Avaya has announced that it’s adopting Google Gemini Enterprise as its core AI platform, alongside Google Workspace for collaboration, offering enterprise tech buyers a compelling case study in strategic platform selection.
The announcement reflects Avaya’s commitment to accelerating product innovation by leveraging hyperscale AI infrastructure rather than developing everything in-house. For Avaya’s customers and the broader UC market, this decision prompts practical questions worth exploring. What does vendor platform consolidation mean for the solutions you’re purchasing, and how should you approach similar choices in your own organization?
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Understanding Agentic AI in Practice With Avaya and Google
Avaya’s focus on Gemini Enterprise as an “agentic platform” underscores a pivotal evolution in enterprise AI. Unlike conventional AI assistants that answer discrete questions, agentic systems autonomously navigate workflows, connect disparate data sources, and execute multi-step tasks across applications.
For Avaya’s teams, this means a unified interface replacing the typical enterprise fragmentation of knowledge that might be scattered across CRM systems, support platforms, documentation repositories, and email.
Pete Lavache, Avaya’s CMO, commented:
“Gemini Enterprise and Google Workspace will empower our employees through AI-driven insights and collaboration and next-gen workplace productivity ─ redefining our work environment. By reimagining workflows and unlocking greater agility across our teams, we can accelerate innovation and deliver high-value outcomes for our customers.”
The more significant question for Avaya customers is whether this internal transformation will translate into better products, faster innovation cycles, and more responsive support. The company clearly believes so, explicitly connecting this investment to its ability to “deliver communications solutions that drive new value for customers.”
What Platform Consolidation with Google Signals
Avaya’s rationale centers on three priorities that should resonate with any tech buyer: simplifying technology infrastructure, enhancing employee productivity, and accelerating innovation velocity. The average enterprise uses dozens, if not hundreds, of different SaaS applications, fostering integration complexity, security challenges, and productivity friction. Consolidating around a cohesive ecosystem theoretically addresses all three.
For Avaya customers, this raises practical considerations. A vendor operating on modern, AI-native infrastructure should theoretically be more agile, more responsive to customer needs, and better positioned to embed AI capabilities into their communications solutions. If Avaya’s product teams can leverage Google’s AI to accelerate development cycles, that potentially benefits customers through faster feature releases and more innovative solutions.
The employee experience dimension is also important. When a vendor’s internal teams utilize consumer-grade tools with embedded AI, it can result in better-designed customer-facing products. A support engineer who can instantly access comprehensive customer context through conversational AI should deliver faster, more accurate resolutions.
Questions for Avaya Customers
If you’re an Avaya customer or evaluating UC vendors, this announcement prompts several practical questions. Firstly, there are the implications for product roadmaps. How will Avaya’s Google partnership influence its product development? Will we see tighter integration between Avaya solutions and Google Workspace? What AI capabilities might be integrated into Avaya’s customer-facing products from Gemini?
Next is competitive positioning. How does this compare to what Microsoft is doing with Teams and Copilot, or Cisco with Webex and its AI strategy? What does Avaya’s platform choice mean for interoperability with your existing infrastructure?
Support and service delivery are also fundamental questions. Will Avaya’s internal use of agentic AI translate into measurably better customer support experiences? What metrics should you track to assess whether this investment delivers customer value?
Lastly, there is strategic alignment. If your organization is also investing in Google Cloud or Workspace, does Avaya’s alignment create integration advantages? Conversely, if you’re committed to Microsoft or another ecosystem, what are the implications?
The Broader Market Context Around Avaya and AI
Avaya’s move reflects a broader market reality where building and maintaining cutting-edge AI capabilities requires resources that even established tech vendors increasingly source from hyperscale platforms. This isn’t unique to Avaya. It’s a general pattern across the B2B tech landscape as companies decide whether to build, buy, or partner for AI capabilities.
For tech buyers, the key insight is understanding how those choices affect the solutions you’re purchasing, the roadmaps you’re depending on, and the integrations you need.
The companies that will deliver the most value are those that can translate platform capabilities into differentiated customer solutions. Avaya is betting that building on Google’s AI foundation will accelerate its ability to innovate for customers. Whether that bet pays off will become evident in product releases, support quality, and competitive positioning over the coming quarters.
As you evaluate your own UC strategy, watch how vendors leverage their platform choices to deliver tangible customer value and not just internal efficiency. That’s arguably the metric that matters most.
