INTERVIEW Sahil Rekhi - RingCentral
“The agreement will open up many new territorial opportunities for RingCentral especially in the APAC region
where the company will bring additional resources to ‘leverage the footprint’.” Sahil Rekhi, MD of RingCentral
RingCentral Snap up Avaya UCaaS
Following the news last month that Avaya had struck a deal to take on RingCentral’s UCaaS applications in
return for a shareholding and cash completed a move that had been the subject of speculation for some time
Comms Business met up with Sahil Rekhi, Managing Director for RingCentral, EMEA to get some details
It’s well documented that
Avaya came late to the
cloud; resellers had been
asking for some years for
the vendor to make the move
and their failure to do so
contributed signi cantly to
the rm entering Chapter 11
Bankruptcy in the US.
Nearly two years after Avaya
emerged from that position
their UCaaS o erings were still
not considered up to the mark
by many industry observers
and last month it appeared that
Avaya had essentially given up
on trying to make a go of their
own UCaaS product and struck
a deal, in return for $500m,
to exclusively sell the UCaaS
proposition of RingCentral.
Sahil Rekhi, Managing
Director for RingCentral,
EMEA told Comms Business
Magazine that he saw no real
UCaaS within the Avaya base,
including ex-Nortel systems.
“What Avaya does have
is a great channel base and
operation. Whilst RingCentral
is active in 45 countries Avaya
has operations in many more
territories.
Avaya will now sell Avaya
Cloud O ering by RingCentral
(ACO), a dual-branded o ering
based on RingCentral’s UCaaS
platform, which will launch in
the rst quarter of 2020. Avaya’s
partners will sell the product,
and both companies share
responsibility for activation,
deployment and customer care.”
Avaya will be selling ACO
exclusively in the market says
Rekhi, adding that in essence
IP O ce is being replaced by
ACO.
“To meet this ambitious
release target it’s clear that our
engineers have been working
together on this project for
some time on the migration
scripts for a seamless transition
that will see Avaya handsets as
endpoints on the RingCentral
UCaaS solution.”
It’s clear that RingCentral
considers IP O ce solutions
to be legacy solutions and
according to Rekhi Avaya
resellers will become part of
Sahil Rekhi, Managing Director
for RingCentral, EMEA
the RingCentral Harmony
Program.
“ is move will cover all
resellers and end users from
SME to Enterprise,” says Rekhi
who adds, “ e agreement will
open up many new territorial
opportunities for RingCentral
especially in the APAC region
where the company will bring
additional resources to ‘leverage
the footprint’.”
RingCentral clearly has
ambition; the company is
growing at a rate in excess of
30% year on year and is on
track to hit $1bn by 2020 with
Rekhi seeing this initiative with
Avaya being a key part of their
plan to get to $5bn in quick
order.
“ ere are so many upsell
opportunities with this legacy
base of Avaya solutions for
applications such as messaging
and video communications. At
RingCentral our mantra is for
our products to be e ortless,
intelligent and open. Presently
our channel business is growing
at a rate of 69% year on year
and the market should expect
to see further announcements
from us soon.”
COMMS BUSINESS READER SURVEY
Our web based reader survey revealed the following results when asked the
following question: Avaya’s tie up with RingCentral, what do you think?
SMART MOVE, G REAT F OR PARTNERS 20%
NO IMPACT O N M E O R M Y B USINESS 5%
THE T RANSITION I S G OING T O B E A N IGHTMARE 55%
WHO C ARES? 20%
20 | Comms Business Magazine | December 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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