Editor’s note: Cassandra Mooshian is an analyst with Technology Business Research.
HAMPTON, N.H. - HP (Nasdaq: HPQ) ES gains Avaya’s unified communications (UC) and private cloud capabilities as well as service delivery personnel, while Avaya benefits from HP’s cloud portfolio and global reach.
HP Enterprise Services (ES) and Avaya entered into a strategic partnership on Tuesday under which the companies will offer Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and infrastructure modernization services such that the companies can address global demand for collaboration solutions that promote business efficiencies and outcomes. Avaya’s capabilities will be integrated into HP’s Business Process Services practice and drive portfolio enhancements for both companies around mobile applications, networking, software, infrastructure and managed services.
As part of the agreement, Avaya is transferring a group of its private cloud services (PCS) employees and subcontractors to HP’s Business Process Services group, where they will focus only on the delivery of the UCaaS and CCaaS infrastructure and services and solutions to Avaya, not to market. The sales portion of the agreement will be handled by Avaya, delivering the private cloud solutions to customers and retaining its customer relationships, essentially acting as a broker of HP cloud and providing dedicated resources to HP.
TBR Assessment: HP and Avaya choose a “better together” approach to cloud-based UC
We expect the joint forces of HP and Avaya to benefit both companies and their customers, jointly and separately. During an industry analyst teleconference with the two companies regarding the deal, the companies spoke of joint customer JCI that will benefit from the integrated solutions and unified delivery for its HP and Avaya private cloud solutions.
Avaya executives indicated over the course of the alliance Avaya is expected to gain hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the partnership. The company will benefit from HP’s global presence, service delivery expertise and broad portfolio. In turn, Avaya is transferring some of its customers’ service delivery to HP, providing HP the opportunity to cross-sell and upsell with the new joint solutions and its proprietary cloud and IT solutions.
TBR believes, particularly in the cloud space, vendors are adapting to a “better together” strategy, realizing they can’t be everything to everyone and instead focusing on core competencies and using partners to fill portfolio gaps faster and cheaper than if they were to invest in research and development (R&D) and organic portfolio development.
As customers seek best-of-breed, need-based cloud solutions, they often pull together solutions from multiple vendors, making interoperability crucially important, and vendors with hybrid IT offerings will come out on top. While both companies have partnerships that overlap the scope of this agreement, having Avaya own the sales process for its customers will help alleviate channel conflict. Most recently, Avaya and T-Systems partnered to deliver CCaaS solutions but only in Europe, indicating the HP-Avaya focus will be in North America.
(C) TBR
