Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral Gains Momentum
It’s now been three months since Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral became available to partners in the U.S. And this week, it became available in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Avaya also unveiled several new features and capabilities, including tools to help migrate customers more efficiently and effectively.
Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral features voice calls, team messaging, meetings, video conferencing, file sharing and more. It allows workforces to meet, share and collaborate regardless of location.
A lot is riding on its success of the offering. Steve Forcum, Avaya technologist, told us at Avaya Engage that it’s “one of the growth pillars of the company.”
To get an update on the rollout, we spoke with Miles Davis, vice president of channel sales for Avaya Canada.
Channel Partners: It’s now been three months since general availability started in the United States. What’s the status of that rollout?
Miles Davis: ACO has been ramping well in the United States the past 90 days and alongside the three new territories (United Kingdom, Canada and Australia). Our U.S. customers will benefit from ACO 2.0, which brings a migration tool for legacy systems, new functionality such as park and page, new capabilities on the ACO portal and additional devices.
CP: Can you give some examples of how partners are making use of opportunities associated with it?
MD: Outside of COVID-19, some of the most common features being used are the open integrations (ACO embedded into Salesforce, plugins for Outlook, Google Suite) and the analytics package for end users, which will explain individual call quality and usage in easy to understand terms.
CP: How has COVID-19 impacted the rollout of Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral? Has it helped partners address their customers’ needs during the pandemic?
MD: Timing-wise, the COVID19 pandemic certainly played a part in the launch of Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral. While we would have liked to be more face to face with our master agents and agents in the ramp up … the call for isolation has definitely showcased the flexibility of the solution. Our first example was just as the pandemic forced companies to react quickly over the weekend in early March. One of our partners was able to take a request for a new temporary overflow team of 50 on Thursday, and have it set up and running by the following Monday. And we’ve seen a long list of requests similar to this.
Keep up with the latest developments in how the channel is supporting partners and customers during the COVID-19 crisis. |
Now that companies are settling into a rhythm (long-term remote or gradual/partial return), the functionality of the interface is being showcased. Avaya Cloud Office is built for call, meet, message and more; this versus having to toggle between multiple solutions that only cater to one or two UC elements (video calling, messaging only platforms, etc), [saving] hours of productive time a week, which adds up to significant improvements at the company level.
CP: Is the international rollout of Avaya Cloud Office now underway? How is that process going to work?
MD: Later this year will come Ireland, the Netherlands and France. And then …