Avaya Expands Cloud Portfolio

Almost exactly a year ago, Avaya announced its foray into the (collaborative) cloud with its Avaya Live offering aimed at small business. Hosted services are growing rapidly and Avaya wants some of that - so here at Enterprise Connect 2013, Avaya announced an expanded cloud portfolio.

Three new services gives Avaya four cloud paths.

Avaya Live remains unchanged: SMB, hosted UC, direct model. What's new are two new "Cloud-Enablement" portfolios aimed at service providers. One service is for UC&C + contact center and the other for video, based on Aura and Radvision, respectively. The fourth option is a private cloud service aimed at mid market contact centers.

The portfolio is positioned against the likes of BroadSoft and Cisco HCS on the UC&C side, and against Cisco and Genesys on the contact center solution. Cloud Service Providers are expected to host the platforms, and to sweeten the offer Avaya is not requiring its partners to purchase unsold licenses. That leaves the hardware commitment, but the solution does support virtualized servers. Another ace up its sleeve is Aura is a multi-tenant platform, so providers don't have to spin-up a new instance for each customer.

The Cloud Enablement video solution involves provider packaging of the Elite Series MCUs, Scopia Mobile and Scopia Desktop. Partners include Yorktel, Telstra, FacetoFace; and now Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest telecom services provider.

The private cloud is more managed services than cloud, and named Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions (COS) Express. As a managed service, the systems can be hosted by Avaya, a partner/provider, or even the end customer on or off premises. The service is available to its dealer channel to resell, and in some cases partners can even co-brand it. COS Express will be expanded, but is initially targeted at mid-market contact center customers with up to 500 agents.