Fadi Moubarak (Avaya)
Communications vendor Avaya has re-tweaked its Edge Partner Program in an effort to encourage more service provision from the channel.
The US-headquartered company has launched a communications platform-as-a-service which will feature a number of APIs for partners to provide to end-users.
Announced at the Avaya Partner Summit in Dubai this week, the platform will offer interface functionalities with social platforms to speed up time-to-market for partners.
The changes come as part of an effort to shift channel partners away from operating a traditional reseller model to providing full unified communications (UC) and contact communications (CC) solutions.
New solutions include embedding artificial intelligence and biometrics into communications workflows. To help partners with this shift, the vendor claimed it will ‘ramp up’ partner capabilities on an ongoing basis through training.
Avaya has also introduced a social network for chatbot and will start providing services using Amazon Alexa for partners to deploy to end-users.
“Avaya wants its channel partners to continue growing – pure and simple,” said Fadi Moubarak, Avaya channel vice president. “As a result, in 2019, we’ll be focusing our efforts on three key areas to enable that.
"There will be a bigger emphasis on cloud; we will enable the delivery of complete solutions that build on our market-leading, API-driven ecosystem; and we will deliver new technologies and innovations that offer answers to genuine business challenges.”
Avaya’s updates follow on from its addition of a cloud integrator stream to its Edge program last year.
Earlier this year, the vendor launched Avaya Cloud to push cloud products and services.
Former IBM vice president of strategic partners for cloud and Watson platforms, Mercer Rowe, was initially appointed to lead the cloud business, but has since been replaced by Gaurav Passi.
