Avaya’s Irish partners have signed more than twice the number of Avaya IX seats for unified communications than were signed in the first six months after the product’s launch in February 2018.
This represents thousands of cloud seats being taken up by Irish businesses over the past half year alone. Avaya currently has 3.7 million cloud seats between its public and private offerings globally.
Demand for cloud-based communications comes as businesses are increasingly seeing demand from Irish employees for more flexible and remote working options. The job search engine Indeed revealed recently that the number of Irish people searching for jobs using the term ‘remote working’ surged 171 per cent in 2017.
David Flood, Managing Director of Avaya Ireland, said: “It’s not just employees that are calling for the move to the cloud. Businesses are also increasingly recognising the advantages of cloud-based working, including the growth of robust network infrastructure that underpins and facilitates remote working in Ireland and the savings that can be made through migration to cloud-based networks.”
The growth in cloud adoption strengthens Avaya’s lead in the Irish market. According to MZA Consultants’ report of the Irish Contact Centre Market, Avaya accounts for 91 per cent of the market for contact centres with more than 100 agents.
Along with a long roster of Small to Medium Enterprise customers (SMEs), Avaya Ireland works with the country’s leading banks, emergency services, education institutions, government departments and global technology and pharmaceutical companies.
All of these organisations are looking to modernise their contact centre platforms and move to a more omnichannel environment to reflect consumers growing expectations of a seamless purchasing and customer experience.
The uptake in cloud adoption can in large part be attributed to the efforts of Avaya’s partner community that have been enabled by Avaya to build out competitive cloud offerings. The country’s largest operators, including BT, eir and Vodafone, are Avaya partners, along with a community of channel partners that includes Capstone, Damovo, Kaptec, Maintel, Telcom, WellTel and Rainbow Communications. The community has been expanded with a recent surge of regional-based partners, including Conversation Piece and Ripplecom, who have helped cloud penetration for organisations in locations outside Ireland’s main urban areas.
Speaking from the 53rd Partner, Community Council (PCC) Conference Flood said: “We’ve seen a growing trend among Ireland’s SMEs to consume contact centre services in an OPEX model. Avaya’s cloud solutions, especially Powered by Avaya IX, are giving them the agility, they need to succeed. On the other end of the spectrum, the public sector in Ireland, especially in health services, is making a committed move to use more digital channels to engage with citizens. Conferences like the PCC ensure Avaya is constantly improving its dealings with partners to make sure both SME and large scale public sector implementations with Avaya an easy choice.”
Arnold Berends, PCC EMEA Chairman and Senior Sales Consultant at Dimension Data added: “The PCC is going from strength to strength, and the conference is reflective of Avaya’s unique and extremely robust relationship with its partners. There is no better way for new business partners and attendees to network with Avaya experts and collaborate on the best ways to serve the market.”
