The RingCentral-Avaya announcement from last week had a lot of industry watchers scratching their heads. The benefits to RingCentral were clear: They just bought an exclusive position for their UC offering with the world’s largest reseller ecosystem. But what is Avaya’s main benefit? Obviously, the cash component was a key to it. (Although I don’t fully understand the inner-workings of that cash-crunch.) But was hobbling their UC business too high a price to pay?
I think the real benefit here is that the deal frees Avaya to focus fully on its crown jewel, the contact center business. A Mitel merger, or any merger for that matter, was going to add confusion in that area. All the moves in the last few years make sense if you think of it in terms of clearing away distractions from a focus on contact center.
![Are You Prepared for Unpredicted Spikes in Call Volume [Webinar]](https://fonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Are-You-Prepared-for-Unpredicted-Spikes-in-Call-Volume-Webinar-450.jpg "Are You Prepared for Unpredicted Spikes in Call Volume [Webinar]")
After the grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, calls to 
News broke last week that Mitel is 
One of our goals with the Fonolo blog is to expose our readers to a broad range of voices on a broad range of topics. We share a lot of diverse content, including lists of 
It’s been a big year for Avaya, probably the most important 12-month period in the company’s long, storied existence. In January, Avaya emerged from bankruptcy with a newly listed stock (NYSE: AVYA); a balance sheet much lower in debt; a new management team; and a renewed focus.
As part of keeping up with the industry, we follow publicly-traded companies for which the call center is a significant component of their business. Earnings time has come around again, so let’s see what can be discerned about the near term future of the sector. Given that this is just a blog post, consider it a casual review, focusing just on companies with recent interesting news.
