
Unified communications giant Avaya has a new channel chief at the helm: telecom veteran Jon Brinton, who served most recently as UC competitor Mitel's cloud leader.
Brinton has been appointed to vice president of North American channel sales for Avaya. The executive is now responsible for Avaya’s channel sales strategy and supporting and educating the company's extensive network of partners, distributors and resellers on cloud opportunities, Avaya said.
Brinton is filling the spot that Avaya's former channel chief, Gary Levy, left in March when he joined Oracle as vice president of worldwide enterprise alliances and channels.
[Related: Avaya and RingCentral Seal Cloud Alliance Through $500 Million Deal]
Reports surfaced in April that UCaaS leader Mitel was looking to buy Avaya in a merger valued between $2.2 billion and $2.4 billion. The deal, which was thought to help the two companies compete against their larger UC competitors, including Cisco Systems and Microsoft, never panned out. Avaya was also reportedly considering a leveraged buyout from a private equity firm that would have valued the company at more than $5 billion in March.
Brinton most recently served as President of Mitel's cloud division and saw the business segment from its inception through expansion to a global market share leader in the UCaaS space over the past 11 years, according to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Avaya. Brinton has also held senior leadership roles with companies in the networking and telecommunications industry.
Since emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2017, Avaya has been focused on shifting its business to a cloud-based business model. The company said that Brinton's appointment signals Avaya's transformation as the partner-of-choice for communications solutions for SMBs and enterprises with an emphasis on cloud and new subscription models.
Avaya in October formed a cloud alliance with UC rival RingCentral, bringing to the table Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral. Via the terms of the deal, RingCentral said it would purchase $125 million in Avaya stock for a 6 percent equity position in the company, while also advancing Avaya $375 million for future payments and licensing rights.
“I am pleased to be joining Avaya at such an important time, as the company works to reshape a customer-driven approach to delivering innovation in its communications and collaboration solutions,” Brinton said in a statement. “I am also excited about the opportunity to build the partner infrastructure to help drive the success of the new Avaya Cloud Office UCaaS offer resulting from the recent partnership with RingCentral."
Avaya does about 80 percent of its business through the channel today.
related stories
trending stories
Video
sponsored resources

NetApp
NetApp Data Driven Learning Center

Vertiv
Edge Computing 360

Best of Breed Showcase

Annual Report Card Showcase

NexGen Showcase

Cloud PPG Showcase

100 People You Should Know Showcase

APC by Schneider Electric
IoT Platforms 360

Silver Peak
Silver Peak Learning Center

NPD
Industry Trends 360

Comcast
Comcast Business Learning Center

AT&T Cybersecurity
Cloud Security 360

ConnectWise
ConnectWise

Symantec
Symantec Business Security Learning Center

RSA
RSA

Eaton
Eaton Learning Center

BlackBerry Cylance
BlackBerry Cylance Learning Center

Storagecraft
Disaster Recovery Learning Center

Lenovo
Lenovo Learning Center

ID Agent
Managed Security 360

Wasabi
Wasabi

Sophos
Sophos Cybersecurity Learning Center

Scale Computing
Scale Computing Learning Center

SonicWall
Network Security 360

Cohesity
Cohesity Learning Center

Dell EMC
Software-defined Data Center 360

Sherweb
Cloud Partner Programs 360
Women of the Channel Showcase

Carbonite
Cloud Storage 360

HP Inc.
HP Toner and Ink
