Avaya’s Unified-Communications-as-a-Service offering, Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral, has been launched in the UK. It is an all-in-one solution that delivers seamless collaboration across multiple channels to empower teams to work effectively from wherever they are, on any device.
Avaya Cloud Office is a simple and reliable solution enabling users to call, meet, message and access business apps across multiple devices, anywhere via a single platform. The company has also added several key new features and capabilities including tools to help migrate customers more efficiently and effectively.
Steve Joyner, Managing Director UK&I, said: “What has happened worldwide in these last few months has really shown that businesses absolutely need to show agility and they need to get speed-to-value. They need to understand how they can control their costs – it’s been in my mind, the last three, four months, has been the ultimate POC of how businesses have to transform very rapidly, with no notice. We’ve almost got to the stage now where we’ve got to plan for the unplanned.”
In the last two or three months alone, Avaya has deployed over two million remote worker licences for customers globally. In the company’s last quarter earnings, 88% of revenue is represented by software and services. There was also a five point sequential growth on its recurring revenues and things like its cloud alliances and subscription are up to a record 23%. All these indicators showed Avaya needed to be a software and services company.
Joyner added: “We truly believe, as well, that it’s a great opportunity for all channels and our agents, that not only for our existing channels and partners that we’ve had for many years, but also the new agents that we will be acquiring.”
Avaya operates in over 180 countries and has more than 4,000 services and salespeople globally. Its partner community includes 5,000 partners globally.
Alison Hastings, Regional Channel Leader, Avaya UK&I, said: “We are on a journey to become a SaaS company. We’re working hard to ensure our partners are part of that journey. This exciting opportunity enables them to win new customers, grow revenue and increase their market share. As you may have seen in some of my blogs recently, 90% of the UK is actually partner-led, from an Avaya perspective, and we will continue to support this strategy.
“So, therefore our existing partners and new agents are still key, so I just want to reinvigorate that message. We are extending our cloud solutions portfolio. We are adding obviously a market leading UCaaS offering. And this is really giving our existing partners and our new agents the opportunity to consume all flavours of cloud from the Avaya portfolio. I think we all recognise that choice is king in today’s environment and most obviously the need to work from anywhere. So, for me, as an overall channel strategy, it’s just really exciting that now we can offer both public, private and hybrid clouds to our portfolio.”
The UK master agents that Avaya will be working with on this agency model are Westcon UK, ScanSource, Avant and Telarus.
Hastings said: “I wanted to touch on one key point actually because when we announced this exciting opportunity, there was a view in the market, around our existing partners, that they weren’t so keen on the master agent model. And, interestingly, we have now on-boarded a large portion of our existing channels to ACO, as they look to expand the public cloud offering into their portfolios. So, I’ve mentioned, half a dozen of our existing partners today and I know that we’ll be following up and doing separate sessions with you, as necessary where you can speak to some of the CTOs, CEOs and CSOs in this large existing partner community to talk about how they’re already working with us on funnel and see the value. So, I think that’s a really key point to make is that we do have huge uptake from the existing partner ecosystem.”
Before the launch day, Avaya had already signed up 1,700 agents to Avaya Cloud Office.
Hastings added: “The great thing is, we are now able to access all flavours of resellers, channels and agents. Our existing channel community is king, but we’re now able to access some of the board in the cloud, resellers, IT resellers and even BPOs that we weren’t able to access prior. I think that’s been really exciting for us to see some of these partners that we’ve never been able to access, and they’re coming to us proactively through this process which is incredible.
“I think the other thing is, the process to sign up for the agency model is easy. The whole master agent programme is intended to make the transition to using cloud software easy.
“Just as an example, the partner does not have to go through a rigorous sign-up process to become an Avaya partner. They just go online and sign up and will be spun up and set up in a matter of days. The partner and the agent actually receive a fee for every new customer they introduce, depending on the term in the contract. And they also receive an upfront payment as well as on ongoing recurring revenue, without having to invest in huge infrastructure and resources.
“I think the key thing is partners don’t necessarily need to be cloud experts, that comes back to the whole agile and flexibility and speed-to-market, we’re living and breathing today more than ever, on the back of, obviously, COVID and what’s happened recently globally.”