Avaya extends its Contact Centre as a Service story with Microsoft
Avaya continues its cloud transformation with the introduction of Avaya IX-CC, a next generation Contact Center as a Service platform, built from the ground up as a cloud-based solution developed on a microservices architecture.
Scheduled for launch in the first half of 2020, Avaya IX-CC will enable organisations of all sizes to smoothly transition from their on-premise deployment to a multi-tenant, enterprise-grade cloud architecture – deployed on the public cloud platform of their choice.
The announcement comes as Avaya focuses its R&D investments to address market demand for cloud-based solutions. With Avaya IX-CC, customers get a next-generation cloud platform in a multi-tenant architecture that can be scaled from small-to-medium sized businesses to large enterprises.
“This is a natural evolution of our product development process to fully embrace a cloud-based, multi-tenant platform with feature-rich applications and the flexibility of a microservices architecture,” said Chris McGugan, Avaya senior vice president, Solutions & Technology. “While continuing to offer our customers their choice of deployment options, we expect our enterprise customers to shift from an on-premise deployment paradigm to a cloud-based private or public cloud architecture over the next two to three years. Accordingly, and uniquely, our next generation contact center platform, Avaya IX-CC, has been designed to meet that expectation.”
Avaya and Microsoft will join forces to bring contact centre services to Azure. Avaya IX-CC will initially be hosted in Microsoft’s cloud data centers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The service will be introduced initially in the Arab Gulf region with plans to expand the offer to other global regions in the future.
Ahmed Helmy, International CTO Avaya said “Our partnership with Microsoft allows us to expand our feature-rich applications on a cloud-based microservices architecture and platform – giving our customers the flexibility in deployment they have come to expect from our brand. They will also have the welcome assurance and flexibility to run their workloads across multiple clouds.”
The Avaya IX-CC next generation Contact Center as a Service platform is expected to be available to customers in H1 2020 with voice capabilities, followed by omnichannel features later in the year.
“Through our work with Avaya, Microsoft now has the opportunity through our marketplace to offer enterprise-grade CCaaS solutions to businesses of any size delivered through Avaya and running on our Azure cloud,” said Sherif Tawfik, Executive Director, Channel, Alliances, Startups, and SMEs.
The all-in-one intelligent workspace - Onespace
Now available for initial customers to implement and evaluate, the new intelligent workspace solution enables enterprises to leverage an open and extensible framework to bring together data from across the entire enterprise, enabling organisations to help drive improved efficiency and enhance the employee experience.
“Avaya is transforming itself in many ways, from its approach to building next-generation communications technologies to its commitment to cloud-based delivery models. The company’s mastery of open APIs and SDKs will be key to the success of Avaya IX Workplace – few vendors with Avaya’s scale can claim seamless integration with the majority of business applications, and the promise of easy access to those applications through a single, cloud-based interface will be particularly enticing to businesses looking to raise their employee experience game,” said Dave Michels, industry analyst and Founder of TalkingPointz.
The powerful features of Avaya IX Onespace create a secure, cloud-based, single access point for email, productivity apps, social media and more, offering a bird’s eye view of employees’ most pressing tasks, most important conversations with colleagues, and upcoming appointments in one contextual, intuitive, and comprehensive channel.
Initial introduction of these new innovations will be available in the EMEA and APAC regions in the first half of 2020.