexible, and standard protocol.
MCP, integrated with the orchestration capability of Avaya Infinity™, transforms the role of AI for both customers and human agents, laying the foundation for what we call tandem care, a model of service where AI agents and human agents collaborate in real time, each amplifying the strengths of the other. Contact center agents can be more proactive with customer responses, as they’re able to leverage the power of AI to easily access a vast array of data points—such as customer profile and demographics, behavioral data, transactional data, weather and environmental context, news and media signals, current events and cultural context, communication preferences, product and service usage, psychographic and intent data, and privacy and consent.
With MCP, AI assistants not only answer questions, but they can also anticipate needs, surface insights, and take action to quietly support the human agent throughout the interaction. It’s a shift from automation to augmentation, and it’s unlocking a new tier of intelligent, high-touch support.
It also has a democratizing effect, where meaningful AI is no longer the domain of developers and data scientists. Contact center administrators are now able to configure dynamic, context-aware workflows — without writing a single line of code. Enterprise users can select which AI models to use and define their own rules without requiring a developer.
David: We plan for the Avaya Infinity™ platform to support MCP by the end of this year as a part of Avaya’s continuous delivery model.
David: The smartphone redefined what people expected from a mobile phone, transforming it from a single-purpose device into the center of our digital lives, and MCP in Avaya Infinity™ has the same potential to redefine customer experience. It unlocks AI from the confines of single systems, unlocks data from silos, and frees enterprises from vendor lock-in, all while maintaining the security and governance that large organizations need and demand.
By integrating MCP into the Avaya Infinity™ platform, Avaya empowers customers to create the kinds of intelligent, context-rich workflows that were previously only theoretical.
From enabling a customer service AI to consult dozens of systems in a split second, to empowering a business analyst to deploy a new AI-driven process without writing code, the capabilities MCP provides translate into tangible business value: faster innovation cycles, more personalized customer engagement, and greater operational efficiency.
With MCP, we can turn a contact center platform into an open canvas for AI innovation, one where the “real value” is limited more by the imagination than the plumbing. Agentic AI powered by MCP could fundamentally reshape how enterprises build customer experiences in the age of AI.
David: MCP helps shift the role of AI in the contact center by significantly lowering the barrier of entry. MCP enables enterprises to securely connect AI with real business tools and vast amounts of data that would’ve otherwise been unattainable. Instead of relying on fragile, custom-coded integrations, MCP offers a standard way for AI to understand and act on real-world context. This means AI can now work alongside human agents in a more natural and useful way; in “tandem care,” AI can handle routine tasks, freeing people to focus on complex needs or human factors like empathy. With MCP support in the Avaya Infinity™ platform, enterprises can create smarter, more personalized customer experiences to transform their contact center into a connection center.
David: Some of the challenges contact centers face today include fragmented data and siloed systems, high agent turnover and burnout, a disjointed customer journey, limited ability to personalize customer interactions, and data security and compliance concerns.
The Avaya Infinity™ platform and integrated MCP can help solve these issues in a number of ways:
To top it off, Avaya Infinity™ with MCP can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments, offering enterprises unmatched data privacy and security.
David: While some voices in the industry are indicating human agents will be replaced by AI, Avaya’s AI Research Report: Living with AI, Longing for Connection, indicates 80% of customers want humans for complex/emotional needs, and 73% of customers say they would leave a brand that hides human help.
Avaya Infinity™ with MCP is transforming real-time collaboration between human agents and AI by enabling a seamless, context-rich experience. Instead of operating disparately, AI agents can now work alongside humans—silently assisting during live interactions by surfacing relevant customer history, suggesting next-best actions, and even orchestrating workflows across enterprise tools. This tandem care model empowers human agents with real-time insights and automates repetitive tasks, leveraging AI with the ability to act based on live context. Avaya Infinity™ with MCP transforms contact centers from reactive support hubs into connection centers where humans and AI agents work in tandem.
David: Sure.
These examples illustrate how Avaya Infinity™ with MCP can transform fragmented, manual processes into intelligent, real-time orchestration, making it an ideal platform for regulated, high-stakes enterprises.
David: Avaya’s strategy is purpose-built to run in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid environments, offering enterprises the flexibility to modernize according to their particular needs. By supporting MCP in the Avaya Infinity™ platform, Avaya will enable AI agents to securely access and orchestrate workflows across both cloud and on-prem systems, without vendor lock-in.
David: Our cloud-only competitors are limited to a “one size fits all” approach. Avaya’s run-anywhere approach, outlined above, empowers the largest and most heavily regulated industries a path to modernization without dumping their existing infrastructure, allowing them to adopt cloud-native capabilities like agent assist, analytics, and virtual agents when they're ready. MCP acts as a universal connector, standardizing how AI interacts with tools, data, and systems, whether hosted in hyperscaler clouds or private data centers. The result is a seamless, context-aware experience that preserves data sovereignty, enhances operational agility, and avoids vendor lock-in, which makes Avaya’s hybrid strategy uniquely suited for complex enterprise deployments.
David: MCP will be supported in the Avaya Infinity™ platform as a native capability, allowing AI agents to securely access and act on enterprise context across both cloud and on-prem systems. Customer Experience (CX) leaders can deploy intelligent, real-time customer experiences without vendor lock-in, accelerating innovation while preserving control, compliance, and flexibility.
One important aspect of our approach is our recognition that adopting an open AI protocol must go hand-in-hand with enterprise-grade safeguards. That’s why we’re partnering with Databricks, known for data analytics and governance, to provide the underpinning for elements like fine-grained access control, audit logging, and unified data governance in Avaya’s MCP implementation. This enables Avaya customers to confidently deploy AI tools and still meet strict security and compliance requirements.
In practice, it means when an AI agent tries to access certain customer data via MCP, all the proper permissions and logs are in place, and sensitive information is protected. By combining an open standard (MCP) with enterprise controls (Databricks and Avaya’s own safeguards), Avaya can offer the best of both worlds to CX leaders: flexibility and peace of mind.
David: I’d say focus on aligning strategy, infrastructure, as well as security and privacy concerns. They should secure their executive buy-in first, then assess existing systems for MCP readiness, and then, following that, prioritize workflows that benefit from contextual automation. Early involvement of frontline teams and clear communication about AI’s role as a support for human agents, versus replacing them, will foster trust. Upskilling staff and establishing governance frameworks are also important steps to ensure an effective, secure, ethical deployment.
David: I don’t know anyone who five years ago would have accurately predicted today’s AI landscape. AI is moving fast, and it’s not going away. We believe that instead of predicting the future of AI, enterprises are better off focusing on extensibility and avoiding vendor lock-in. The power of MCP is that it unlocks value across an ecosystem of partners, providers, and platforms. Avaya Infinity™ with MCP becomes the “secret sauce” to deliver hyper-personalized service and to reshape the experiences that human and AI agents in tandem can provide.
Instead of isolated bots or scripted workflows, Avaya Infinity™ with MCP will support dynamic, context-aware interactions that adapt in real time to each customer’s needs. It positions organizations to deliver proactive, personalized service at scale, powered by AI that understands customer history, sentiment, and business logic. Avaya Infinity™ with MCP will help contact centers move from managing fragmented experiences to delivering unified, intelligent journeys that elevate both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Thank you, David Funck, for speaking to us. We look forward to having you again at our Top Voice programs.
To participate in our interviews, please write to our Contact Center Tech Media Room at sudipto@intentamplify.com
