Avaya, RingCentral deploy cloud office in multiple markets

The US-based Avaya Inc., has extended its partnership with RingCentral to further proliferate its unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solution including cloud office to as many as 13 markets worldwide.

“We are continuing to work with RingCentral to deploy Avaya cloud offices in roughly about 13 markets, mainly in North America, Western Europe, and a few in Asia, Australia, New Zealand. We rebranded our Cloud Contact Center as an experience platform, and that is globally available in many markets including in India,” Tim Sherwood, Global VP – Partnerships & Alliances, Avaya told ETTelecom.

The executive further said that the company is looking at the experience platform as an innovation engine, serving both employee communications productivity, as well as customer experience. “That’s really where we’re putting the bulk of our new development investments in anything that is related to artificial intelligence (AI) that is typically delivered from the cloud and experience platform to our customer base.”

Early this year, Avaya and Vlad Shmunis-driven RingCentral extended their multi-year partnership to unlock further opportunities including additional go-to-market strategies to facilitate Avaya Cloud Office to newer markets.

“We do have a joint commitment with RingCentral on the development side to go at a deeper level of integration between the UCAS (Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and the CC (Contact Centre) functionality,” he said.

Alan Masarek-headed Avaya said that the company would also be partnering with local service providers to enable the telephony directly into its solution for an enhanced experience to its existing customers.

On the channel partner front, Sherwood said that the company has reset its strategy with some of its traditional value-added resellers so as they could add value through the cloud offering, which tends to be more oriented around customer personalisation.

The US company has close to 1,800 employees on the engineering side that includes developers including at Pune in India.

Avaya is also bullish on homeland security and surveillance portfolio and works closely with technology partners in the US and Canadian markets.

“We partner with companies like Alliance Technologies. They sell cameras, badge access, and have a group within them that sells the actual security devices. They are also purchasing from us to create a much tighter security solution,” Brian Anderson, Practice Leader for Public Safety at Avaya said.

The executive said that nearly 85% of all calls nationwide to 911 come from mobile phones.

From a perspective of provider 911, Anderson said that the company shares control of enterprise assets like door locks, camera feeds, and paging interfaces with the first responders in emergency scenarios.

Lately, Avaya has shifted its focus to improve emergency and public safety services. It deployed Dial 100 for local policing in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.