In a live virtual press conference, Avaya have announced the commercial availability of the Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral solution. Earlier this year, I went to Avaya Engage in Phoenix, AZ, where I got a preview of the solution. Since then, the platform’s made its debut in North America and other parts of the world.
Avaya Cloud Office lets users call, meet, message, and access business apps across multiple devices, anywhere via a unified platform. In line with the company’s UK release, Steve Joyner, Managing Director, Avaya UK, and Ireland, said during the press conference:
“We’ve added several key new features and capabilities including tools to help migrate customers more efficiently and effectively”
Avaya’s public cloud business collaboration tool is a subscription-based solution, and as such, “It offers the flexibility and agility that customers demand from technology providers nowadays,” Joyner continued. Since making the announcement last year, both Avaya and RingCentral have shaken up the UCaaS market, introducing another viable offering into the mix. And the solution’s today making some traction and proving to be healthy competition for others in the space.
Oru Mohiuddin, Research Manager Enterprise Communications & Collaboration, IDC, said the firm’s done extensive research on UCaaS in Europe. According to researchers there, UCaaS will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 23.3 percent between 2019 and 2022. “This is higher than the 17 percent anticipated during the pre-COVID-19 period.” Mohiuddin had a lot more to say, so I will let her take it from here:
“It is, however, not just enough to provide UCaaS – it needs to be customizable, flexible, modular, agile, frictionless, scalable, omni-channel, and secure to cater to the varying needs of enterprises”
Avaya said it had already trained five of the UK’s most qualified partners with its Master Agent Program which the company said should “Help meet the anticipated demand for Avaya Cloud Office in the UK.” This includes the likes of Jenne, Inc., ScanSource, Inc., AVANT Communications, Synnex Corporation, and Telarus LLC. Avaya also has nearly 800 channel partners trained to sell Avaya Cloud Office, the majority of them new to selling ACO, a spokesperson shared.
Joyner made it a point to say, Avaya had expanded support for its endpoint devices which supports rich meeting capabilities via Avaya Cloud Office into conference rooms in the form of high-fidelity sound quality. “Migration Tools and features that facilitate the customer transition from Avaya premises-based unified communications platforms to Avaya Cloud Office are also available.”
I’m told, more features like call park and page, which enable customers to transition from existing Avaya platforms without changing the workflows they’re accustomed to. Already, ACO has over 130 integrations located within the app gallery, which includes Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365.
Toward the end of the virtual press conference, Avaya let us in on another revelation — announcing that customers who sign up now, would get a free month of service along with a 20 percent discount. “Customers even get free basic Avaya Cloud Office implementation discounts on ACO professional migration services and discounts on select desk phones as well,” Joyner added.
