Every Cloud Has a Story: A Spectrum of Customers Move to Avaya Midmarket Cloud

As new Avaya customers embrace Avaya Midmarket Cloud solutions, three examples offer unique stories that highlight their business models and reasons why full-on or hybrid cloud makes sense for them. From a small, start-up design business, to a youth soccer-focused camp and gear company, to a growing movie and TV studio with ever-changing requirements, Avaya Midmarket Cloud delivers the features, flexibility and cost-effectiveness they need for success, offered by Avaya channel partners.

The Crossing Studios in Burnaby, BC rents over 350,000 square feet of space to Hollywood movie and TV production crews, growing from a single location to eight in record time. Production needs can change frequently, and the number of people needing communications for a single customer can jump from a handful to more than a hundred with only a moment’s notice. Since all eight locations had different communications infrastructure, IT spent inordinate amounts of time re-configuring and adapting systems that had sub-par reliability to begin with.

The Crossing Studios selected Unity Connected Solutions’ cloud UC solution Powered by Avaya IP Office, because of the simplicity and scalability the hosted solution could bring to its business. Features like auto-attendant, mobile twinning that connects mobile phones to extensions numbers, and per-user billing make customers happy and keep Crossing Studios in demand. Better yet: The cloud-based solution has saved the company over $100,000 in IT resources, providing secure, simple and scalable communications capabilities.

"I’m always out in the field making sure our clients are happy, and to this point we have received nothing but praise and support for the solution. Being in customer service for over 25 years, working with some of the top Telecom companies, I cannot tell you how rewarding it is to see our clients not complaining about their phone equipment. From a metrics perspective, Avaya IP Office ticks every box. Is it what my clients are looking for? Yes. Are they happy with the solution? Yes. Is it costing me a lot of money to service and maintain? It’s definitely not. I really couldn’t have chosen a better solution."
— Mark Herrmann, Chief Technical Officer, The Crossing Studios

Challenger Sports
Challenger Sports is a total soccer solution for thousands of soccer organizations throughout North America. From its headquarters in Lenexa, Kansas, and 13 regional offices, the company hosts thousands of soccer camps throughout the US and Canada. To make sure players are safely and stylishly garbed, another division, Challenger Teamwear, provides custom uniforms for school, travel, and independent soccer teams and clubs as well as their camp attendees.

Challenger’s headquarters were already equipped with an Avaya IP Office system, but regional offices and locations had a mix of many brands and systems. The largest of the non-Avaya suppliers was a pure cloud-based company, but Caleb Christopher, director of IT at Challenger, wanted to consolidate around a single vendor that could provide a hybrid solution that could meet both his on-premise and cloud-based needs.

Christopher came up with a bold plan: leverage the Avaya IP Office installed at the headquarters and deploy Allegiant’s Hosted Solution Powered by Avaya IP Office. Subsequently, he installed the Avaya soft client on Chromebooks to enable anywhere-access to the company phone system for the company’s ~200 highly mobile end users.

"My goal is to hand users one device that contains everything they need to do their job. With Avaya and GSuite, that’s a Chromebook. They can go anywhere, anytime and have full connectivity with Avaya communications, productivity applications, and their Chromebook. With Allegiant and Avaya, I find the hybrid deployment model provides the agility and quality of service I need with lower long-term costs over other telecommunication vendors."
–Caleb Christopher, Director of Information Technology, Challenger Sports

Stacey Cohen Design
There comes a time in the life of every new business when relying solely on a mobile phone for company communications simply doesn’t cut it. For Stacey Cohen Design (SCD), a fast-growing, five-person residential and commercial design firm in Toronto, a Powered by Avaya IP Office solution helped deliver the professional image the company sought to convey through enterprise-level connectivity without the enterprise-level budget.

SCD employees still use their iPhones for business, but they’re now equipped with Avaya one-X Mobile for IP Office. SCD has one landline phone with auto attendant serving the reception desk, and an extension number for each employee that keeps their personal cell numbers private, and provides easy access to features that can make this small firm look big.

For the deployment of the Avaya IP Office cloud-based solution, Cohen worked with Avaya Sapphire partner, Telanet, which had the system up and running in a matter of days.

"My staff and I are always on the go, which means we’re off site a lot. The mobile twinning feature makes us available to vendors and clients when we’re away from the office. And if we’re not available to take a call, the caller can be transferred to reception immediately by dialing zero. Thanks to that functionality, I get far fewer voicemail messages than I did before we implemented Avaya."
–Stacey Cohen, owner, Stacey Cohen Design