What is Avaya Cloud Office (ACO)? An Introduction

With an incredible $2.9 billion revenue for 2020, and a rapidly growing ecosystem of customers, Avaya stands as one of the most popular communication companies in the world today. Despite some issues in the past, Avaya has overcome a multitude of challenges in recent years to rise to the top of the communications industry once again.

For 2021, the company earned the position of “Visionary” in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions, highlighting it’s increasing focus on solutions for businesses undergoing digital transformation. However, for most companies looking to optimize communications, the most exciting offering from Avaya today will be it’s UCaaS platform: Avaya Cloud Office.

Otherwise known as “ACO”, the comprehensive cloud phone and collaboration tool offers a revolutionary way for teams to stay connected in an evolving environment.

What is Avaya Cloud Office?

ACO is a state-of-the-art solution for communications, built with support from another leading cloud company, RingCentral. The cloud-focused offering is perfectly suited for the future of work, where hybrid and remote interactions are essential to business continuity.

With an all-in-one environment for communication and collaboration, companies can use ACO to keep their evolving times synergized and ready for action. The easy-to-use interface supports one-click calls, meetings and messages, as well as easy access to a range of meeting room features.

As a comprehensive system for UCaaS, Avaya Cloud Office supports everything from omnichannel communication methods for your teams, to call logs and on-demand recording. Companies can access single sign-on functionality, set up custom roles and permissions, and even integrate their business phone technology with leading tools like Salesforce.

Avaya Cloud Office offers exceptional reach for international companies, as well as industry-specific support, so you can build an interface with integrations to all the tools and services your business already uses. Some of the most impressive features of Avaya Cloud Office include:

• Advanced security: Call monitoring, single-sign-on, multi-side administration management, custom roles and permissions, and a host of other tools help to keep your business secure and compliant. There’s also 24/7 support in case something does go wrong.
• Exceptional reliability: Avaya offers state-of-the-art connectivity and fantastic reliability regardless of where your team members need to access their UCaaS tools.
• Flexibility: Access a comprehensive developer platform and create your own integrations or leverage native integrations with leading tools like Salesforce and Microsoft 365 productivity tools.
• Omnichannel communications: Support your teams in communicating across video, audio, messaging, fax, and various other channels. On-demand logging and call-recording means you can even keep track of conversations.
• Collaboration tools: bring teams together with document and screen sharing capabilities, instant messaging, and a range of other tools ideal for the hybrid workforce.

Where is Avaya Cloud Office Headed?

For companies in search of an all-in-one, reliable environment for communications and collaboration, Avaya Cloud Office represents a valuable way to minimise costs and improve efficiencies. Because it’s based in the cloud, the UC solution is available to access from any environment, and it’s inherently scalable – capable of adapting to the changing needs of your team.

The cloud-central nature of ACO also means it’s easy for Avaya to continue rolling out new features and functionality for teams. For instance, in Summer 2021, Avaya updated its “visual voicemail” solution, so users could more easily navigate voice messages from their phone screen and view transcripts from calls.

Over the last year, Avaya also introduced Avaya Cloud Rooms, a solution designed to turn any workspace into a conference room with Avaya collaboration functionality built-in. We’ve also seen the arrival of numerous new smart devices (like the Avaya Vantage) and plug-and-play hardware intended to support employees in accessing amazing communication experiences wherever they are.

According to Avaya’s leadership team, right now, the focus of the company is on making it easier for organizations of all sizes to transition into the cloud and keep their teams connected. This is an important goal during a time of distributed, hybrid teams.

To achieve this vision, Avaya has introduced everything from new license tiers for its EU customers, to new default data residency settings to help keep users compliant. With ACO support now available in forty countries, Avaya is on pace to take the world by storm.