Avaya, RingCentral CEOs Get Serious About Cloud Migration

AVAYA ENGAGE 2024 — Vlad Shmunis, back as RingCentral's CEO, since the beginning of the year, on Tuesday joined Avaya CEO Alan Masarek on stage at Engage 2024 to talk about the companies' reinvigorated partnership.

Under the terms of the expanded Avaya-RingCentral partnership, RingCentral will supply the underlying technology for the hybrid solution built to help organizations collaborate using Avaya Aura and Avaya Cloud Office telephony solutions.

Shmunis appeared gleeful on the keynote stage, talking about how the new Avaya-RingCentral partnership can be very successful if the companies execute it as well as they have their original 2019 alignment that brought Avaya Cloud Office to market.

"It is wonderful, and what I can see is a positive reaction from customers. I think it will hit a nerve, providing people with a very clear path from on-prem to the cloud," Shmunis said to a room full of Avaya partners and customers.

Shmunis further commented on the early days he spent at RingCentral and when he founded the firm, saying that the partnership essentially aligns with RingCentral's goal since its founding.

"Twenty-five years ago when we started, we wanted to take business communications to the cloud, and the easiest way to realize that was with Avaya," the RingCentral exec shared. "Hey, here's Avaya, and here's their feature set, let's use that to take you to the cloud," Shmunis said to Masarek. 

Avaya, RingCentral Look to Convert Seats to Hybrid or Pure Cloud

The process of moving seats to a hybrid or full cloud environment won't be a fast one, but it will extend flexibility, which is what those who leverage the joint offer will be eyeing.

Researchers at Channel Futures' sister company, Canalys, forecast spending for global cloud infrastructure services will increase by 20% in 2024, compared to 18% growth in 2023, with vendors across the cloud market looking to get a piece of the pie.

Masarek echoed that sentiment in the conversation between the Avaya-RingCentral executives.

"We see this situation where lots of customers who start on-prem want to move to the cloud, and what we announced today on the collaboration side is just that. Most of those customers opting for the hybrid model are knowledge workers, living within that video collaboration solution that RingCentral offers. That's the user interface that acts as their day-to-day-interface, but they also want to access telephony from within that [user interface], and I think that plays into meeting the customer where they are, as the move to the cloud is not an absolute jump," Masarek shared. 

Avaya Ready to Fully Embrace the Cloud

During a separate conversation with Masarek, we asked him about the company's long-term play and what happens when an Avaya customer wants to moves solely to the cloud. Is Avaya ready to make that shift? Avaya is ready, he said, and that shift will happen naturally over time, with the company making sure not to leave its on-prem customers behind. 

He did, however, share that there will be customers, such as those in highly regulated industries, that stay on-premises and add features like artificial intelligence over the top as their industry necessitates it.

He also acknowledged that companies with pure cloud offers are doing innovative work, but conveyed that customers aren't thrilled about the concept of losing an entire investment by migrating fully to cloud communications infrastructure. 

"That is the easiest way for an IT person to get fired," Masarek told Channel Futures.