BroadSoft, Mitel Go After Avaya Customers, Partners with Guns Blazing

AVAYA ENGAGE — BroadSoft on Tuesday rolled out a plan for Avaya customers to migrate to business cloud services with BroadSoft Business.

The launch comes during Avaya Engage, the company’s conference for partners, customers and others in Las Vegas. Last month, Avaya filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and executives have assured attendees that the company will emerge a stronger company.

BroadSoft is among several competitors, such as Mitel, that are capitalizing on Avaya’s financial issues to try to gain new customers.

Morag Lucey, Avaya’s chief marketing officer, said since the bankruptcy filing, the company has closed 120 deals, including some with “very big entities.” As for competitors trying to capitalize on the bankruptcy, she said if Avaya “[were] insignificant, they wouldn’t do it.”

Avaya anticipates emerging from chapter 11 this summer, she said.

According to BroadSoft, Avaya customers and partners can run hybrid offerings using existing PBX and premises-based investments, and can add cloud services such as mobile UC, team productivity and enterprise messaging, or BroadSoft cloud contact-center solutions.

“BroadSoft is the cloud UC global market share leader with the portfolio, scalability and trusted track record that enables businesses to move to the cloud, and fully realize the communication and collaboration benefits the cloud delivers,” said Taher Behbehani, BroadSoft’s chief digital and marketing officer.{ad}

Chuck Flaherty, Windstream’s vice president of sales (pictured above), said, “We find Avaya customers and ourselves as an Avaya (vendor) partner are loyal to the brand and loyal to the technology.”

“We think the technology is very relevant in today’s cloud environment, and we find our customers are in that same position,” he said. “So while they can try to go on the offensive and look to attract them, I’m sure there [are] some customers that will make that move. We find many are staying very loyal to that brand.”

Dan Pitcher, sales account manager at Unique Communication Solutions, told Channel Partners that his company supports Avaya’s products and “will continue to do that, and invest our time and interest in doing that as well.”

“We believe our customers will continue to purchase and support Avaya products,” he said.