Avaya has denied that it is losing partners because it lacks a cloud product.
For those who came in late rival, Genesys claimed it was luring away Avaya and Alcatel partners because it has a bulky cloud offering which customers loved.
Avaya maintains it does have cloud options, pointing to the recent UK rollout of its enterprise private cloud offering dubbed ReadyNow.
Alison Hastings, Avaya’s UK channel leader, told Computer Weekly:“There was comment [by Genesys] that we don’t have a cloud solution, and this represents a major opportunity for them. We absolutely do have a cloud proposition, which is a platform to enable digital transformation. We launched it to our existing channels a couple of weeks ago and every single one has been trained, on-boarded, and we are already building a major funnel.”
Hastings says the company is identifying new prospective partners, which are coming to Avaya directly, “as they are recognising that they need us to enhance their go-to-market. All round, we’re delighted with the response”.
She adds: “From a channel perspective…we’re not forcing them; it’s not a one-step approach. That’s where I feel we will get stronger in the channel because we’re flexible, agile and it’s all about integration.”
Avaya has made several announcements regarding its product portfolio, not least that RingCentral will be now delivering a new joint UCaaS solution called Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) after a $500m investment in the firm. It announced a new Contact Center as a Service platform, Avaya IX-CC, scheduled for launch in the first half of 2020. Avaya describes as being “built from the ground up as a cloud-based solution developed on a microservices architecture”.
