Avaya Holdings Corp. is launching a Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) offering.
While the communications company isn’t giving customers and partners access to all of its devices under the DaaS model, it is giving them access to the “Vantage” portfolio, as well as the Essential Experience series of J100 phones, and the Avaya B179, B189, and B109 conferencing devices. The Avaya Desktop Experience includes agnostic capabilities, meaning the aforementioned devices can be deployed on Avaya or non-Avaya UC platforms.
In a Dec.11 blog post, Steve Brock, director of Avaya Desktop Experience marketing, said UCaaS service providers can now deliver a unique desktop phone ownership experience to their customers, such as single monthly billing and managed services. The launch of Avaya’s DaaS offering is the final phase of their latest plan to bring smart devices technology to the employee desktop.
“The first phase is conducting extensive research to better understand the needs of today’s business communicators,” Brock wrote, referring to the 2018 State of the Desktop Report.
The second phase was to create a new, platform-agnostic portfolio of devices, followed by phase three, the launch of Device Enrollment Services in January 2018.
Avaya says customers can contract with terms of one, three or five years, with longer terms offering lower monthly prices, and customers can upgrade at any time to more advanced devices without being penalized.
Greg Pelton, vice-president of collaboration and devices for Avaya, said customers and partners have been asking for a DaaS offering.
“It brings a new level of simplicity to UC as a Service (UCaaS) where customers can now enjoy the best cloud service and latest cloud devices, all on one monthly bill,” he said.
The DaaS offering will rollout to other countries, including Canada, early 2019, but is currently available in the U.S. today.
