Lenovo announces the GA of the Smart Office videoconferencing device, developed in partnership with Microsoft, that was announced last fall at Microsoft’s Ignite event. What they deem more important however, is their message to the market that this product is only the start of an initiative designed to make Lenovo a major player in the Smart Office space.
3CLogic is partnered deeply with a very select number of vendors, one of which is ServiceNow. The new integration lets ServiceNow reps handle all the interaction with 3CLogic phone support through the ServiceNow interface.
Plantronics reworks its channel program to give greater emphasis to implementing their SaaS management solution, and to selling their hardware within broader solutions rather than simply as peripherals.
The Engage franchise, available in models which connect to two and five devices respectively, and in mono, stereo and lightweight convertible models, is designed for dense contact centre environments, and allows for connection of three times as many wireless headsets with no loss of quality.
Mitel is also emphasizing that their acquisition by SearchLight Capital Partners means business as usual for customers and partners, with no change to the company’s leadership, roadmap or channel programs stemming from the deal.
Longtime Westcon exec Corbin is recruited to 8×8 to become old channel chief Chris Peters’ new boss, and talks with ChannelBuzz about his plans to drive the company’s business forward.
Plantronics moves far beyond headsets by buying Polycom, which brings them into three additional businesses that are synergistic to their headset core.
The new technology will roll out later this year in a new service, Avaya Mobile Experience, although Canadians will have to wait a little longer, since it will initially be limited to the U.S.
Zang believes that the seven new updates to Zang Workflow will significantly help the channel, by making it easier for them to build customized applications for their customers.
Ooma’s CEO Eric Stang discusses the implications of the deal with ChannelBuzz, including the likely impact on both the Ooma and Voxter solution provider channels.
Specific details on the new Mitel channel program elements, and the distributors involved, will not be announced until April, but the strategic outline of both elements of the go-to-market strategy was made clear.
While Calabrio has been expanding its cloud presence with new partnerships with Contact Centre-as-a-Service providers, they are also leveraging their strategic platform and reseller partners and looking to expand into new kinds of platform markets.
Avaya also rebooted their chatbot strategy with a significant deepening of their AI focus, and they have some things coming in the near future that will be of interest to partners.
Avaya’s restructuring issues in 2017 had an impact in the midmarket in Canada which is served by the channel. Those problems have disappeared, and Avaya is bullish about its Canadian channel business moving forward.
Mercer Rowe, newly recruited from IBM’s cloud business to put Avaya on a cutting-edge path in the cloud, laid out his plans at the Avaya ENGAGE event this week
New Avaya CEO Jim Chirico acknowledged the old Avaya was the equivalent of a team that loses football games by playing a prevent defense, and told the company’s customers and partners that now they have a fundamentally different gameplan.
Avaya was already partnered with Spoken, but the acquisition will allow broaden application of their technology throughout Avaya’s portfolio, to enable customers to transform their business models.
Nectar creates a new Chief Revenue Officer position to coordinate the company’s different channel routes to market.
This extension of the Avaya-Salesforce relationship provides a complete omni-channel integration between the customer engagement and CRM platforms. The companies plan to develop the relationship further, into areas like the Internet of Things.
Cisco previews Spark Assistant, which aims to bring voice control to its collaboration tools, and ultimately create a AI-based meeting moderator.
