Mitel’s acquisition of the Toshiba business is all about acquiring customers, and their channel. In order to protect their own Mitel channel partners, the two channels will, however, remain separate.
Sennheiser adds a distributor with focus on the communications space, after trimming its distribution channel by about half a year ago.
Avaya Canada channel chief Corey Mindel discusses partner momentum selling Avaya’s software-based next-gen products, including Zang, which can be a tricky issue for some partners.
Mutare is one of about 90 strategic ISV partners of Zang, but they were also one of the very first.
Carl Watene of Jive Canada on the company’s partnering strategy, and why MSPs should be giving UCaaS a second look.
Walter Denk, who has a distribution background and has been working for Avaya in Germany, is the company’s new global channel chief. Even more importantly, he says that the job has been redefined and that the channel will benefit.
Rejean Bourgault, who has been in the lead role in Canada since October, and Corey Mindel, who has been acting channel leader since Ange Valentini left at the end of the year, were both formally introduced at Avaya Engage.
Zang moves into the cloud PBX market with Zang Office, although at this stage, the channel opportunities, other than referral fees, are limited. Partner opportunities for Zang Space, the collaboration tool, appear stronger.
Avaya says that the sale of its Contact Center business is not being considered as a way to restructure its balance sheet, but that it is in discussions to possibly sell off other assets.
The changes will save partners hours in deployment time, and by reducing time to value, should also please customers.
ShoreTel has done all the cloud installs itself since it acquired its cloud business in 2012, but now their Enabled partners who get certified through the new program will be able to do so.
8×8 only began to actively a develop a channel in recent years, but now the channel has grown to the point where the company has had to introduce a new program with more resources to support it.
While Avaya plans to extend Equinox to the mid-market in the future, today it’s based on Aura and as such is just an enterprise play.
The new Sennheiser headsets, designed specifically for knowledge workers in noisy open offices, feature high end adaptive noise cancellation capability.
Speakerbus makes a high quality product used in financial segments, and by first responders and the military, but it is also exceptionally well suited to managed services.
The new release of IP Office also makes some architectural and administrative changes designed to make things easier for Avaya channel partners who sell the product.
The joint solution will be available through the channel of both vendors, although in Canada, the FatPipe channel is more limited, so Avaya’s channel will likely carry the ball here.
Apart from the typical benefits from certified status of Microsoft’s validation with customers, Microsoft’s policies of encouraging partnerships is generating new business for Actiance from other Microsoft vendor partners, and developing a higher value-add channel for them.
Sonus sees significant opportunities here for partners, who are their sole go-to-market in the enterprise space. They also announced their SBC portfolio has been certified for Skype for Business.
With the Mitel deal now off, Polycom needs to build its own bridge into a cloud future. Nick Tidd, who runs their Global Partner Organization, outlines the company’s plans to do just that, with one key objective being to get their own channel to sell Polycom and Microsoft together.
