Avaya partnership expected to 'ramp up' RingCentral's growth

Imminent UCaaS offering Avaya Cloud Office anticipated to bolster RingCentral’s revenues

Avaya's established global presence is expected to bolster strategic partner RingCentral's international growth, according to the latter's chief exec.

Vladimir Shmunis told investors during its Q4 earnings call that the recently unveiled Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) by RingCentral offering is expected to contribute to revenues by the end of 2020 and that it has already received "positive" feedback from partners.

ACO is a global unified comms-as-a-service (UCaaS) offering ecompassing a full suite of UC, contact centre, UCaaS and contact centre-as-a-service. It is expected to launch on 31 March in the US at first and then expanded to three further countries in the next release cycle.

"We have received positive feedback and interest from both customers and partners alike," Shmunis said on the call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

"Our partnerships with Avaya is going to be a big contributor to growth as we look ahead, and that's going to span all customer segments."

Last year was an annus horribilis for Avaya, which was reported at looking at several buyers, including rival Mitel, before striking up a partnership with cloud-based comms provider RingCentral. The deal saw the latter invest $500m in Avaya.

ACO was revealed at Avaya's Engage conference last week and Shmunis claimed that partners are waiting for the release of the product and that one told him that they were not interested in anything but ACO.

"The field clearly wants a cloud-based pure cloud product from Avaya and here it is. There was really no pushback," he said.

"One major partner, in particular, was saying ‘Hey, we're all in. We are not so much even interested in offering anything but ACO to the customer base'. So that was great for us to hear.

"I would say that there are no red lights. There are not even yellow lights at this point. People are just waiting for the product to really be there."

Shmunis also announced on the call that systems integrator Atos has declared RingCental as its "preferred provider" of UCaaS solutions.

"The partnership will help extend RingCentral's reach into large enterprise accounts, moving forward with digital transformation initiatives," Shmunis explained.

"As part of this partnership, we will introduce a co-branded UCaaS solution. This cooperative solution will be a key part of Atos's digital workplace solutions."

CFO Mitesh Dhruv added: "We feel that Atos and Avaya will be vectors for ramping up the international growth for us going forward as both of these companies have significant international presence," he said.

Both vendors announced quarterly results yesterday.

RingCentral saw revenue increase 34 per cent year-on-year to $253m for its quarter ending 31 December 2019, while in the same period Avaya saw its revenue drop three per cent year on year to $715m.