One additional change is that to satisfy data residency requirements in certain markets, Avaya Cloud Office customer data is now stored in-country by default, in select markets, which include Canada and the U.S.
Mitel also plans to make some major changes to their marketing enablement policies for partners in the second half of the year.
Alexa for Business for Zoom Rooms with Poly is initially targeted at the COVID sensitive market as companies return some of their workforce to the office, but they see the longer term use cases as extending well beyond that.
Observe.AI has always had a key channel component through alliances with strategic vendor partners, but the company is now building out its trusted advisor channels, starting with a Master Agent channel, and with a VAR channel to come.
Zoom also increases the number of Master Agents in the program, and will also be evolving the Zoom Phone program so that partners in geos with different regulatory systems will be able to sell Zoom Phones on their own paper.
EPOS, which took the US and gaming products in the 2020 split of Sennheiser, had never had a structured overall program in the Sennheiser days, but has reworked the program, believing that was necessary to scale their growth.
The Evolve2 30 is a superior version to the existing Evolve 30, with better collaboration features, passive noise cancellation, durability and flexibility, although the older model will also remain in production.
In addition to the Rove, which is a brand new line, Poly has also announced the refresh of another DECT series, the Savi 7300.
The Studio P is not exclusively a Work From Home product, although that trend accelerated its development, but it is Poly’s first commercial entry for this part of the market.
Available on a freemium model and not tied to the RingCentral platform, Glip meetings have no real time limit, and facilitate pre- and post-meeting preparation and collaboration so that meetings have more context than is typically the case.
This is Jabra’s first partnership around their PanaCast 180 degree panoramic camera solution, and the goal is to extend the collaboration partnership with HP, which will include letting HP leverage the data capabilities from PanaCast.
The new Poly Sync devices, which extend from the home office [Poly Sync 20] to small and mid-sized conference rooms [Poly Sync 60] feature both newer technology and price points that are competitive in the small device space.
The global plan allows for streamlining the service agreement process by letting customers purchase domestic calling across all geos, while the new support covers mainly Europe, but also geos in Central and South America, and in Asia.
The portfolio has been reorganized into three components: Avaya OneCloud CCaaS; Avaya OneCloud UCaaS; Avaya OneCloud CPaaS.
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.
