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Avaya Announces Partnership With RingCentral
Avaya announced a partnership with RingCentral, a move that jointly strengthens the two companies’ positions in the growing cloud-based unified communications market.
The news comes after Avaya CEO Jim Chirico called for “strategic alternatives” to resolve Avaya’s financial situation during the company’s August 13 third-quarter earnings call.
As part of this partnership, Avaya will launch a new global unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offering in 2020, called Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral. Avaya will now be able to offer public, private, and hybrid cloud solutions to its unified communications and contact center customers.
RingCentral will become the exclusive provider of Avaya’s UCaaS offering, investing $500 million into its partnership with Avaya. This investment includes an advance of $375 million for certain licensing rights.
The partnership will be confirmed in the close of the fourth quarter of 2019.
Source: SoftwareReviews Avaya Unified Communications Scorecard. Accessed September 9, 2019.
Our Take
Avaya’s partnership with RingCentral reflects a trend in the broader unified communications and contact center market: cloud-based solutions to these services are increasingly prominent.
Indeed, consider Avaya and RingCentral’s major competitors: Cisco acquired BroadSoft and Mitel acquired ShoreTel to also push for and develop cloud-based solutions. Avaya Cloud Office now enables Avaya and RingCentral to offer its customers a competitive UCaaS solution, jointly strengthening both companies in this marketspace.
As such, there is not much to say to the contrary that Avaya and RingCentral’s partnership is mutually beneficial. Avaya get to utilize RingCentral’s solution for developing and launching a UCaaS offering, while RingCentral becomes the exclusive provider of this offering and can now reach customers outside the US where Avaya already has a foothold.
However, some questions still need answering, especially around Avaya’s contact center as a service (CCaaS) solution. RingCentral already has a CCaaS offering (based on the Nice InContact solution), so which product will win out? Will Avaya follow its UCaaS offering and provide a similar “Avaya’s CCaaS by RingCentral” product, or will Avaya’s solution replace RingCentral’s? Info-Tech members who are primarily interested in contact center offerings are urged to follow the latest developments in this area.
Source: SoftwareReviews RingCentral Unified Communications Scorecard. Accessed September 16, 2019.
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SoftwareReviews Avaya Unified Communications Scorecard
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