Avaya’s long-awaited single system for managing partner pricing and quoting finally has a due date – the networking vendor has announced that Avaya One Source will roll out globally this year, starting with EMEA and Asia Pacific by July, and ultimately arriving in North America by the end of the year.

Avaya has been pledging a unified quoting tool since the introduction of its Avaya Connect partner program, its first program that included both legacy Avaya and Nortel products and partners. And the need for a streamlined system has become even more apparent with the acquisition and integration of other companies along the way, most notably video conferencing company Radvision.

Currently, each of those groups has their own price books, catalogues and quoting tools, making it cumbersome for partners to get a quote for customer projects that involved products from multiple categories. One Source brings all of Avaya’s products under the same roof and into the same tool, and provides the framework for offering future products, or integrating the offerings of future acquisitions. In all, some 200 pricing catalogues are being consolidated into One Source.

“It’s going to simplify and streamline the ordering process,” said Avaya Canada channel chief Renzo DiPasquale. On average, he said, partners who’ve had early access to the tool have seen the time to produce a quote reduced by about 50 percent.

With the move to OneSource, the company is also tackling the complexity of figuring out partner discounts on its gear. Currently, the company has upwards of 1,400 material price groups into which its products fall for discounting. With the launch of One Source, the company is bringing that down to 13 distinct categories by consolidating the pricing groups into larger overall categories, including networking, wireless, and contact center.

One Source allow introduces the ability for partners to share the quotes they generate with distributors via the Web, and allows for access to quotes and ordering without the need for partners to connect via VPN.

The networking vendor also announced plans to introduce a series of bundles that bring together frequently combined unified communications functions and makes them available on a pay-per-user model via the channel. The company will introduce three new Avaya Unified Communications Suites: Foundation, which covers SIP, telephony, instant messaging and desktop video; Mobility, which adds single number access, BYOD features and secure remote access; and Collaboration, which bundles a the breadth of Avaya’s communications and collaboration offerings. Foundation and Mobility Suites are available now, with Collaboration set to debut next month.

DiPasquale said the packages use the typical bundling tactics of offering more bang for the customer’s buck adding features that would be separately more than the combined cost of the bundle. The suites are also easier for solution providers to get access to – they can be ordered as a single SKU from distribution.

Like One Source, the Suites fall under the category of making it easier to do business, DiPasquale suggested.

“Any time we can streamline the process, that leads to a more satisfied customer, a happier partner, and more revenue and more margin for everyone,” he said.