RingCentral and Avaya seal alliance to boost sales and partner network with RingCentral’s technology platform

RingCentral Inc. and Avaya Holdings announced closing of their early October alliance.

Avaya and RingCentral will introduce a new solution, Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral (Avaya Cloud Office), which will be the exclusive public Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solution marketed and sold by Avaya.

Avaya Cloud Office combines RingCentral’s UCaaS platform with Avaya’s technology, services and migration capabilities to create a highly differentiated UCaaS offering. The companies expect to launch Avaya Cloud Office in the first quarter of next year.

RingCentral is contributing US$500 million to its partnership with Avaya, including a $125 million investment of 3 percent redeemable preferred equity that is convertible at $16 per share and an advance of $375 million primarily in stock for future payments and certain licensing rights.

In October, RingCentral had announced that it will enter into a commercial agreement with Avaya Holdings, thereby making it an exclusive provider of UCaaS solutions to Avaya. The vendors also decided to jointly develop programs to leverage Avaya’s global sales and partner network, as well as build automated technologies for seamless customer transition to RingCentral’s global UCaaS solution.

This collaboration will enable Avaya’s customers to leverage their existing investments, while reducing migration complexities and timeframes. Avaya Cloud Office is expected to provide an attractive total cost of ownership for Avaya customers and favorable compensation for Avaya and its partners.

“Our game-changing partnership with RingCentral and the introduction of Avaya Cloud Office have generated tremendous excitement with our partners and customers,” said Jim Chirico, Avaya president and CEO. “Avaya Cloud Office is a continuation of our stated strategy to be a cloud-first company, and we believe the addition of this UCaaS solution to our portfolio is a key differentiator that provides customers with a seamless journey to cloud communications.”

“As a leader in cloud communications, we’re laser-focused on bringing the power of the cloud to more enterprise customers,” said Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral founder, chairman and CEO. “With the growth of the mobile and distributed workforce, cloud communications solutions can deliver the capabilities enterprises need to effectively connect with customers, partners, and employees. This strategic partnership accelerates the transition of one of the world’s largest on-premise unified communications installed bases to the cloud.”

ConvergeOne updates managed services lineup with Digital Infrastructure Manage Offering powered by OnGuard

ConvergeOne announced Thursday that it has expanded its managed services portfolio with the launch of its Digital Infrastructure Manage offering powered by OnGuard. 

With ConvergeOne's Digital Infrastructure Manage offering, customers receive purpose-built Managed Services that deliver proactive fault identification, isolation and avoidance, enabling ideal operational experience for their enterprise networking and data center infrastructures. 

ConvergeOne Manage combines ITIL-based best practices delivered by highly skilled engineers using ConvergeOne's custom developed OnGuard 7 management platform with intelligent threat detection and advisory services from Alert Logic, providing the most proactive and complete enterprise networking and data center offering in the market. 

The Digital Infrastructure Manage offering utilizes ConvergeOne's custom developed management and AIOps platform, OnGuard. For years, OnGuard has been the trusted tool to deliver ConvergeOne Managed Services in voice, unified communications, contact center and video environments, with thousands of unique devices across hundreds of customers this year itself. 

ConvergeOne's new OnGuard 7 update provides a standardized platform of tools, services, and automation that extends to customers' enterprise networks and data centers.

ConvergeOne's Digital Infrastructure Manage offering and OnGuard managed services platform have been designed to address the rapidly evolving IT landscape, which features public, private, and hybrid clouds; software-defined environments; higher demands on networks; and increased network and data security monitoring requirements. 

While IT administrators often struggle to keep up with these changes, outsourcing to third party service providers or purchasing new service management tools tend to be expensive and complicated to implement and maintain. ConvergeOne's offerings are unique, enabling customers to maintain their infrastructures at peak performance and availability in a cost-effective, adaptable and transparent manner.

Earlier this month,  ConvergeOne announced that it has extended its Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solution into the mid-market segment with the launch of its ConvergeOne Cloud Experience (C1CX) Mid Market offering.

C1CX provides a secure, scalable, and comprehensive collaboration experience that changes the way people communicate, share content, and manage projects—all with the goal of getting more done with less. C1CX Mid Market for UCaaS consists of two Powered by Solutions - Powered by Avaya and Powered by Cisco. 

ConvergeOne also partners with RingCentral.