Avaya Launches New Managed Services Offer to Help Partners Expand Their Business and Enhance Customer Relationships

BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - October 14, 2009) - Avaya today launched a new set of managed services offers to help its partners expand their business, enhance customer relationships and reduce costs. This new suite of Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services allows partners to provide their own brand of industry-leading managed services to customers -- using Avaya technology, processes, and experts.

Managed services provide real-time monitoring and management of communications and information technology (IT) infrastructure. With today's announcement, Avaya's partners can, for the first time, directly offer Avaya managed services to their clients -- branded under their own name, and priced and packaged to support the partner's business plans.

Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services are aligned with IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards, a collection of best practices for IT service management.

"By combining an ITIL-based framework with its own operational support expertise and tools, Avaya provides a flexible model for delivering managed services," said Curtis Price, program vice president, Infrastructure Services for IDC. "Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services provide the key foundational services that enable partners to expand their business by addressing the growing demand for managed services, while establishing a trusted relationship with customers."

Avaya Partners Enabled With Range of Service Options

With Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services, partners now have an array of options for the delivery of managed services. These options provide partners with access to Avaya's industry-leading technology experts, platforms, and operational support, giving partners new opportunities to grow their business, enhance their customer service reputation, and provide differentiated levels of support.

A 'private label' option allows Avaya partners to take the lead in managed service engagements while using Avaya's network operations centers (NOC), applications and equipment, maintenance, and other services. With this approach, a partner can choose to provide some of their own support (i.e. help desks) while Avaya handles the rest -- or they can have Avaya handle all of the support. Partners can brand their services under their own name, or co-branded with Avaya.

Another option has been designed specifically for Systems Integrator and Service Provider partners, which already have their network operations in place. With this approach, Avaya integrates highly-skilled support capabilities into the partner's existing network operations center, providing them with the tools, processes and training for the partner to deliver their own Avaya-based managed services offer.

These new options can improve a partner's communications infrastructure, help partners develop new revenue streams, and enhance customer service. In many cases, partners can also reduce the costs associated with building out their own managed services operation.

An Avaya business partner who recognizes the enhanced value delivered by new Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services is ConvergeOne, a leading value-added solutions provider of state-of-the-art communications solutions.

"We are very interested in the value of the new Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services offers," said Scott Springgate, vice president, services, ConvergeOne. "These types of offers allow us to enhance and grow our business, while we provide better support to our clients and build closer customer relationships."

Multiple Levels of Managed Services Support Is Available

Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services lets partners offer a variety of multi-vendor unified communications, contact center and network infrastructure offerings. They are categorized into three types of service levels:

-- Monitor: Includes service desks, notification, and some monitoring services.

-- Operate: Includes all Monitor services, plus the handling of technology configurations, incident and service management and other maintenance issues.

-- Optimize: Includes both Monitor and Operate levels, plus system administration, availability and capacity management services, as well as ongoing consulting.

"With this announcement, Avaya is accelerating its channel-centric approach with customer needs and partner goals in mind," said Ed Nalbandian, vice president, Avaya Operations Services. "We are now moving to a partner-based model, supporting Avaya and non-Avaya technology, and opening up our capabilities to enable partners to deliver managed services in the way that's most optimal for them."

About Avaya

Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

Contact Information: Media Relations: Jonathan Varman 908-953-6432 jvarman@avaya.com