Avaya and RingCentral first partnered five years ago, and a lot has changed since.
From financial wobbles at the former to leadership shifts at both, the vendors have endured a topsy-turvy start to the decade.
However, the relationship between them has stayed strong and continues to evolve.
Indeed, it started with Avaya acting as an agent, paving the way for customers to switch to RingCentral.
That original agreement saw them move hundreds of thousands of seats.
The success led to an expansion, with the vendors combining the migration with Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) and its endpoints.
Now, Avaya and RingCentral have sold “some 500,000” seats together, according to Alan Masarek, CEO of Avaya.
Yet both enterprise communications stalwarts sensed the opportunity to further the relationship, and that's precisely what happened at this month's Avaya Engage event.
A Hybrid Avaya-RingCentral Offering
Perhaps most notably, Avaya and RingCentral launched a hybrid solution that integrates RingCentral Meetings, available under the ACO brand, with Aura, Avaya's on-premise PBX.
Previously, customers had to choose between ACO or leveraging Aura with a phone system.
Yet, with RingCentral now integrating with Aura, users can keep their on-premise telephony as they utilize RingCentral’s collaboration tools. As Masarek told ZKast:
It's all about innovation without disruption. Letting customers maintain their existing infrastructure while adopting new technologies.
As such, one part of the business may now use the full ACO suite while another continues to use their on-premise systems, with additional digital capabilities from RingCentral.
That will allow big businesses to slowly migrate different locations to ACO, enabling a more cautious, phased cloud migration.
Acknowledging this, Vlad Shmunis, Founder & CEO of RingCentral, summarized: "It's about meeting customers where they are and offering them a path to the cloud at their own pace."
RingSense AI In the Avaya Cloud Office
Avaya customers leveraging ACO or Avaya Aura can now leverage RingSense, RingCentral’s conversational intelligence platform.
In doing so, they can enable voice transcriptions, meeting summaries/insights, and video highlights - among many other things.
"RingSense AI brings conversation intelligence to all communication modalities—messaging, video, and phone," added Shmunis.
It includes features like transcription, sentiment analysis, and action items, helping users focus on interactions without taking notes.
"This integration with Avaya's offerings ensures customers benefit from advanced AI capabilities," concluded the CEO.
Most interestingly, however, RingCentral is bringing these capabilities to customers in on-premise and hybrid environments as well as to Avaya's cloud customers.
