Leading communications company, Avaya, recently announced a series of new updates designed to enhance channel partner growth. As part of the Avaya Channel Partner Summit in Dubai, Avaya leaders took to the stage to describe how the company planned on helping partners transform their offerings in the year ahead.
Many of the new updates are featured as part of the Avaya Edge partner program, which offers channel partners an opportunity to accelerate their value propositions with more advanced solutions and innovations. The updates to Avaya Edge revealed during the partner summit also emphasised the importance of "inclusivity" for the Avaya network. Avaya wants its partners to know that they have a path for digital transformation ahead of them, no matter their size or business model.
2019: Avaya's Year of Cloud
Speaking to an audience of more than 450 channel partners this year, VP of Channels, Fadi Moubarak said that Avaya's growth is "inexorably linked" to the success of their partners. With that in mind, Avaya will be placing even greater focus on their channel partner program in 2019 and the years ahead. Much of the attention for 2019 centres around giving channel partners of all sizes the freedom and flexibility to deliver cloud-based products to customers.
According to the International President of Avaya, Nidal Abou-Ltaif, 2019 is set to be the "Year of Cloud" for Avaya. This means that Avaya's range of cloud-based services will continue to expand in the year ahead, becoming available to any Avaya partner throughout the globe. Nidal noted that Avaya has already made significant progress in their path towards the cloud, with the UCaaS and CCaaS Avaya models representing some of the fastest-growing segments for the company. Additionally, Avaya's channel partner ecosystem on the cloud has grown at a rate of 50% year-over-year.
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Nidal Abou-Ltaif addresses the partners at the Avaya Channel Partner Summit in Dubai[/caption]
Though there is a significant focus on "cloud" for Avaya customers, Avaya also noted that they wanted to make their channel partner program one of the most inclusive in the world. This means going beyond cloud connectivity to encourage and empower partners of all sizes to deliver more holistic solutions to their customers.
Going Beyond the Cloud for Avaya Partners
During 2019, Avaya will also be leveraging their open-standards communication platform for the channel partner community. For instance, solutions available through the Avaya A.I.Connect and Avaya DevConnect programs will allow partners to support their customers with disruptive and readily-integrated solutions for communication.
Avaya's open ecosystem will also be available for partners to use when building their own solutions. Now that many of Avaya's most successful partners have already proven how easy it is to innovate on top of the Avaya platform, the company feels it's time to deliver new APIs and tools that encourage greater developments. Avaya even announced their "Avaya Private Cloud" system, which will give channel partners the opportunity to sell their customised CCaaS and UCaaS solutions to larger companies in search of more unique functionalities. The Avaya Private Cloud ensures that any Avaya partner will be able to sell private, hybrid, or public cloud solutions as well as on-premises products for enterprise customers.
Nidal noted that many of the upgrades to the channel platform solution are about delivering "stellar customer experience" throughout the enterprise. Avaya has embraced a new tagline for its identity this year, which centres around "Experiences that Matter." This new selection of channel partner technologies will help Avaya partners to follow through on that mantra when serving the next generation of customers.
