Avaya Buys CTIntegrations As Number Of Partners Selling CCaaS Solution Triples

Avaya has bought one of its technology partners, CTIntegrations, a contact center software development specialist. Contact center generated 60 percent of Avaya’s cloud annual recurring revenue in the third quarter, Avaya President and CEO Jim Chirico tells CRN.

Avaya has acquired CTIntegrations, a contact center software development specialist and systems integration technology partner, to supercharge its Avaya OneCloud Contact-Center-as-a-Service offering in light of the significant growth the company in seeing in the cloud contact center space.

In fact, 60 percent of Avaya’s cloud annual recurring revenue metric, OneCloud ARR, was generated by contact center customers during the company’s third quarter, Jim Chirico (pictured), president and CEO of Avaya, told CRN following the company’s earnings call Monday.

Avaya’s always-strong, but recently increasing pipeline of CCaaS deals encouraged the company to bring CTIntegrations, a company that has been part of Avaya’s DevConnect partner ecosystem, into the fold, Chirico said.

“It just made sense to formally bring them in so we can help prioritize the road map and accelerate some of the product development,” he said. “It’s a technology tuck-in, but it’s a pretty unique solution and it’s going to help fuel our CCaaS growth in the market.”

Financial terms of the transaction, which is already completed, were not disclosed.

[Related: Avaya CEO Jim Chirico: 'We Are A Software And Services Company']

The CTIntegrations deal will allow partners to build CCaaS solutions for specific use cases on top of the Avaya platform, Chirico said, adding that partners are playing a big role in how Avaya is rolling out public and private cloud-based contact center solutions. Avaya trained close to 400 new partners to sell its public cloud CCaaS solution during the third quarter.

“We’ve tripled the number of partners that are now selling our CCaaS solution globally,” he said. ”We’re pretty pleased with the traction, and we expect that pace to continue for the next few quarters, at least.”

Avaya OneCloud CCaaS is currently available in over 40 countries. The company said that CCaaS will be available in 60 countries by the end of 2021.

Avaya in 2020 started to see a big change within OneCloud ARR, which was up a whopping 275 percent year over year during third-quarter 2021 to $425 million. OneCloud ARR includes Avaya’s OneCloud subscription, Avaya Cloud Office (ACO), its Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), Device as a Service and the company’s private cloud offering that gives enterprises a hybrid communications option. In fact, the company has once again raised its ARR guidance. Avaya now expect to cross the $1 billion threshold by the end of calendar year 2022, about a year ahead of schedule, Chirico said.

That’s because 95 percent of OneCloud ARR came from customers generating $100,000 or more in annual recurring revenue. About 64 percent of that revenue comes from deals greater than $1 million, Avaya said.

The company’s goal is to grow its recurring revenue to account for more than 70 percent of its business. In the third quarter, recurring revenue made up 64 percent of the company’s revenue, a figure that remained flat year over year. Software and services slipped slightly to account for 88 percent of revenue during the quarter, down from 89 percent a year ago, which Chirico attributed to a resurgence in the company’s more traditional businesses, which included a boost in ACO, or UCaaS sales and accompanying desk phone purchases during the fiscal quarter.

Avaya’s Cloud, Alliance Partner and Subscription (CAPS) revenue continued to tick up during the first three quarters of 2021. CAPS revenue now accounts for 40 percent of Avaya’s total revenue compared with30 percent in the year-ago fiscal quarter, according to the company.

For the quarter ended June 30, Avaya posted revenue of $732 million, up 2 percent compared with the third quarter of fiscal 2020, marking its fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. The Durham, N.C.-based company’s non-GAAP net income was $73 million, or 75 cents a share.