Last week, CX Today broke the news that Avaya will enforce a monthly minimum commitment of 200 seats.
The move will impact Avaya Experience Platform (AXP) Public customers from June 30, 2025.
Customers with fewer seats may cancel their subscription without charge by providing a written notice to Avaya before June 30.
Alternatively, they can modify their subscription to meet the 200-seat threshold.
All AXP Public subscription bundles, including the “Digital Only,” “Voice Only,” and “All Media” offerings, will be affected.
Customers that use these in combination must ensure that, in total, their seat count meets that 200-seat minimum target.
The news comes as part of an “AXP evolution update,” which Avaya sent to its customers on January 31, 2025. Critically, the update noted that Avaya will also offer additional innovative cloud and on-premises solutions for seamless customer migration, with details available soon.
Lastly, the enterprise communications stalwart stressed how customers who meet or exceed the 200-seat target will not need to take any action.
With Avaya’s longstanding heritage of serving contact centers of all shapes and sizes, the news will impact many businesses worldwide.
As such, CX Today gathered the thoughts of several industry analysts during its recent Big News Update. Here’s what they had to say.
Not a Large Enterprise? Then, “You’re Collateral Damage”
Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, highlighted that the move shouldn’t come as a shock when considering previous statements by Patrick Dennis, CEO at Avaya.
He noted: “When he [Dennis] took the job, he said that they [Avaya] would focus on the G1500. It’s pretty clear that when you get down market, they’re not making any money off that space. It’s a small piece of the revenue and an even smaller piece of the profitability.
Avaya is focused on large enterprises, and if you’re not part of a large enterprise, you’re collateral damage.
Is this move going to create massive growth for Avaya? Perhaps not – but frankly, it’s their “only chance at survivability,” explained Kerravala.
“It’s focused on the large companies where they make some money. And they have a chance to keep long-term customers this way.”
All Eyes on The Competition: How Will They React?
Shelly Kramer, President and CEO of Kramer & Company, expressed that this move was a “no-brainer” when considering the CEO’s responsibility for growth and profitability.
However, she told CX Today: “The first thing I thought about was that opportunity this presents for some of Avaya’s competitors.”
After all, a significant chunk of the competition still wants to serve contact centers with fewer than 200 seats.
Agreeing with the aforementioned points, Derek Top, Senior Analyst at Opus Research, theorized that this has been a long time in the making and that “the likes of Zoom and others will see this as an opportunity.”
Alluding to last year’s partnership between Zoom and Avaya, which sees the Zoom Meetings client now serving as a bridge to the Avaya Communication Manager, Top explained, “I do see this as a way for the growth companies to actually find the market.”
Other companies specializing in midmarket contact centers – including the likes of 8×8, RingCentral, and UJET – will also sense a significant opportunity to win new business.
The World of CX Is Changing: What Are The Wider Implications for Avaya?
Expected or not, the change in direction for Avaya will cause murmurs across the CX industry.
Moreover, Finbarr Begley, Senior Research Analyst at Cavell Group, highlights that this shift in strategy may not guarantee the loyalty of Avaya’s G1500. He added:
I still think those 1500 companies are looking at the latest technology developments that are coming out of the large cloud-focused providers with curiosity and interest.
Other wider implications should be considered, including the geopolitical landscape, continued Begley. However, he noted that some of these may benefit Avaya.
Begley used Europe as an example where “lots of questions in the past two weeks coming out of Denmark about how they’re building local on-prem data centers, trying to tackle uncertainty coming out of the US market and their worries about tariffs.”
They’re now considering how to lock in large contact centers in Europe that are “safe and stay safe regardless of what’s happening geopolitically.
There is still an appetite for what Avaya is doing, but the cloud is definitely going to grow as well.
To wrap up the conversation, Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, Principal Analyst at CaCube Consulting, told CX Today that the “shift in focus was overdue for Avaya.
It’s time for them to recast and tell the market who they want to be and what they are going to provide long-term.
The scope of CX’s expansion means that all these considerations must be addressed quickly.
Financial focus on profitability is a bigger change taking place in the industry as soon as it went below 20 percent growth in acquisition for the cloud.
Suddenly, “Everybody wanted to see proof of profitability, and Avaya has been feeling this pressure more than anyone else,“ concluded de Kouchkovsky.
