BT and Avaya have done a five-year deal which will see BT Wholesale deliver Avaya’s Unified Communications and Contact Centre applications as a cloud service to midmarket and enterprise customers via the indirect channel.
Called Avaya Cloud Solutions, the service will give businesses and public sector organisations with 250+ employees access to Avaya Aura contact centre and UC products delivered over BT Wholesale’s managed Ethernet network. The service will be available only from Avaya accredited channel partners through BT Wholesale.
The joint initiative also offers existing Avaya customers a hybrid model with managed migration to help them evolve from on-site to cloud based services. In making the move to a hosted environment, BT Wholesale and Avaya will help companies better manage costs by eliminating the need for large, up-front capital investments and upgrades. “The pay-as-you-grow business model will enable businesses to respond quickly and flexibly to their customer demands and improve the customer experience and revenue generation,” it says. The service also offers the assurance of a “secure and reliable platform” provided by Avaya and BT Wholesale, delivered by their preferred channel partner.
Meanwhile, channel partners will benefit from the combined reach and market share of both companies - exploiting economies of scale, streamlined provisioning and configuration tools, and faster speeds to market.
James Hennah, director, Fixed Telecoms, BT Wholesale said: “There are currently no wholesale options which allow the UK channel to address mid-market and enterprise customers with an end to end service. For most, their only realistic option until now has been to fund and build propositions themselves – but with this agreement, channel partners can harness the combined strengths of BT Wholesale and Avaya without capital investment.
“Hosted Communications Services are at the heart of our plans to offer more to our indirect channel business. By working with us, channel partners can offer their business customers a complete and future-proofed communications service.”
Joe Manuele, vice president of Global SP-SI, Alliances and Cloud, Avaya said: “With Avaya Cloud Solutions we are delivering a new path to greater business agility. New and existing customers can now access Unified Communications and Contact Centre Applications as a Service with BT Wholesale through our channel partners, safe in the knowledge that the flexibility, scalability and reliability that is synonymous with Avaya products is available in an even more affordable and manageable way.”