First Distribution, South Africa's leading distributor for datacentre, enterprise and cloud solutions, announced today it has been appointed as a distribution partner in South Africa and the SADC region for Avaya, a global leader in business communications, software, systems and services. The two companies will focus on making Avaya's innovative technology available as cloud-based or hosted offerings across the region.

Avaya provides solutions and services for unified communications and collaboration, contact centre and customer experience management and networking, to public-sector organizations and enterprises of all sizes. Avaya is the only company specializing in simplifying complex business communications, built on open and mobile software platforms and supported by a robust underlying networking infrastructure. Thus, Avaya is uniquely placed to help organizations of all sizes in Africa drive digital transformation strategies.

First Distribution will work with cloud service providers and managed service providers to build out Avaya's Unified Communications-as-a-Service, Contact Centre-as-a-Service, and Video-as-a-Service offerings and make them available as local offerings across the region. First Distribution will also offer the complete range of Avaya solutions, including Avaya's innovative networking and wireless offerings.

Along with its hosted business, First Distribution established the first cloud-services brokerage in South Africa in 2014, with First for Cloud, which enables resellers to sell best-of-breed cloud services to their end-users.

First Distribution Managing Director, Debbie Abrahall, said: "First Distribution welcomes Avaya to our portfolio of best-of-breed products and solutions. As the worldwide leader in team engagement solutions based on unified communications and collaboration technologies, Avaya makes a great fit for us in terms of what they offer as well as the calibre of their products, solutions and global organisation. We look forward to working with them closely in the future."

Danny Drew, Managing Director, South Africa, Avaya, said: "As Africa looks to play a greater part in the global economy, Avaya is helping organizations across the region to meet their digital transformation challenges. By working with First Distribution, we can build the ecosystem to help enterprises leverage our solutions, make our offerings available in the model they want, and help them to achieve transformation at their own pace and path."

Maryka Absil, Distribution and Midmarket Lead, South and Southern Africa, Avaya, said: "First Distribution allows us greater coverage and accessibility through their traditional distribution channel as well as through the new channels, First for Cloud and First Distribution's successful Hosting aggregation models make available to us. We are excited to help build this new channel and successfully explore the opportunities it holds for both First Distribution and Avaya."