The portfolio has been reorganized into three components: Avaya OneCloud CCaaS; Avaya OneCloud UCaaS; Avaya OneCloud CPaaS.

Today, Avaya is announcing a new brand architecture which realigns its portfolio under the Avaya OneCloud brand. Their cloud offerings are now categorized into three focus areas: Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, Avaya OneCloud UCaaS and Avaya OneCloud CPaaS. Traditional on-prem communications products like Aura and IP Office sit on a foundational level underneath, with a path to the cloud. Avaya believes that the new nomenclature will make it much easier for them and their channel partners to highlight value and successfully evangelize their solutions to customers.

Avaya’s rebranding campaign actually began at their Engage event in early 2019. With their IX [Intelligent Xperience] strategy, they announced they would both be simplifying their portfolio and giving their solutions names which more closely interact with what the products do.

“The Xperience rebrand was to get out of our own way, so that we could offer solutions rather than tactical feature benefits, which is what the shifting nomenclature was all about,” said Simon Harrison, Avaya’s CMO. “This is an evolution of that. It reflects that when it comes to the future of the world, it will be powered by cloud ecosystems and evolving public cloud offerings.”

The new framework sets up three focus areas: Avaya OneCloud CCaaS, Avaya OneCloud UCaaS and Avaya OneCloud CPaaS. Everything in these areas can be completely deployed in the cloud, including subscription and managed services, and Avaya’s private and public cloud offers.

“We are expanding what we are delivering in terms of OneCloud,” Harrison said. “It’s all flattened and normalized and it makes sense. It shifts to a vehicle that serves us better for the future, in terms of both  vision and product strategy. In the future you might just buy one cloud subscription and check the boxes you need.”

So where do Avaya’s traditional communications solutions like Aura and IP Office fit in this model? They aren’t actually part of One Cloud UCaaS, but are a foundational level underneath it.

“The on-prem solutions are building blocks underneath OneCloud, which give the  ability to bake in more without having to change the message,” Harrison indicated. “We are shifting to a cloud-first model, and describing value in terms of public cloud benefits so we sell more powerful solutions. We are not neglecting our on-premises base, and they are still key parts of the communications portfolio, but we lead with public cloud, while creating a path for the on-prem solutions to One Cloud so that our on-prem customers still feel loved.”

Harrison stressed that for channel partners, the new structure of the portfolio provides them with more and better ways to position and sell Avaya.

“There are so many ways that people selling Value-Added solutions get in their own way,” he said. “They tend to be focused on consumption style. But the real power of cloud is getting rid of maintenance, and scalability, and not having to worry about platform. We are focused in getting the channel to use the right language here. There are so many ways in which cloud provides value, and if you get into it in the right way, it changes the conversation completely. Consumption style is just part of it. The focus needs to be on the more transformational aspects of technology.

“Our solutions marketing team is shifting to become more evangelists, and we want partners to be able to evangelize in the same way,” Harrison continued. “These are complicated sales, and we have to catch up to cloud value to talk about it with customers. OneCloud provides the vehicle for doing that.”