It is all about a continuous revenue stream...

Avaya IP Office continues to be the flagship for Avaya's Small/Mid-Market on premise. I don't see that going away... at least I hope not.

ACO is the answer to Avaya being able to provide a cloud UC solution for all business sizes. What I like about ACO is that it is one application that integrates with so many other business critical applications via a plugin. App fatigue is a real issue with users needed an app for this and an app for that and app for the other...

For all that you get out of the box, it's a decent value for sure. To spin up the same capabilities in IP Office would cost a small fortune in licensing. There is a market for ACO with customers that want something that just works, and want it cared for by Avaya directly.

What I don't like about it is not having lower level access to the solution..because I like to tinker. but I guess that's the way with cloud in general.

ACO, and hosted in general, certainly has a place. My problem is companies thinking it is the end all be all answer for everyone. People are still desperately clinging to their POTS lines and Avaya acts like 100% of their customers will go hosted. That is the problem I see.

The truth is just an excuse for lack of imagination.

For customers that have a CAT3 infrastructure, I've put in Phybridge Switching to deliver POE over CAT3. This allows customers to move to SIP on existing infrastructure and have a constant set type throughout. Huge cost avoidance for the customer.

This works for customer that want Avaya IP Office on premise and with ACO.

The problem we have with selling ACO is the billing and that we have no control over pricing, plus we are handing the customer over to Avaya!

@johnhyde I have the same issue, once they are on ACO you can no longer sell them any thing. All equipment comes from ring central.

Avaya made a mistake with the deal they have with ACO.
No problem with the relationship and partnering with Ringcentral, but Avaya from day one has been a channel only.

Why change this for ACO.
Avaya knows that most of the partners have their own billing platform and other products/service to sell to the customer.
For us, it doesn't make sense that our customer has one bill from us for IT/Internet/Mobile but then the customer has to sign a separate different contract from Avaya and this is invoiced separately, and we have no control over prices.

After over 15 years of working only with Avaya, we are now looking at other vendors.

Any suggestions on other vendors would be appreciated!

Unfortunately this is the way the world of telephony is going. It's much cheaper for Avaya and companies like them to sell space in the cloud and licenses than it is to manufacture, warehouse, and ship hardware. They make the same, or even more money doing that.