As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:
Telstra Business Systems yesterday announced it was awarded gold certification level in Avaya's BusinessPartner program.
"The IP Telephony market is growing and Telstra is fully participating in meeting our customer needs," said Telstra spokesperson Sarah McKinnon. "Telstra and Avaya would concentrate on growing our business together, offering great services to existing customers with Avaya solutions and focusing on acquiring new customers that would benefit from Avaya solutions."
"The addition of Avaya to our portfolio means a greater choice of technology for the customer as well as enhanced capability within Telstra to guide them on their IP transformation journey," said Telstra Business System's managing director, Malcolm Flanagan. "IP telephony is fast becoming the preferred option over traditional voice systems with Australian companies recognizing the business benefits of converged solutions."
Under the terms of agreement, Telstra Business Systems will provide sales, marketing, distribution and support for the Avaya enterprise IP telephony range and call centre solutions to businesses in Australia.
Avaya will provide Telstra's team with training and certification for the delivery of converged voice and data networking and applications as well as supporting services to enterprises.
The partnership will offer businesses end to end management including planning, design, building, managing, monitoring and maintenance of IP telephony network and applications. By facilitating flexible migration from current TDM (time-division multiplexing) technology to IP telephony, Telstra expects to provide high quality, applications rich, secure and reliable converged telephony and data services that reduces costs and improves productivity of businesses, McKinnon said.
The appointment of Telstra Business Systems to Avaya's Gold BusinessPartner status cements an existing, two-year-long relationship between the companies, and recognizes Telstra's improving technical and commercial expertise, the companies said.
"[The partnership] opens up new territory for us and for Telstra," said Carlton Taya, managing director of Avaya South Pacific. "Because of who they are, they touch Australian companies large and small, so they give us the sort of reach we can't get from other partners."
"IP telephony is still [in its] early days here, so the timing is just right for us," he said.
