July 16, 2026
Avaya and C1 Renew Their Twenty-Year CX Bet on Each Other
Avaya and C1 have extended the strategic partnership that’s kept them tied together for more than two decades. Nothing about a renewal is necessarily a headline on its own, naturally. However, the timing says something instructive about where contact centre modernisation is heading in the future.
The renewal formalises how C1 will keep selling, deploying and supporting Avaya’s two flagship platforms. These include Avaya Infinity, Avaya’s AI-heavy contact centre and customer engagement system, and the new Avaya Nexus, a mission-critical voice platform still working towards a Q4 2026 launch. Avaya frames the pair as the backbone of where it’s taking communications and customer experience next.
C1, for its part, gets to keep its status as one of Avaya’s longest-standing delivery partners. This is a relationship that C1 is clearly keen to protect given how much of its own AI-managed services business, branded C1Advantage, is now built around it.
Marylou “ML” Maco, Avaya’s Chief Revenue and Customer Experience Officer, commented:
“C1 has long been an integral part of Avaya’s partner ecosystem, and we are excited to continue building on that relationship and delivering customer value. Our customers are looking for trusted paths to modernise while preserving the reliability, flexibility and control their businesses depend on.”
What is Avaya’s Message to Contact Centre and CX Customers
Partnership renewal news rarely results in fireworks. However, what’s compelling behind Avaya and C1’s direction is what the two companies are choosing to lead with. Namely, reassurance. The release repeatedly stresses flexibility across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments, as well as protecting existing investments. This is language clearly aimed at enterprises nervous about being prematurely pushed into a disruptive migration.
C1’s Chief Revenue Officer, Leigh Juul, noted:
“Avaya remains a key technology partner for so many of the organisations we serve, and we are pleased to extend our partnership. Our focus and passion is helping customers modernise in ways that are practical, secure and designed to deliver measurable business outcomes.”
Between the two statements, the message to customers is essentially that nothing forces your hand yet. However, the runway is being extended so you can move when it suits you. That’s aimed squarely at healthcare, financial services, government, and other regulated sectors, where C1 has built much of its reputation and where a poorly timed migration carries huge consequences.
Why the News Matters
Renewals like this rarely make waves, but they’re a decent barometer for how a vendor is positioning itself ahead of a bigger push. Avaya is mid-transition. Infinity is out and expanding, Nexus is still pre-launch, and both need a partner ecosystem that can practically deliver them at enterprise scale rather than just sell them. Locking in its longest-standing integrator now, before Nexus ships, suggests Avaya wants its delivery story settled.
It’s also a small sign of where competition in this market is heading. NICE used its own London event last month to make almost the identical pitch. Customers can modernise without a rip-and-replace. Once the pitch converges across vendors, whoever’s actually running the migration starts to matter almost as much as the platform itself.
What Avaya and C1’s Contact Centre Modernisation Pitch Means for Buyers
If you’re an IT or CX leader pondering a contact centre modernisation decision, this adds a useful data point. It confirms C1 stays Avaya’s default delivery partner for both Infinity and Nexus. It’s also yet another signal that Avaya intends to keep supporting hybrid and on-premises deployments rather than steering everyone towards cloud-only.
For anyone in a regulated sector running legacy voice infrastructure alongside a newer contact centre stack, it’s confirmation that a phased approach, with modern AI tooling in the contact centre now and mission-critical voice modernised later, remains an option rather than something Avaya is trying to wean customers off.
