CVx Show Daily Day 2

8 CVx at ITEXPO I FEBRUARY 12 - 14, 2020 www.bekabusinessmedia.com DAY 2 A vaya Holdings Corp. and Ring- Central Inc. recently introduced Avaya Cloud Office by RingCen- tral. Together, Avaya and RingCentral are looking to “redefine business communi- cations” by offering a solution delivering seamless communication and collaboration through multiple channels. The unified communications offering is based on the recent strategic partnership with RingCentral announced in October 2019. Originally previewed at the annual Avaya ENGAGE user conference last week, Avaya Cloud Office combines RingCentral’s UCaaS platform with Avaya phones, services and migration capabilities. Avaya Cloud Office will be generally available for customers and part- ners this spring. According to the companies, Avaya Cloud Office enables users to realize how easy it is to communicate using an all-in-one solution that delivers calling, team messaging, video conferencing, file sharing and collaboration. Avaya predicts that this solution will be the answer to growing demand for an evolving unified communications environment that captures cloud innovation while leveraging existing investments. Built on RingCentral’s open platform with more than 200 pre-built business solution integrations, users can keep the tools they love and will be able to integrate them with Avaya Cloud Office. Overall, this allows users to benefit from Avaya enterprise- grade features and services with the ease and speed of a leading cloud unified communica- tions platform to meet their unique require- ments and budgets. “With Avaya Cloud Office, users can trans- form business communications and collabo- ration via the cloud at a pace that is right for them, simplify communications, easily scale as needed, and receive industry-leading secu- rity and support from a trusted partner,” said Dennis Kozak, senior vice president of busi- ness transformation at Avaya. “By bringing RingCentral’s industry-leading unified communications platform together with Avaya, our aim is to help businesses empower employees to communicate, collab- orate and work better together and best serve their customers and partners,” said Anand Eswaran, president and chief operating officer for RingCentral. “We look forward to the ongoing collaboration with Avaya that will continue to enhance and strengthen our part- nership and bring industry-leading solutions to customers.” With Avaya Cloud Office, users get popular features such as video, chat and collabora- tion, along with calling; more than 200 ready- to-use integrations with business cloud apps, including Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk and Google G-Suite; leading security and reliability features to keep businesses secure and operational, while also providing compliance for cloud providers; and compatibility with Avaya phones and devices, including J139, J169 and J179 series phones, with additional devices to be added. “The initial feedback we are hearing from our customers is very positive, and we have every expectation that they will embrace this new cloud offer as they seek communication solutions that more effectively address their evolving business needs,” said Jeff Gardner, CEO of Carousel, a top technology integrator, managed services and cloud solution provider, and a key Avaya partner. Avaya Cloud Office adds UCaaS solutions to the company’s portfolio, which includes a full suite of communications software and hardware solutions to a global customer base that includes more than 120,000 customers, over 100 million UC seats and 5 million contact center users in over 180 countries. “Businesses currently using premises- based or cloud solutions now have a new, compelling public cloud option available to them with Avaya Cloud Office, providing inte- grated and intuitive unified communications and collaboration,” said Elka Popova, vice president of connected work research, Frost & Sullivan. “Avaya customers now have a smoother, more cost-effective migration path to a public cloud solution that makes it easier to realize enhanced workforce productivity and business agility.” p S kySwitch, a leading channel-exclusive white label UCaaS provider, has released its Appointment Reminder, a new applica- tion designed to make appointment scheduling and management easier for service-based businesses. Consumer-centric engagement applications are in high demand for service-based companies, say SkySwitch executives, and now SkySwitch resellers are equipped with a solution that works seamlessly with the cloud voice, business SMS and other UCaaS products that their customers use. With this new application, customers of SkySwitch resellers can easily schedule and record appointments and configure automated reminder campaigns for those appointments. Reminder campaigns can be set up as voice or SMS reminders or a combination of the two. These campaigns can be either scheduled as one-time events or as recurring reminders. In addition, the new solution can be integrated with hundreds of CRM applications and other online scheduling services using popular workflow automation tools such as Zapier and IFTTT, so reminders can be scheduled automatically when an appointment is created. “This new application gives SkySwitch resellers a leg-up when it comes to pursuing their clientele in service-based industries, such as the healthcare, personal care, hospitality verticals or anything that requires follow-up activity,” said SkySwitch president and founder, Eric Hernaez. “As business SMS continues to grow in popularity, specialized tools, like our Appointment Reminder app, become pivotal to the success of service-based companies that utilize SMS and cloud voice in very specific, recurring ways. Now, SkySwitch resellers have a significant new feature that brings real value across a wide range of industries and allows them to differentiate their services from other vanilla business voice offerings.” The Appointment Reminder app also includes an Appointment Reminder Report feature that makes it easy to filter and drill down on important details, including recipient phone number or reminder delivery status. The application also can detect pre- configured keywords so recipients can easily opt-in or opt-out of appointment reminders. p Avaya, RingCentral Introduce ‘Avaya Cloud Office’ SkySwitch Launches Appointment Reminder App