Avaya’s cloud-native, Unified Communications-as-a-Service solution running on Google Cloud Platform has launched to help customers of all sizes, including small-to-medium businesses (SMB), more fully leverage the flexibility, efficiency and scalability of cloud.

This new offer, initially available in 24 global markets, enables Avaya partners to more effectively transition SMBs to cloud-based communications. Powered by Avaya IX provides a customizable, just-in-time cloud communications infrastructure that allows partners to achieve significant cost-reduction with the capability to provision services for their customers at cloud speed. Building on its strategic integration with Google Cloud, this is the deployment platform for Powered by Avaya IX, providing cost benefits through this highly resilient and scalable solution. Avaya has also adopted Kubernetes to empower Avaya solutions with microservices and containerization, taking a true cloud foundation design approach in their solution offerings. This advances multiple cloud deployment options for businesses, delivering the benefits of cloud solutions while avoiding the one-size-fits-all limitation offered by other providers.

“Powered by Avaya IX now gives SMBs an attractive cloud communications option with many of the capabilities, features and benefits previously associated with larger enterprise offerings,” said Chris McGugan, Avaya Senior Vice President, Solutions & Technology. “This new offer is branded by our partners and accelerates the opportunities for the global network of Avaya authorized partners to expand the market with a robust, secure and reliable communications platform. Partners can leverage Avaya’s popular communication offer deployed on Google Cloud, without the need to invest in and support their own infrastructure, providing an attractive option over competing cloud offers.”

Olitel is an IT systems integrator based in Brazil and a key partner for Avaya in Latin America. “Avaya’s approach to cloud communications deployment options and containerization helps further extend our competitive edge in the market,” said Mario Mendez, CEO, Olitel. “By providing just-in-time infrastructure, we minimize our costs while allowing us to offer the benefits of a complete cloud Unified Communications solution to our customers. The new architecture also allows us to cost-effectively reach the smallest businesses and scale from there, making any size organizations an opportunity for us.”

It is great to see Avaya serious about Latin America, SMB and the MSP market all at once!

Back in 2012 at ITEXPO which coincidentally also has a focus on MSPs, SMBs and Latin America, was where we broke the news that CPE player Shoretel was buying UCaaS player M5.

At the time – we wrote – between keynotes:

Cisco may now be forced to buy 8×8 and Avaya will likely make a move as well. This move could even push Vonage to go after the SMB space. Mitel is an interesting question – they have leading edge tech but a troubled stock to use as currency.

This quote is interesting but shocking at the same time. Vonage listened to our advice, Avaya and Cisco took a looong time to respond and lost tremendous share as a result. Now that everyone is in on the cloud game – the UCaaS market will get far more competitive and hopefully innovative.

It would be a shame if this becomes a massive price war instead of a race to make customers more productive, efficient and able to tap into the future of work.

Learn about the latest in everything business tech… UCaaS, the Channel, IT, IOT, Edge, Cybersecurity, AI, SD-WAN, and the Future of Work at the world’s only MSP Expo, part of the ITEXPO #TechSuperShow, Feb 12-14, 2020 Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Update: Shortly after posting tech thought leader and tastemaker, Andy Abramson was nice enough to send this message:

The Avaya post and what they are claiming to be doing with Google and Microservices is much along the lines of Craig Walker’s Keynote at ITEXPO 2018…..further underscoring that ITEXPO is where the industry tells the story of what they are doing and what’s to come.