BT and Avaya today announced a five-year agreement which will see BT Wholesale deliver Avaya’s unified communications and contact center applications as a cloud service to mid-market and enterprise customers via the indirect channel. The move brings together one of the world’s largest providers of contact center and unified communications services with the U.K.’s leading wholesale communications business.
Called Avaya Cloud Solutions, the service will give businesses and public sector organizations with 250-plus employees access to the full suite of Avaya Aura contact center and unified communications products delivered over BT Wholesale’s high speed, high quality, managed Ethernet network. The service will be available only from Avaya accredited channel partners through BT Wholesale. It will provide customers with adaptable communications applications, security and service level guarantees which have previously only been available at an enterprise level. BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries.
The joint initiative also offers existing Avaya customers a hybrid model with managed migration to help them evolve from on-site to cloud based services. In making the move to a hosted environment, BT Wholesale and Avaya will help companies better manage costs by eliminating the need for large, up-front capital investments and upgrades. The pay-as-you-grow business model will enable businesses to respond quickly and flexibly to their customer demands and improve the customer experience and revenue generation. The service also offers the assurance of a secure and reliable platform provided by Avaya and BT Wholesale, delivered by their preferred channel partner.
Meanwhile, channel partners will benefit from the combined reach and market share of both companies, exploiting economies of scale, streamlined provisioning and configuration tools, and faster speeds to market. They will be able to build innovative commercial deals for their customers, differentiating on price and service.
"There are currently no wholesale options which allow the U.K. channel to address mid-market and enterprise customers with an end to end service,” said James Hennah, director, fixed telecoms, BT Wholesale, in a statement. “For most, their only realistic option until now has been to fund and build propositions themselves, but with this agreement, channel partners can easily harness the combined strengths of BT Wholesale and Avaya without capital investment.”