Brian Riggs, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Telecoms

At Enterprise Connect in March 2013 Avaya introduced a set of platforms on which its partners – which include operators, systems integrators, and resellers – can build to offer fully hosted communications services. The move is a marked departure for the company, whose revenues are derived mainly from selling communications software and solutions that enterprises deploy on-premise.

Avaya also has a services business that sells managed and hosted communications services to a highly restricted set of business customers. Last month’s announcement, however, represented something new for the company.

In addition to selling its communications solutions and services to businesses, Avaya will now sell them to service providers, which will use them as the basis for the cloud-based unified communications (UC), video conferencing, and contact center services that they sell to enterprises.

This is a good move on the part of Avaya, which has lagged behind …