Avaya To End Powered By Avaya IP Office Sales As Firm Focuses On Cloud UC
'We want to have one primary, true UCaaS offering in the market,' Avaya's SVP of business transformation Dennis Kozak tells CRN.
Avaya is ending sales of its Powered By Avaya IP Office solution for partners and customers as the company aligns itself to put its resources behind its new cloud-based UC offering, Avaya Cloud Office.
The virtualized and containerized versions of Powered By Avaya IP Office have been used by partners to emulate a cloud UC offering so customers would have an Avaya option, according to Dennis Kozak, senior vice president of business transformation for Avaya.
The Avaya Cloud Office service is eliminating the need for the virtualized and containerized versions of Powered By Avaya IP Office, Kozak said.
"We want to have one primary, true UCaaS offering in the market," he said.
[Related: Avaya, Taking Aim At UC Rivals, Hires Former Mitel Cloud Leader As Channel Chief]
The end of sale for the virtualized version of Powered by Avaya IP Office will apply to all countries except Bahrain, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Oman, and South Africa. The End of Sale of the containerized version of Powered by Avaya IP Office will apply on a global basis, the company told its channel partners on Tuesday.
There will be no change to the go-to-market for Avaya IP Office on-premises offer, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said.
Despite the end of sales announcement, existing deployments of Avaya's global Powered By Avaya IP Office solutions will still be supported by Avaya and any existing deals in the pipeline or deals registered before March 31 will still be available and supported, according to Kozak. Existing customers can also still continue to scale their Powered By Avaya IP Office deployments until their contracts end, he said.
Renewals of Powered by Avaya IP Office for virtualized environments will be allowed until after Avaya Cloud Office becomes available, at which time Avaya said it will communicate more information about service support dates and migration tools.
Avaya does about 80 percent of its business though the channel today and about 85 percent of its business comes from premise-based UC solutions. Since emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2017, however, Avaya has been focused on shifting its business to a cloud-based business model.
Avaya and UC competitor RingCentral inked an agreement in October that would have RingCentral purchase $125 million in Avaya stock for a 6 percent equity position in the company, while also advancing Avaya $375 million for future payments and licensing rights. The Unified communications giant said that its new Avaya Cloud Office solution, which is coming to market as a result of its strategic partnership with RingCentral that was revealed in October, will be available through the channel and directly to end customers as of March 31.
Avaya Cloud Office is based on RingCentral's platform but is fully Avaya-branded and will become Avaya's primary public cloud-based UCaaS offering. Kozak said that Avaya has been making "a ton of progress" on the Avaya Cloud Office service since the deal closed between the two companies.
Kozak said that Avaya and RingCentral's partnership is beneficial for both providers. Avaya now has access to RingCentral's cloud-based UC product development team, while RingCentral is benefiting from Avaya's footprint in more than 180 countries.
Avaya in December also announced it had hired telecom veteran Jon Brinton, who served most recently as UC competitor Mitel's cloud leader, as its new vice president of North American channel sales for Avaya. Brinton is filling the spot that Avaya's former channel chief, Gary Levy, left in March when he joined Oracle as vice president of worldwide enterprise alliances and channels.