Avaya Holdings Corp is giving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) the tools to drive greater productivity and streamline collaboration through a single application for all communications channels, meetings, team collaboration and content sharing.

This latest release of Avaya IP Office solution also adds support for Avaya Equinox, the company’s signature unified communications (UC) experience, integrated call-recording features and flexible cloud deployment options that provide SMBs an enterprise-level experience, said a statement from the company.

Khalid Khan, Avaya's director cloud and midmarket, Middle East, Africa, South Europe and APAC, said: “Research shows that when organisations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240 per cent boost in performance-related business outcomes compared to organisations with neither engaged employees nor engaged customers; a big reason why today, over 26 million users rely on Avaya IP Office.”

“By providing a single app to access all the tools they need to efficiently connect, communicate and collaborate, from anywhere, at any time and from any device, coupled with the scalability and lower TCO offered by the cloud model, we are expanding the capabilities of IP Office and enabling small and midsize business teams to stay competitive by working smarter, not harder,” he added.

A key feature in the latest release is the integration of Avaya Equinox. The integration imbeds communications capabilities directly into the applications, browsers and devices that employees use every day to create a single, powerful gateway for calling, messaging, conferencing and collaboration, it said.

Unlike other solutions on the market, IP Office now also offers an embedded call recording option and cradle-to-grave web-based reporting and tracking package that improves measurement of call activities, enabling even the smallest of organisations to enhance customer engagement.

Finally, with a choice of deployment—on-premise, hybrid cloud, public coud—IP Office allows SMBs the flexibility to scale up from 5 users to as many as 3,000 and from a single location to 150, all within a single plug-and-play platform, it added.

Elka Popova, vice president and senior fellow - connected work and digital experience at Frost & Sullivan, said: “As businesses move their communications and collaboration capabilities to the cloud, they look for robust, business-grade solutions delivering familiar, yet enhanced user and admin experiences.”

“With support for Avaya Equinox and all deployment options, Avaya IP Office offers small and midsize business customers a proven UC solution with an advanced, contemporary user interface designed for highly mobile and collaborative work environments,” Popova said.

“Avaya made a commitment to shift its solutions portfolio to the cloud and the launch of Avaya IP Office with Avaya Equinox shows that the vendor is delivering on its promise,” Popova added.

New cloud-based technologies are stimulating the adoption of digital communications tools in the region’s SME segment, which accounts for around 90 per cent of registered businesses in the Middle East and North Africa.

Gartner estimates that organisations in the region spent $1.2 billion on public cloud services in 2017, with this expected to reach almost $2 billion by 2020, it stated. – TradeArabia News Service