Jim Chirico kicked off Avaya’s Engage event in Austin by updating the company’s progress, and stressing that the company has reoriented its approach to the market and their customers.
Nureva adds net-new international and North American sales director positions, as the company expands the number and type of partners, and explores new kinds of go-to-market relationships.
Avaya has announced alterations to the Edge partner program it first rolled out two years ago, to remove some pain points, and which provides partners with more compensation than before, but which is distributed differently.
Comm100, which has been in business since 2009, just formalized its first partner program in September, and has onboarded four new partners, with many more in the pipeline. They are looking to build the channel business to 20 per cent within the next 1-2 years.
Plantronics sees the HP Elite Slice G2 Audio-Ready as providing formidable conference room advantages, including the elimination of cable clutter from tables, and is transitioning from the Polycom MSR series to these Polycom + HP SRS Bundles for Microsoft room systems.
A new Master Agent agreement with TradeWinds Brokerage establishes Mitel’s first Master Agent in ANZ, where their UCaaS business is already strong. It leverages a U.S. relationship which is part of a growing Master Agent channel in that market.
The ending of the joint venture between Sennheiser and William Demant, which will see the Sennheiser unified communications business transition to William Demant on January 1 2020, means a much more aggressive growth strategy, and new VP Jim Fairweather said that planning has already begun, which includes a more focused channel strategy.
The new DaaS service differs from the leasing option in that Avaya retains control of the device, which some customers like because it reduces their risk. It also allows them to upgrade to a higher priced device with no penalty.
Avaya believes its solution provider channel will also have some interest in the store, which offers Avaya’s UC and CC as-a-service options. They also confirmed that this online store is not a direct play.
Jabra resellers get access to a wireless earbud headset that has appeal to consumer product users, but at a much higher quality that is certified for Skype for Business, and which can spare them a long series of support issues compared to the kind of products in this form factor that have been available until now.
Cisco’s collaboration team kicks off a busy Partner Summit with new collaboration dongle for any screen, a smaller room-based telepresence package, and the integration of cloud calling into Webex Teams.
Jabra’s first corded model in their next-gen Engage franchise is aimed at the more price-sensitive part of the market, but still contains some interesting technology innovations.
Zoom sees the expansion of the platform’s capabilities as broadening collaboration conversations for Zoom channel partners, who are a still small, but growing part of their go-to-market strategy.
The newly announced ones are the Voyager 4200 UC, aimed at the ‘corridor warrior,’ and the Savi 8200, which extends the range of the Plantronics line that supports deskphones, mobile phones and PCs. They also recently announced the Elara 60 series, which is a mobile phone station.
CounterPath has added a VAR channel in the last couple years, although the new service will initially launch only through service provider and retail channels, in case any issues need to be worked out.
Texas-based Tango Networks launched their cloud offering in Europe first, but now brings it to the North American market, and are expanding their channel of enterprise-focused partners to help sell it.
Sennheiser is targeting the burgeoning unified collaboration market for headsets with a type of competitor displacement promo which is a first for the company in North America in recent memory.
Wildix is strong in Europe, but just began to expand into the U.S. a year and a half ago, and have a small presence in Canada today. They are looking to build on that by attending the ASCII event in Toronto.
Lenovo continues their strategy designed to make them a major Smart Office player, with the announcement of their second ThinkSmart offering for the Smart Office, following up their first, which just was released to General Availability.
Sennheiser is looking to their first unified communication and collaboration headset to further stimulate their Canadian business, which has already been showing strong momentum.
