ENABLING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH THE RIGHT UCAAS …

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ENABLING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH THE RIGHT UCAAS SOLUTIONSolution Spotlight: Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentralA Frost & Sullivan White Paper

https://ww2.frost.com/research/industry/digital-transformation

Contents 02

Digital Transformation Drives the Move to Cloud .......................................................3

Introduction .........................................................................................................................3

Compelling UCaaS Benefits ..........................................................................................4

Cost Optimization and Risk Mitigation ..............................................................5

Operational Efficiency and Agility ........................................................................6

Enhanced Customer Value .....................................................................................7

Solution Provider Selection Criteria .............................................................................8

Features and Speed of Innovation .......................................................................8

Migration Tools and Incentives .............................................................................9

Service Quality and Reliability .............................................................................10

Security and Industry Compliance ......................................................................11

End-user Experience ................................................................................................11

IT/Telecom Staff Experience ..................................................................................12

Communications Integration with Third-party Software .............................13

Analytics and Reporting ........................................................................................13

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) ............................................................................14

Partner Ecosystem ....................................................................................................15

Provider Business Performance ..........................................................................15

Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................15

Vendor and Solution Spotlight: Avaya Cloud Office ...................................................16

Avaya Background ...........................................................................................................17

Avaya Cloud Services Portfolio .....................................................................................17

Sales Model .........................................................................................................................18

Avaya Cloud Office: Description and Analysis .........................................................19

Overview ......................................................................................................................19

PBX Features and Voice Services ........................................................................19

Conferencing and Collaboration Services .........................................................20

Solution Packaging and Pricing ............................................................................21

Global Office ...............................................................................................................22

Customization and Integration .............................................................................22

Service Reliability, Security and Compliance ....................................................23

Service Administration, Management and Analytics .....................................24

Customer Migration and Support .......................................................................25

Customer Considerations ................................................................................................26

Key Avaya Cloud Office by Advantages and Differentiators .......................26

Best Fit ..........................................................................................................................27

Legal Disclaimer .................................................................................................................28

All rights reserved © 2020 Frost & Sullivan

3Enabling Digital Transformation with the Right UCaaS Solution


DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION DRIVES THE MOVE TO CLOUDIntroductionDigital technologies are profoundly transforming the way businesses operate and create customer value. Mobility, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), unified communications (UC) and collaboration, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced connectivity and other technologies are enabling operational efficiencies, greater employee productivity and competitive differentiation in all industries and business segments.

Frost & Sullivan customer surveys show there also exists a strong correlation between digital technology adoption and high revenue growth rates. However, the proliferation of advanced technologies is raising business communications and IT infrastructure costs and complexity, which creates challenges for IT/telecom staff. Routine management of increasingly sophisticated technology environments often prevents IT/telecom staff from focusing on important tasks—such as aligning technology investments with broader business objectives and optimizing key workflows. To achieve desired performance outcomes, many businesses are moving their software workloads to the cloud to re-assign internal resources to more strategic projects, gain operational agility and become more responsive to evolving customer requirements.

A growing number of businesses are acknowledging the considerable benefits of cloud communications and are adopting hosted IP telephony and unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions. Deployment success requires careful evaluation of provider offers to select the best fit for their specific needs. This paper discusses the benefits of UCaaS as well as the criteria businesses must consider when selecting a UCaaS solution and provider. The paper also provides an assessment of Avaya Cloud Office, a new UCaaS offering tailored for existing Avaya customers and other businesses that value the Avaya experience.

To achieve desired performance outcomes, many businesses are moving their software workloads to the cloud to re-assign internal resources to more strategic projects, gain operational agility and become more responsive to evolving customer requirements.



Compelling UCaaS Benefits Frost & Sullivan research shows that most businesses choose cloud communications to gain greater flexibility at times of rapid growth or downsizing, as well as to access advanced features and capabilities. A Frost & Sullivan survey of 1,266 IT decision-makers worldwide found that 79% recognize faster delivery of services and features as a key benefit of cloud solutions; 75% also believe cloud services are important or very important to business agility and market responsiveness. However, different businesses also face unique challenges and pursue varying objectives when moving their communications to the cloud. Business size and industry vertical often determine the priorities in a cloud migration strategy. Frost & Sullivan finds that UCaaS solutions offer most businesses a broad spectrum of benefits in three key areas:

• Cost optimization and risk mitigation

• Operational efficiency and agility

• Enhanced customer value


Cost Optimization and Risk Mitigation

UCaaS total cost of ownership (TCO) varies based on deployment size, existing infrastructure, solution functionality, performance requirements, number and location of sites, and other factors. However, UCaaS delivers significant cost benefits in the majority of cases. Frost & Sullivan’s survey shows that 77% of IT decision-makers believe cloud solutions reduce costs and 76% state that they reduce software and hardware maintenance. Cost optimization coupled with reduced risks enables most businesses to realize a greater return on investment (ROI) when adopting hosted IP telephony and UCaaS. More specifically, businesses can reduce costs and avoid risks, as follows:

Cost Optimization and Risk Mitigation

Reduce upfront capital investment for associated hardware and software

Replace variable premises-based infrastructure and software maintenance and management costs with predictable monthly fees

Reduce service fees for initial configuration and installation

Provide cost-effective business continuity and disaster recovery through redundant connections and mobile device integration

Reduce the risk of technology obsolescence and sunk costs

Apply security patches and updates as part of monthly service programs



Operational Efficiency and Agility

By outsourcing communications management to an expert third party, businesses can more efficiently allocate internal resources to strategic projects and priority tasks. IT and telecom staff, in particular, can focus on more strategic projects to ensure faster and more targeted impact of technology investments on key performance indicators (KPIs). Businesses can realize efficiencies and improve agility in the following areas:

Operational Efficiency and Agility

Enable flexible, rapid and economical capacity adjustments

Free up internal resources for more strategic tasks

Eliminate the expense and hassle of integrating multiple, disparate technologies in a premises- based UC solution

Provide faster, more economical access to technology updates and new features

Deliver telephony and UC features based on user needs independent of their physical location or underlying infrastructure

Provide access to superior technology expertise




Enhanced Customer Value

For most businesses, technology investments deliver the greatest value when they boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. Advanced UCaaS solutions drive internal productivity and agility, which often results in better products and services, as well as faster and more reliable product and services delivery to the customer. By deploying integrated cloud communications and collaboration and contact center solutions, businesses can also greatly enhance the customer experience. By more effectively aligning internal stakeholders through a broader set of collaboration tools, businesses can enable a better end-to-end customer journey. Several factors impact customer value:

Enhanced Customer Value

Focus on core business activities and customer value creation

Accelerate decision-making and responsiveness to customer concerns through better team collaboration

Accelerate innovation and development cycles through access to more advanced technology tools

Improve product and service quality through enhanced internal coordination and optimized workflows

Improve the customer experience through application integration and custom-tailored solutions


Solution Provider Selection CriteriaAs businesses embark on their cloud migration journey, they must first inventory their existing technology assets and IT/telecom skill sets. Then they must identify critical pain points that can be addressed with advanced communications and collaboration tools and/or cloud delivery models. The next important step is to select a UCaaS solution provider that best addresses specific business needs and better aligns with their key performance objectives. Businesses evaluating UCaaS providers must take into account the following selection criteria:

Features and Speed of Innovation

The majority of UCaaS solutions offer the essential capabilities most businesses require, including:

• Cloud PBX and common business telephony features• Voicemail and unified messaging/voicemail to email• Telephony presence• Auto attendant• Audio conferencing• Mobility (simultaneous/sequential ring)

Frequently, UCaaS service bundles also include:• Instant messaging and online presence• Video calling• Basic ACD • Desktop and mobile soft clients• Personalized call handling and routing

However, fewer UCaaS solutions offer:• Online fax and traditional fax machine support• Multi-level auto attendant• Texting/short messaging services (SMS)• Video conferencing• Content and screen sharing• Robust and seamless experiences across desktops and mobiles• Persistent group chat and team spaces• File sync and share• Voicemail transcription• Automatic call recording• Integrated multi-channel contact center

Solutions also vary in terms of support for popular telephony features such as: • Key system emulation• Call park, call forward• Wireless (e.g., DECT) phone support• Analog device support (fax machines, door phones, paging systems, etc.)• Paging• Receptionist console• Boss/admin features

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Businesses must invest in technology based on their long-term vision for their communications solution evolution. While certain features may not be critical today, they may become important in the future as company size, portfolio, vision and user demographics evolve. UCaaS technology roadmap and speed of innovation can determine a provider’s ability to promptly address shifting customer needs. Providers employing agile software development methodologies and promoting entrepreneurial practices within their organizations are typically nimbler and better positioned to innovate more rapidly.

Migration Tools and Incentives

Most businesses have existing investments in premises-based solutions at varying stages of depreciation and lifecycle. Such businesses must optimize cloud migration processes and ensure maximum investment protection and minimal disruption. Adopting hosted IP telephony and UCaaS solutions that replicate familiar user and IT/telecom admin staff experiences can greatly reduce employee training costs, as well as provisioning, configuration and management costs. The ability to re-deploy existing communications endpoints can also reduce switching costs and disruption. Certain cloud communications providers also allow businesses to trade in their premises-based system licenses for credits toward the new cloud services. More forward-looking providers are also offering programs whereby businesses can consolidate their telecom bills for existing premises-based and new cloud services in cases of phased migration or long-term hybrid deployments. These programs convert all costs to OPEX to enable greater flexibility and ease the business into the cloud future. Frequently, these programs also include provisions for elastic capacity adjustments at no additional cost within a certain period of time (e.g., a year).



Service Quality and Reliability

The move to cloud communications should not entail increased risks or concerns related to service quality and reliability. Businesses must require their providers to offer financially backed uptime SLAs of at least 99.99%, and also seek proof of service performance consistently meeting or exceeding this threshold.

In addition to requesting historical service records to receive evidence of desired performance levels (uptime, mean opinion score, etc.), businesses must inquire about the following:

• Service provider data center architectures (geo-redundancy, failover, traffic route optimization, etc.)

• Quality monitoring tools

• Additional (e.g., analog) line failover

• Intelligent edge device (e.g., gateway, SBC) use for survivability and quality control

• Preventive/proactive service monitoring and management tools.

Provider response times for minor and major issues, endpoint replacement policies, and other processes and capabilities that ensure effective service management should be included in the request for proposal (RFP). Service provider peering arrangements with other carriers are also important as they can impact both service costs and availability.

Businesses must require their providers to offer financially backed uptime SLAs of at least 99.99%, and also seek proof of service performance consistently meeting or exceeding this threshold.

Connectivity options also determine service quality and reliability. Businesses with more stringent requirements may need to deploy UCaaS over private networks using multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) or software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technologies to guarantee better service performance. Those choosing the flexibility to bring their own internet connections must ensure that the UCaaS providers have engineered solutions to monitor quality over public broadband networks.



Security and Industry Compliance

As businesses increasingly adopt digital technologies, security is becoming a top concern for IT management. Multiple variables may impact UCaaS solution security, including the service provider data center setup, the WAN connection between the customer site and the service provider network, the customer local area network (LAN), as well as the users’ endpoints. Businesses must inquire about the methods their service provider is using to ensure greater security—e.g., encryption technologies, fraud protection, data center policies, MPLS connections, etc.

Businesses in more heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, retail, government and financial services must also inquire about solution compliance with key industry regulations such as HIPAA, FedRamp, and PCI. Better security protection and stricter compliance certifications can help businesses prevent disruption due to cyberattacks, fraud, compliance violations or other adverse events

End-user Experience

The end-user experience ultimately determines the value of UCaaS investments. Effective use of advanced communications tools can impact user productivity and job satisfaction, as well as the company’s return on UCaaS investments. Therefore, prior to deploying a new solution, businesses must carefully assess their users’ technology capabilities and preferences before choosing software tools and devices that will deliver the greatest benefits. In addition to features and service quality, other solution characteristics also affect the user experience, as follows:

• Ease of use

• Personalization

• Control over features and settings (e.g., via a convenient graphical user dashboard/portal, intuitive telephone feature menu)

• Service independence of device and network (e.g., seamless mobile and desktop experience, bring-your-own-device support)

In addition to solution design, other factors that help improve overall user perception and utilization of UCaaS tools include:

• Proper training

• Smooth and efficient onboarding

• Self-help tools

• Conveniently accessible helpdesk support



IT/Telecom Staff Experience

The benefits of usability and manageability extend to IT/telecom staff as well. They are ultimately responsible for purchasing, deploying, customizing, integrating and managing the new UCaaS solution. Their journey starts with the provider evaluation and solution purchase processes, whereby online information, live resources (via phone or web chat) and convenient e-commerce (e.g., online ordering) options can greatly enhance their experience. For most businesses, this first phase in solution deployment is a combination of self-education and consultative discussions. Businesses with more complex requirements can also benefit from white-glove implementation and training services. Providers engaging with customers via diverse teams comprised of sales, engineering, project management and other staff can significantly improve deployment outcomes. Providers offering a choice between automated provisioning and custom solution design or a combination of both are likely to address a broader spectrum of customer UCaaS deployment preferences.

When moving communications to the cloud, businesses are looking to outsource complexity, yet also may wish to retain a high degree of control. Advanced admin portals with multiple permission levels and a unified view of all applications within the UCaaS stack can significantly ease the burden on IT/telecom staff and empower multiple stakeholders within the organization to manage features, users, devices and billing based on pre-set policies. Distributed organizations also require the ability to manage multiple sites as a single system and the ability for multiple IT/telecom admins to log in and perform tasks (e.g., updates) simultaneously.

Proper IT/telecom staff training, onboarding support and help desk services also represent critical elements in delivering a superior customer experience. Strong professional services can better assist IT/telecom staff with integration and custom application development and thus further enhance customer value.



Communications Integration with Third-party Software

The ability to integrate with third-party communications or business software, e.g., Microsoft productivity suite, Google G Suite, email, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), human resources (HR), and vertical apps represents an increasingly important criterion in UCaaS provider and solution evaluations. Businesses acknowledge the value of integrating communications with other software to more tangibly impact key business processes and overall business agility. Both off-the-shelf and custom integrations can considerably boost the UCaaS solution ROI. Businesses that require such integrations today or envision the possibility of integrating different types of software in the future must partner with service providers that leverage standards-based technologies and offer flexible APIs and/or Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) capabilities. CPaaS can also enable businesses not yet ready to adopt full-fledged UCaaS solutions to embed communications features into a variety of customer-facing applications to improve customer interactions, drive sales and raise customer satisfaction.

Businesses acknowledge the value of integrating communications with other software to more tangibly impact key business processes and overall business agility.

Analytics and Reporting

To properly measure the outcomes of digital transformation initiatives, including cloud communications adoption, businesses increasingly leverage analytics and reporting tools offered either by their UCaaS providers or third-party vendors. Analytics provide valuable information to both IT/telecom decision-makers and service providers about UCaaS applications, underlying networks, devices and user behavior. Reported metrics can enable businesses to more effectively leverage UCaaS to reduce costs, enhance network efficiency and employee productivity, and improve business outcomes. Analytics tools deliver helpful insights throughout the UCaaS lifecycle phases: assessment, planning, delivery/deployment, management, transformation and optimization.

Most providers offer basic analytics and reporting tools at no additional charge. Businesses looking to better correlate technology investments with actual business performance must inquire about their provider’s ability to offer more advanced analytics and reporting tools, preferably tools providing a broad perspective across multiple communications and collaboration applications and modalities. Intuitive graphical representations, customizable views and reports, sophisticated statistical analyses and predictive analytics can make a big difference in generating superior outcomes from UCaaS deployments.



Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

TCO is an important consideration for all businesses investing in new technologies. It is necessary to look at costs holistically, rather than in isolation, since multiple cost variables can affect the solution TCO, as follows:

• Installation

• Onboarding

• Training

• Integration

• Customization

• Recurring monthly charges (user seats, telephony lines, per-minute charges, etc.)

• Communications endpoints (personal and conferencing desktop phones, soft clients, video devices, etc.)

• Internet access services

• Access lines

When comparing monthly fees across solution providers, businesses must clarify which features are included in service bundles and which ones may need to be added a-la-carte (and hence entail additional charges). Frequently, bundles from different providers appear similar in both features and price; however, there could be important differences in the cost of additional services—e.g., auto attendants, DIDs, toll-free numbers, audio minutes, and others. Businesses must also inquire about potential volume discounts and discounts based on term commitments.

In addition to direct costs, multiple other factors can negatively affect TCO and may need to be taken into account, including:

• Disruptive outages

• Service quality issues

• Limited customer support

Similarly, there could be some positive factors that may be difficult to measure, including:

• Greater user productivity

• Improved workflows

• Better customer engagement

Assessing UCaaS TCO can be a complex undertaking but can help businesses make better choices and more sustainable investments.



Partner Ecosystem

Most providers continually enhance their UCaaS offerings and add other services (e.g., SIP trunking, MPLS, SD-WAN, contact center, managed IT) to their portfolios to offer a convenient one-stop shop to their customers. However, no provider can deliver all the services that businesses may potentially require. Therefore, businesses need to ensure that their UCaaS providers can leverage broad ecosystems of technology partners that can add valuable capabilities to a UCaaS portfolio, including analytics, call recording, advanced collaboration, contact center, networking, and others.

Reseller partnerships also add value to a UCaaS provider ecosystem. Resellers often possess differentiated skills in system integration, IT management, customer premises equipment (CPE) and other areas. Also, resellers typically have long-standing relationships with existing customers and can capitalize on their in-depth knowledge of the customers’ infrastructure and business challenges to select and/or help custom-design solutions that best fit specific customer needs.

Provider Business Performance

Businesses must take providers’ business performance into account when evaluating UCaaS solutions. Most businesses prefer to engage with providers for the long term to avoid switching costs and ensure greater user comfort with service features and experiences. Provider financial stability can be assessed in terms of revenue growth rates, profitability, and market share. However, other metrics such as customer satisfaction, customer churn rates, and net promoter scores (NPS) provide valuable information about overall provider competitiveness.

Conclusion Choosing a hosted IP telephony and UCaaS provider is an important decision that must be based on the above selection criteria, as well as any highly specific requirements that may be relevant to their particular circumstances. Sustainable, long-term UCaaS investments deliver superior value and can greatly enhance broader digital transformation initiatives. The following solution and provider spotlight offers detailed company and solution portfolio information to assist businesses in their evaluation of Avaya Cloud Office and strategic decision-making.

Sustainable, long-term UCaaS investments deliver superior value and can greatly enhance broader digital transformation initiatives.



VENDOR AND SOLUTION SPOTLIGHT: AVAYA CLOUD OFFICE

Price Options

U.S. list prices: $19.99-$49.99/month/user (including unlimited local and domestic LD calling, conference calling, internet fax and business SMS)

Prices in international markets vary

Key Features/Capabilities

• Fully featured cloud PBX

• Custom greetings with voicemail, voicemail to email, voicemail to text

• Multi-level auto attendant

• Mobile apps for iOS and Android

• Business SMS and MMS

• Web collaboration

• HD video conferencing

• IM/chat/presence

• Team messaging & collaboration

• Online fax

• Software integrations with other leading cloud providers (Zendesk, Salesforce, Office 365, G Suite, etc.)

• Global cloud PBX service

• Global virtual numbers

• Contact center

• Quality of service analytics & real-time reports

Phone Terminals

A choice of desk phones, conferencing stations, and IADs from Avaya, Polycom, Cisco, and Yealink

Phone rental option available


Avaya Background With approximately 100 million installed users and more than 100 years of industry experience, Avaya is one of the largest and most trusted business communications solutions vendors in the world. Avaya’s mission is to create intelligent communications experiences for its customers leveraging open, converged and innovative technologies. Its vast solutions portfolio comprises communications and collaboration software, services and endpoints, and addresses the diverse needs of a broad customer spectrum. Avaya’s strong track record of delivering reliable and innovative technology solutions has made it the vendor of choice for businesses of any size and industry.

Avaya Cloud Services PortfolioIn line with market trends and evolving customer requirements, Avaya has shifted its focus to predominantly software-based solutions and services over the past few years. More specifically, to meet customer demand for more flexible technology consumption and greater business agility, Avaya has expanded its portfolio to provide a variety of cloud solutions tailored for different customer preferences. From customer premises-based private cloud architectures to dedicated (single-tenant) and shared (multi-instance and multi-tenant) hosted cloud services, Avaya’s solutions address varying customer cost, functionality, security, customization, and integration requirements. Capitalizing on advanced technologies and innovative architectural design, Avaya OneCloud ReadyNow and Avaya Cloud Office represent the company’s flagship cloud services offerings. The two offerings are differentiated both in terms of architecture and customer benefits.

• Avaya OneCloud ReadyNow leverages dedicated software and the latest in virtualization technology. It is tailored to serve businesses looking for cloud communications, collaboration and contact center services that meet stringent security and compliance requirements as well as enables flexible customization and integration with third-party software and services.

• Avaya Cloud Office leverages a cloud-native platform to provide highly scalable, cost-effective and feature-rich cloud services to organizations of any size.

Avaya’s cloud and premises-based enterprise telephony solutions can be complemented by Avaya Spaces, which provides flexible and economical cloud-based team spaces, persistent chat and web/video conferencing capabilities. Both existing and new Avaya customers can choose from Avaya’s continually enhanced cloud solutions to gain the agility they need to thrive in an increasingly competitive global environment.




Sales Model Avaya leverages more than 4,000 channel partners to deliver communications services and solutions to businesses around the world. Partners deliver value to customers by providing additional products and services, such as devices; networking equipment; implementation, customization, integration and management services; and more.

Avaya customers moving their communications, collaboration and contact center solutions to the cloud often look for trusted partners to help them select the right solutions and ensure deployment success. Partners typically possess deep knowledge of customers’ existing communications solutions as well as customers’ technology requirements. Therefore, Avaya and its partners are best positioned to jointly deliver the most advanced technologies along with a highly personalized deployment approach to businesses with existing Avaya premises-based solutions looking to adopt cloud services cost-effectively and with minimal disruption.



Avaya Cloud Office: Description and Analysis

Overview

Avaya Cloud Office leverages RingCentral’s industry-leading platform as well as unique Avaya capabilities to address the specific needs of existing Avaya customers and other businesses that wish to partner with Avaya and/or its resellers as they move their software workloads to the cloud.

Avaya Cloud Office is an advanced cloud communications solution offering an enterprise-grade new-generation phone system with a broad set of additional UCC features allowing users to access their cloud communications capabilities via any device of their choice—desktop phone, desktop PC/laptop or a mobile device. The solution also supports traditional fax machines and other analog devices through an analog telephone adapter (ATA).

Avaya Cloud Office provides a strong value proposition to businesses that have both office-based and mobile employees who rely on mobile devices to conduct business while commuting, traveling or working remotely—from home, a client site, a coffee shop or another location.

Avaya Cloud Office provides a strong value proposition to businesses that have both office-based and mobile employees who rely on mobile devices to conduct business while commuting, traveling or working remotely—from home, a client site, a coffee shop or another location. Unlike most hosted IP communications providers who lead with a desktop value proposition and offer a minimal degree of mobile integration as a value-added feature, Avaya Cloud Office places a strong emphasis on mobile capabilities while also integrating desktop devices to effectively meet the needs of the entire organization.

PBX Features and Voice Services

Avaya Cloud Office provides a robust PBX feature set including call forwarding, call flip (live call transfer across devices), call delegation, call screening, call park, shared line, visual voicemail, voicemail to email, voicemail transcription to text, intercom, paging, call recording, multi-level auto attendant and more. Customers can port existing numbers to Avaya’s service or purchase new local numbers, extensions, as well as toll-free and vanity numbers from Avaya.



Conferencing and Collaboration Services

A cloud-based online meeting solution with HD web and video conferencing is included in the top three Avaya Cloud Office packages and differentiates the company’s offerings from the majority of alternative hosted IP telephony and UCaaS solutions. This feature provides great value to business customers increasingly demanding advanced collaboration capabilities to improve team productivity and effectiveness. Cloud-based meeting services are also particularly valuable in keeping remote/home workers connected to each other as well as to their office-based counterparts, customers and business associates. Tighter bonds among co-workers aid knowledge transfer, accelerate decision-making, and instill a sense of team belonging and camaraderie.

Avaya Cloud Office also stands out among UCaaS solutions with its innovative team messaging and collaboration capabilities. Using the Avaya Cloud Office App, users can better organize their conversations around key topics through the integration of persistent chat and content management in a single user interface. Contextual information, calendar integration, task management, recording, annotations, and advanced search capabilities, which represent key features of the Avaya Cloud Office App, greatly enhance user productivity and improve team collaboration outcomes.

The Avaya Cloud Office App also integrates with other productivity applications such as Dropbox, Microsoft 365 and Salesforce, to name a few of more than 100 out-of-the-box integrations available to users. Through open application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs), businesses and independent developers can embed communications and collaboration functionality into business software, thus driving workflow efficiency and automation.


Solution Packaging and Pricing

Avaya Cloud Office is available in four editions—Essentials, Standard, Premium and Ultimate—with varying features, capabilities and pricing to match each organization’s needs. The packages are clearly described and do not require advanced technical expertise to deploy or manage. All packages include the full feature set and vary primarily in terms of usage metrics:

• Essentials includes: Unlimited phone calls, toll-free or local numbers, 100 toll-free minutes per month, and voicemail-to-text for $19.99/user/month.

• Standard includes: Unlimited phone calls, toll-free or local numbers, 1,000 toll-free minutes per month, voicemail-to-text, unlimited audio meetings, unlimited video conferencing with up to 100 participants, and unlimited internet fax for $24.99/user/month.

• Premium includes: Unlimited phone calls, toll-free or local numbers, 2,500 toll-free minutes per month, voicemail-to-text, unlimited audio meetings, unlimited video conferencing with up to 200 participants, unlimited internet fax, and automatic call recording for $34.99/user/month.

• Ultimate includes: Unlimited phone calls, toll-free or local numbers, 10,000 toll-free minutes per month, voicemail-to-text, unlimited audio meetings, unlimited video conferencing with up to 200 participants, unlimited internet fax, and automatic call recording for $49.99/user/month.

Note: Actual prices will vary based on number of users, contract term and billing cycle.

The capabilities in the various packages match or exceed those offered by other market participants for similar price points. Avaya includes both desktop and mobile soft clients with all of its services bundles, which allows users to access their communications capabilities anywhere, anytime on the device and network of their choice.



Global Office

Avaya Cloud Office provides a Global Office option tailored for globally distributed organizations. Global Office brings Avaya Cloud Office capabilities to over 40 international locations with international phone numbers in over 100 countries and enables businesses to seamlessly connect their global workforce with one secure and integrated service. Users in all supported locations have a unified user experience in communications and collaboration via calls, online meetings, team messaging, and fax across all devices.

With Global Office, customers can consolidate their bills and streamline multinational expenses. They can purchase Avaya Cloud Office for their headquarters in the United States (later in 2020: Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) and receive their invoice in their local currency. Global Office can be added to any license to provide local cloud PBX services in international locations; the customer must have a billing entity in one of the countries where Avaya Cloud Office is available (noted above).

Customization and Integration

Avaya Cloud Office offers a wide range of integrations across CRM, customer support, productivity, collaboration, and automation applications. Customers can bring advanced communications into the business applications they use every day, with the ability to use features such as click-to-dial, call analytics, call logging, and faxing—all from within one interface.

By integrating applications such as Microsoft 365 and G Suite with Avaya Cloud Office, organizations can drive productivity by providing one consolidated interface to access their phone, fax, and messages when they need these services.

By integrating a cloud-based calling tool with a CRM platform such as Salesforce, users can automatically store call records within the CRM platform and use it to keep track of call outcomes. Click-to-dial and screen pops of customer data can also be offered within the CRM platform. Reports are available across a team in terms of total calls, average duration per call, amount of calls per day, and so on.



Service Reliability, Security and Compliance

Avaya, in partnership with RingCentral, ensures compliance with various industry regulatory requirements to provide secure services to its customers. To meet HIPAA security requirements, Avaya Cloud Office has implemented the HIPAA security safeguards. RingCentral annually undergoes a third-party SOC 2+ audit, which includes an assessment of controls mapped to the HIPAA Security Rule requirements. It demonstrates the implementation of the security safeguards and requirements outlined in the HIPAA Security Rule.

Other applicable security and compliance standards include:

• Avaya Cloud Office and the Avaya Cloud Office App (Glip) have earned Certified status for information security by HITRUST CSF, which indicates that these applications have met industry-defined security requirements and are appropriately managing risk. HITRUST CSF helps organizations address cybersecurity challenges through a comprehensive framework and scalable security controls by including federal and state regulations, standards, and frameworks. HITRUST CSF Certification sets the highest standard for compliance with security requirements and has become the benchmark that organizations apply to safeguard ePHI data.

• Avaya Cloud Office has earned Skyhigh’s CloudTrust rating of Enterprise-Ready, the highest rating possible from Skyhigh. Skyhigh grants this status to cloud services that fully satisfy the most stringent requirements for data protection, identity verification, service security, business practices, and legal protection.

• Avaya Cloud Office offers customers a robust Data Processing Addendum (DPA), governing the relationship between the customer and RingCentral. RingCentral’s DPA contains strong privacy commitments that few software companies can match and has been updated to confirm compliance with GDPR.

• Avaya Cloud Office has Tier 4 data centers located on both US coasts that inter-work with international data centers to support a global network. These facilities are monitored 24/7 and are SSAE 18 SOC 2- and SOC 3-compliant. All systems are audited monthly, and audit reports are available to customers. The data centers are managed by highly trained, on-site engineering specialists, including experts in various aspects of security and regulatory compliance with privacy regulations such as the PCI DSS and the California Security Breach Information Act (SB-1386).



Businesses using Avaya Cloud Office have multiple options for connectivity services. They can deploy the cloud service over the public internet (for flexibility, cost purposes or due to existing commitments) or use RingCentral Direct Connect, which provides a number of managed-bandwidth options to address the needs of mid-market and large-enterprise customers for assured quality of service (QoS). Businesses can choose from the following:

• Customers of AT&T Managed Internet Service (MIS+) automatically gain end-to-end QoS by bundling Avaya Cloud Office services.

• For an additional charge, Avaya (via RingCentral), can provide an interconnect into nearly any carrier’s MPLS network.

• A physical (fiber or Ethernet) link is available in cases where RingCentral and customers share data center facilities.

• Customers can also use virtualized connections by leveraging software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technologies.

While many businesses prefer over-the-top connections, the managed-bandwidth options enable Avaya to serve businesses with more stringent service reliability, security and quality requirements.

Service Administration, Management and Analytics

To ensure its cloud solutions deliver the desired outstanding user experience, Avaya provides robust IT management capabilities and administrative controls. Rich analytics tools allow businesses to accurately assess service usage and quality and preempt potential service issues. Leveraging RingCentral Quality of Service Analytics, Avaya enables IT staff to closely monitor voice quality globally and troubleshoot before critical problems arise. Mean Opinion Score (MOS) information, as well as jitter, latency and packet loss data, help IT staff prevent disruptive service degradation. Live Reports additionally enable line-of-business managers to track customer interactions in real time to ensure a high-quality customer experience. Both tools come with powerful dashboards with graphical representations of various metrics, including call quality, call volume, employee availability and customer hold times, among others.

Leveraging RingCentral Quality of Service Analytics, Avaya enables IT staff to closely monitor voice quality globally and troubleshoot before critical problems arise.



Customer Migration and Support

Avaya has purposely designed the Avaya Cloud Office experience to enable a smooth transition for businesses currently using Avaya premises-based or hosted communications solutions as well as Avaya devices. Customers using Avaya J Series desk phones and B199 conference phones can preserve their investment in these devices and re-deploy them with the new cloud offering with zero-touch provisioning. This minimizes both hardware and user/admin training costs.

Avaya is also offering programs and tools for customers to migrate from Avaya IP Office (premises-based or partner-hosted) as well as CS1000 deployments to the new cloud solution. Avaya support teams, staffed out of Denver, Colo., and Raleigh, N.C., provide customer assistance before, during and after deployment. Designated Customer Success Managers and Porting Success Managers play critical roles in ensuring deployment success. Avaya professional services teams are available to provide assistance remotely, on site or via custom engagements.

Avaya partners can also provide considerable value in Avaya Cloud Office deployments. Most Avaya partners have deep knowledge of customer existing communications and IT environments, technology requirements, budget, purchasing preferences, and other important customer details. Avaya partners are also certified on Avaya technology and highly skilled in Avaya solution deployments. Depending on their skill sets, they may be more or less involved and assist with the following:

• Customer premises equipment sale and/or installation and support

• Customer onboarding, training and ongoing support

• Solution integration with other software and services

• Solution optimization

•

Most Avaya partners have deep knowledge of customer existing communications and IT environments, technology requirements, budget, purchasing preferences, and other important customer details.


Customer Considerations

Key Avaya Cloud Office Advantages and Differentiators

• Extensive and expanding feature set addresses diverse and evolving user needs.

• Important partnerships with VARs, distributors and other resellers enable better customer support before, during and after deployment.

• Compelling mobile functionality addresses the pain points of the increasingly mobile workforce.

• Tiered pre-packaged service bundles make it easier for customers to budget and deploy the right feature set for their organization.

• Competitive pricing makes Avaya Cloud Office solutions affordable for a broad customer audience.

• High-capacity voice calling, conference calling, internet fax and business SMS reduce costs and make expenses more predictable for businesses with large calling and messaging volumes.

• Flexible cloud technology and a proprietary platform enable rapid innovation and cost-effective scalability.

• International presence and Global Office capabilities enable Avaya to more effectively serve multi-national organizations.

• Geo-redundant data centers and a strong track record of service reliability ensure high service quality.

• Tailored migration tools and programs, along with the ability to re-deploy Avaya endpoints, enable business continuity and investment protection for existing Avaya customers.

• Avaya’s robust implementation, integration and other services will be key to ensure deployment success for many businesses that require more extensive support.

Best Fit

• Avaya Cloud Office is a great fit for businesses with existing Avaya solutions and expertise. Familiar devices, zero-touch device provisioning, and migration tools and programs enable Avaya customers to more easily transition to the cloud using Avaya Cloud Office compared to other UCaaS solutions. For customers seeking a phased migration to cloud, Avaya IX Subscription provides unique discounts and benefits. It enables businesses with both premises-based and cloud services to consolidate bills, trade in perpetual licenses against cloud services credits, pay for only what they use with the option to expand up to 20% over contracted capacity in a given year, combine existing Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) programs with the Avaya IX Subscription, and more.

• Avaya Cloud Office is a highly effective solution for businesses with mixed communication endpoints environments, including IP desktop phones, laptops/PC and mobile devices with the Avaya Cloud Office App. For a single monthly fee, users receive access to their cloud PBX and UCC applications on any device of their choice.

• Advanced collaboration capabilities, including web meetings, HD video conferencing, team spaces and persistent chat packaged with the cloud PBX for a competitive monthly fee, provide a compelling solution for businesses looking to enhance collaboration among geographically distributed teams and remote workers.

• As a flexible cloud solution, Avaya Cloud Office supports rapid provisioning and flexible capacity adjustments. This enables Avaya to effectively support businesses needing to rapidly ramp up remote-working capabilities—whether due to geographic expansion, need to address worker preference for work from home or other factors driving an increase in remote working.

• With a significant international presence and the Global Office offering, Avaya is well-positioned to address the needs of larger, distributed enterprises, including multi-national organizations.




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