BT Wholesale and Avaya Come Together to Launch Cloud Solutions to the Channel

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM–(Marketwired – Aug 12, 2014) – BT and Avaya today announced a five-year agreement which will see BT Wholesale deliver Avaya’s Unified Communications and Contact Centre applications as a cloud service to midmarket and enterprise customers via the indirect channel. The move brings together one of the world’s largest providers of contact centre and unified communications services with the UK’s leading wholesale communications business.

Called Avaya Cloud Solutions, the service will give businesses and public sector organisations with 250+ employees access to the full suite of Avaya Aura® contact centre and UC 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 the kind of bespoke and adaptable communications applications, security and service level guarantees which have previously only been available at an enterprise level.

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.

James Hennah, director, Fixed Telecoms, BT Wholesale said: “There are currently no wholesale options which allow the UK channel to address mid-market and enterprise customers with an end to end service. 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.

“Hosted Communications Services are at the heart of our plans to offer more to our indirect channel business. By working with us, channel partners can offer their business customers a complete and future-proofed communications service.”

Joe Manuele, vice president of Global SP-SI, Alliances and Cloud, Avaya said: “With Avaya Cloud Solutions we are delivering a new path to greater business agility. New and existing customers can now access Unified Communications and Contact Centre Applications as a Service with BT Wholesale through our channel partners, safe in the knowledge that the flexibility, scalability and reliability that is synonymous with Avaya products is available in an even more affordable and manageable way.”

About BT

BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to its customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of five lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Business, BT Consumer, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

For the year ended 31 March 2014, BT Group’s reported revenue was £18,287m with reported profit before taxation of £2,312m.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.btplc.com.

About Avaya

Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

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