Avaya Equinox Meetings Online is a rebranded and significantly upgraded updating of Avaya Live Video. It is a service which integrates well with on-prem video, and is aimed at the premium part of the market where video quality matters.
Following Rejean Bourgault’s departure for AWS Canada, Avaya names a replacement from within, hoping for some stability in the Canadian country manager role.
While Extreme has always had a significant enterprise business to go along with their mid-market presence, their flurry of recent acquisitions, complemented by internal changes to optimize them, has created a much stronger enterprise focus.
Because the closing of the acquisition will take place during a planned extensive restructuring of the Mitel channel program, the integration of both programs into a new one will take place in relatively short order.
Avaya customers are assured of consistency in service support, Avaya partners will be invited into the Extreme channel program, and further details on platform integration will be disclosed beginning with another webinar after the Avaya deal closes on July 1.
Extreme says it has had a strong reaction from Avaya networking partners, and that they expect the lucrative benefits of the Extreme program as well as the broader portfolio should woo them over.
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.
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 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.
Built on top of the Avaya Breeze engagement platform, Oceana is designed to deliver on industry promises of next-gen customer engagement, and while it is much more of an enterprise play than mid-market, should be a useful tool for partners who play in the enterprise space.
At an event Wednesday, Avaya strongly urged its partners to look closely at their networking fabric and the middleware which enables its automation, saying that it provides a clear path to smart computing and a strong differentiator from competitors.