Avaya Targets Midmarket With New Cloud Offerings, More Partner Opportunities

Avaya is arming its partners with new multichannel UC and contact center cloud offerings to do battle in the much-coveted midmarket.

Avaya Midmarket Cloud Solutions includes two deployment options, enabling partners to “seamlessly evolve midsize companies to the advanced capabilities needed for digital business.” Avaya executives primed partners on midmarket opportunities at last week’s Avaya Executive Partner Forum in San Diego.

The nearly $50 billion in addressable market includes $16 billion in the midmarket, according to Avaya.

Mike Kuch, Avaya’s senior director, segment leadership group for cloud, tells Channel Partners that from a midmarket perspective “we feel that our partners are one of our strengths, and we really want to engage our partners and bring our partners in along with us on this cloud journey.

“We want to evolve our partners into cloud providers and be able to set them up for whatever is next,” he said. “This is part of engaging with our partners and helping our partners move through this journey, and we want to move with them and help them move their customer base also.”

Both options — Powered by Avaya IP Office and OnAvaya – Google Cloud Platform — can enable hybrid clouds that allow customers to “maximize their investments in more than 1 million Avaya systems worldwide,” according to the company.{ad}

In addition, Avaya has launched OSC platforms where partners go to order and help manage their cloud platforms.

“Before, we did a lot of manual work, and these are automated portals that we’re now rolling out for the partners,” Kuch said. “We’ll continue to make things easy for the partners, and trying to make time to market and time to customer faster and faster.”

Avaya’s cloud offerings and partner engagement are drawing interest from some of its competitors’ partners, he said.

“Some of the traditional competitors are not paying as much attention to their partners,” Kuch said. “We’re sort of taking a different tact where we’re engaging with our partners. We want the partners to become part of our ecosystems, and this is becoming very attractive to not just our partners but the partner community in general.”

Powered by Avaya IP Office now is available globally to qualified channel partners that wish to install the offering in the data center of their choice. OnAvaya – Google Cloud Platform currently is available in the United States only.

“Avaya channel partners have a significant role to play in cloud deployments for midsize companies with their established knowledge of the customer and expertise with Avaya products,” said Steve Biondi, vice president of Avaya’s Global Partner Organization. “Now, they have even more flexibility with which to approach the customer by offering hybrid cloud solutions in a market that has considerable growth potential and is looking for a cost-effective path to advanced communications.”