Most MSPs have chosen not to become involved in the UCaaS market, something Pax8 is trying to change, in the belief that their ecosystem can provide MSPs with more visibility than they have had from working directly with these vendors.
Okta’s partner report is a follow-up to an earlier one done with Okta customers, and the trends are essentially the same.
LogMeIn makes two unrelated announcements, expanding MSP opportunities in their Identity and Access Management business, and adding new hardware bundles for GoToRoom in their UCC business.
The channel angle with this offering is really aimed at the Master Agent channel, as it is targeted at smaller customers.
Avaya Canada channel leader Miles Davis with some thoughts on why the time for UCaaS is now.
Avaya Canada took advantage of the 90 days since the initial launch of Avaya Cloud Office in the U.S. to get what for them is a new Go-to-Market model in place, and also benefit from some tweaks to the solution.
In its first launch of these new white-labelled Intermedia offerings outside the U.S., NEC is looking to use them to re-establish a strong presence in Canada.
IGNITE!, which is really a sub-program of RingCentral’s Channel Harmony program, is aimed at organizations with 400 employees and under, and features a different sales process tailored for a shorter sales cycle, and over which the partner has full control.
Mitel has been selling a wholesale private cloud offering in the U.K., and with this announcement, that model both goes global and onto the Google Cloud.
A new contact management layer ties together chats in different channels into a single experience, keeping track of each user and allowing them to switch between channels.
The deal will make Evolve IP’s voice integration between Microsoft Teams and Cisco VoiP available in Canada for the first time. It will also be sold initially through a Master Agent-style commission model, although that’s likely to evolve itself long-term.
Intermedia CEO Mike Gold says that this partnership is different from all their others, in that it’s the biggest they have ever done, with enormous implications for both parties.
The new Poly partner program which brings the two legacy ones together will feature a new partner portal, that will be live on April 10.
While RingCentral maintains its partnership with Zoom, its new browser-based video now comes standard in RingCentral Office. It is also standard in Avaya Cloud Office, although Avaya will continue to sell its own video solutions to their enterprise customers.
Poly continues the overhaul of its headset portfolio that has been ongoing for the past several months with a new model, borrowing the same 3-in1 wearing option from the Savi 8245, and providing a Microsoft Teams option.
The new channel and program are focused on taking Zoom’s video-first UC platform to market, which they believe will fit partner business models better through a referral system rather than doing deals on the partner’s paper.
Synacor has a large channel, for whom the addition of Qumu’s enterprise-grade video will significantly deepen their collaboration offerings.
Poly Lens will eventually unify all the endpoint management solutions from both the Plantronics and Polycom sides of the house.
Avaya is introducing new cloud services through their RingCentral partnership, and is aggressively expanding into the Master Agent channel, but even as a Canadian channel exec moves on, the company still sees its stability in Canada as a major asset.
New Avaya channel chief Jon Brinton lays out Avaya’s channel strategy for the year ahead, which unsurprisingly emphasizes the new Avaya Cloud Office but also focuses on developing new channels.
