This topic provides answers to frequently asked questions regarding Procurement Benefits available to DevConnect Program members.
Through the DevConnect program, Avaya provides certain tools, remote lab access, and current versions of its platforms and software at heavily discounted prices solely for the development of member solutions that utilize, interoperate, or interface with Avaya platforms. Avaya offers these procurement items as an entitlement of membership in the DevConnect program to facilitate development on the most current version of Avaya products, and to enable our technology partners to more ably support and demonstrate innovative, interoperable solutions to the ultimate end customer.
The DevConnect team has carefully selected representative configurations of Avaya products, feature licenses, and other product options, and provides discounted pricing based on the expected usage of these configurations in a development lab environment.
The specific offers available, and the methods by which they are fulfilled, vary by membership level.
Once logged in to the DevConnect Portal, use the Labs & Sandboxes mega-menu to Access DevConnect Procurement.
The procurement catalog shows you a variety of procurement options available at your membership level, and provides the ability to see additional offers filtered by category or other search criteria. You can View Offer to see additional technical, support and licensing details for any individual offer, after which you can submit an order request for that particular item, and identify any specific requests, such as inclusion of additional Avaya endpoints or clients as part of the order.
Your order will be reviewed by members of the DevConnect team, and once approved a final configuration will be developed.
DevConnect procurements are fulfilled through an external third party, Innovative Development, although the DevConnect team carefully configures and stages all orders for quality purposes. Once a system or software application is purchased through the DevConnect program, all future support, including license key renewals and software updates, must be obtained through the DevConnect Program and may be further subject to continued membership in the program at specific membership levels.
Avaya reserves the right to refuse sale of any offer at our sole discretion.
No. The procurement prices displayed in the DevConnect Procurement Catalog do not include shipping costs or any taxes. When a Procurement Request is entered, a formal quote is prepared that will include shipping costs as well as any VAT or duties for international orders. In general sales tax is not collected for shipments inside the US as the procurement usually qualifies as a tax exempt R&D purchase. In states and localities where this is not the case, the purchaser is responsible for the sales tax.
Once you have placed a Procurement Request and it has been processed to our third-party facilitator, Innovative Development, you will receive a final quote/invoice detailing all Taxes and Shipping costs, and providing a final price for the offer.
DevConnect procurement requires up-front payment, and all sales are final as per the terms by which you will purchase from Innovative Development. If you do not act upon the Procurement Request within the ninety (90) days the quote is valid for, Innovative Development and DevConnect will jointly cancel this Procurement Request upon expiration of this period.
Use the Account Dashboard to track the status of your procurement requests, or those made by other members of your company.
All DevConnect procurements are processed by a third party facilitator, Innovative Development. At the present time, Innovative Development accepts the following forms of payment:
PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL PAYMENTS ARE MADE TO INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENT, NOT AVAYA OR THE AVAYA DEVCONNECT PROGRAM. Payments that are mis-directed to Avaya or Avaya DevConnect for procurement offers will only delay processing of this request.
Credit card payments can be made directly from the invoice page on the Innovative Development website. This link will be included in the quote you receive from Innovative Development with final pricing information, including taxes and duties. See www.innovativedevelop.com for more information.
No. These platforms are designed and priced for their intended development use in a laboratory environment. The usage of these platforms to process live customer transactions in a production environment is strictly prohibited by your DevConnect membership agreement or the specific procurement purchase agreement.
Depending upon the extent of the difference between your specific needs and the pre-defined configurations offered by DevConnect, it may easily be accommodated by simply adding additional endpoints or related software features to an existing procurement offer. Enhanced-level members should contact their DevConnect Business Development Manager to discuss specific needs.
Only a limited number of procurement offers are available to Base-level Registered members. For access to additional DevConnect procurement offers, consider becoming an enhanced-level member of the DevConnect program
In some cases, DevConnect may direct you to an Authorized Avaya Edge channel partner who may be more suited to meet your needs. These purchases will not be considered a DevConnect Procurement request, and may include additional on-site installation and support/maintenance services offered by the channel partner. DevConnect will not provide Procured System Support for these solutions.
Most Procurement Requests for lab systems are fulfilled directly by DevConnect and our third-party facilitator, Innovative Development, and follow the steps below. Software-only offers may still require processing of internal Avaya orders, but the delay for factory confirmation and equipment configuration is generally negligible.
The DevConnect Fulfillment process for the Procurement Request is as follows (in this order):
Event | Status | Description |
---|---|---|
Submit Procurement Request | Order Submitted | When an order is initially submitted via the DevConnect portal, it is reviewed and approved by an assigned DevConnect Business Development Manager (BDM). |
Approved | Verify Configuration | Upon approval, a DevConnect Procurement Engineer verifies that the order entered is for equipment that is appropriate for your needs. This includes correct version, features, and regional/international configurations/settings. |
Confirm Configuration | Prep Formal Quote | Confirmed configuration details are sent to our third-party facilitator, Innovative Development, for order processing and invoicing. All DevConnect procurement requests which are fulfilled directly by the DevConnect program are invoiced by, and shipped through, Innovative Development. |
Quote Sent | Awaiting Payment | Innovative Development sends an e-mail notification containing a link to the DevConnect Portal which may be used to access the Quote/Invoice for this Procurement Request. This Quote/Invoice includes the price of the procurement request, plus any shipping, taxes, and tariffs that apply. The order waits in this state until Innovative Development receives full payment for the procurement request. |
Payment Received | Generate Equipment Order | Once (and only after) payment is received by Innovative Development, the DevConnect group generates an internal Avaya order for the specified configuration. |
Equipment Ordered | Wait for Factory Confirmation | Once an order is placed by the DevConnect team, it is generally confirmed by the Avaya factory within one week. This is the first point in the process where an estimated delivery date can be provided. |
Factory Order Confirmed | Wait on Equipment | This state indicates that the DevConnect team is awaiting receipt of the equipment from the Avaya factory. This typically takes up to 4-6 weeks from when the order is placed. |
Equipment Received | Config Equipment | All equipment orders are initially received at the DevConnect Procurement staging lab in Westminster Colorado, where configuration of the equipment begins. Configuration generally takes less than a week, but can take longer for large-scale or custom orders, or when there is a significant queue of other procurement requests. |
Shipped to innovative | Ready to Ship | Once staging is completed, DevConnect will ship and transfer ownership to Innovative Development. Innovative Development receives these shipments and reships them to the member. Turnaround time at Innovative Development is generally 1-2 days, but may be longer for international orders that require export/customs documentation. |
Shipped to Member | Follow-up Support | This state indicates that the procurement request has been shipped by Innovative Development, and will remain in this state until the member receives the equipment and installs the necessary licenses. |
Procurement Completed | Procurement Completed | Once the procurement request has been completed, the record remains with the Procurement Completed status for historical purposes. |
Small items such as telephones can take several days. Large, complete systems which are fulfilled directly by DevConnect can take up to 45 days or more to process. Note that all offers requiring shipment of hard goods fulfilled directly by DevConnect are first shipped to Innovative Development before they are shipped to the member.
When payment is made for lab equipment fulfilled directly by DevConnect, an internal Avaya order is placed for the equipment, and the status of the procurement request will be Generate Equipment Order or Wait for Factory Confirmation. During these two periods, Avaya does not have a better estimate than up to 12 weeks that is quoted for all procurement orders. It usually will take approximately 7-10 days after the status of the procurement order changes to Wait for Factory Confirmation for the factory to confirm the order and the status to change to Wait on Equipment. At this time, Innovative Development will usually have a better estimate of when the order will be ready to be shipped.
Software and license keys may be provided via FTP or email transfer methods on an accelerated timeframe, once payment is made to Innovative Development and an order confirmed by them with the DevConnect team.
Typically, for orders fulfilled directly by DevConnect, licenses are provided by Avaya at the time of delivery. Avaya products acquired through the DevConnect Program may contain software licenses that expire. These licenses are engineered for usage in lab environments only and for a fixed time interval, typically 12 months after initial installation or upgrade; Communication Manager licenses are for a 6 month period.
For Avaya products to continue to provide uninterrupted lab service, enhanced level DevConnect members must contact Avaya two weeks prior to the end of every time interval to have new licenses issued. New licenses will be delivered electronically and/or via remote access provided by the higher level DevConnect member. Note that if a higher level DevConnect member's membership expires, future licenses will not be provided for items procured by that member.
DevConnect adheres to Avaya's End of Sale/Support policy, which details a date for End of Manufacturer Support for Software for specific product/release combinations. Once this date has passed for a specific product release, DevConnect will only provide best effort support for members using these systems/releases. It is in the member's best interest to monitor the product's E-Notifications (configured through www.avaya.com/support) and consider upgrading systems as they approach the End of Manufacturer Support for Software date. By best effort support we may or may not be able to provide continued licensing. Product support issues will be based on our ability to answer member questions. We will no longer be able to utilize product development resources to investigate and provide answers to member questions.
For orders fulfilled by an authorized Avaya reseller, software is sub-licensed by the reseller. License upgrades/renewals/maintenance may be handled by the reseller under their standard business practices.
No. Activation of software-based features or provisioning of updates and upgrades for any Avaya development or lab system procured outside of the DevConnect program will not be supported by DevConnect.
In certain cases, it may be possible to bring a system procured through authorized channels under the control of the DevConnect Program. If you wish to do this, please discuss this with your DevConnect Business Development Manager.
Most DevConnect procurements include a statement similar to the following: Up to eight (8) hours of installation support are included with this procurement. Additional installation or configuration support may consume technical support hours.
We have found that members may or may not be familiar with Avaya product deployments. This is largely due to their focus being on their application and not on the Avaya product suite. The 8 hours of support available with a Full Stack deployment and smaller amounts with other products, is limited in scope to getting the products and licenses installed and the initial configuration in place to get to the point that the products can be logged into, and where necessary, are communicating between themselves (e.g., for licensing and certificates).
At that point the scope of the installation support ends and a different scope begins. This second scope is typically the configuration of the various services provided by the product, e.g., trunking, stations, routing, inter-product signaling paths, and the like. Since the overall scope of provisioning an environment can run into many tens of hours and not all members need that level of assistance, those costs are not included in the procurement.
We would like members to develop familiarity with the provisioning of the Avaya systems so they become more self-sufficient and can fully test the functionality provided, set up configurations to mimic end customers to facilitate pre-deployment testing and be nimbler in their work. For those members that need assistance beyond what the Avaya documentation and training materials provide, they can utilize DevConnect support hours to get this additional guidance. Other members may wish to engage a business partner to take responsibility for this type of work.
Unused installation support hours are not added to the general pool of technical support hours for the member.
The DevConnect technical team provides technical support of the Avaya products provided via this program and fulfilled directly by DevConnect.
Once a system that includes hardware is procured, we stage it, by loading the necessary software and upgrades, configure IP information (acquired from the member), and provide the necessary licensing. We then ship the equipment to the member's site where we provide assistance connecting it to the network and getting the member properly logged in. For software only solutions, we make the software available via FTP and remotely provide guidance (documentation) with installation, IP addressing, licensing, and verifying access. This may involve our assistance, but many members are successful in completing the majority of these tasks without our direct involvement.
The procurement assistance outlined above is provided as part of the procurement cost up to the maximum number of hours stated in the procurement ordering details. For all questions related to a procurement, a DevConnect Procured System Support Request tickets should be entered via the portal.
Once the member has successfully gained access to the system, the task of provisioning the system falls to the member. If the member requests our assistance with provisioning tasks, our preference is to teach them how to perform that task on their own. Technical support hours are required and utilized for providing this level of assistance.
Remote access may be required by Avaya personnel to complete the installation process or to assist with any level of troubleshooting. It is the member's responsibility to provide satisfactory remote access if required by Avaya.
Post-installation and on-going technical support is accessible via DevConnect services, which may be chargeable to your membership Technical Support Hour entitlements.
All levels of support including maintenance and upgrades for systems fulfilled through an Avaya reseller are provided by the reseller.
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As a result of Avaya’s settlement with a former third-party software supplier, Avaya has ceased distribution and support of certain legacy products. As a result, DevConnect is no longer able to provide you with renewed software license keys for affected products and/or releases. In particular, Avaya Aura Midsize Business Edition (AAME) and individual Avaya Aura suite components through release 6.3.10, as well as certain G430 & G450 media servers, are impacted. More information is available in this Feb 13, 2018 DevConnect Program Update
Minor release (e.g., 7.0 to 7.1 or similar) upgrade and patch software is included with procurement of a system procured through the DevConnect program that is running a corresponding release (e.g., 7.x.x). Upgrade software will be made available to members who are up to date with their membership status (i.e., fees and other obligations). Members should make a request for upgrade software through a DevConnect Procured System Support request. Major release upgrades (e.g., Release 7.x to 8.x) to DevConnect procured products are not available through the program. A full system purchase is required.
If the system is being ordered, please include any special requests in the comments field of the procurement. If the system has already been ordered, please open a procurement support request and specify the special needs you have related to the procurement (e.g. increased number of user licenses) and include a reference (e.g. procurement number) to the system you are referring to.
Procurements are handled by Innovative Development and are not returnable/refundable. As stated in the Membership Agreement, all DevConnect related fees are not refundable.
The Avaya Media Server is a newer offering from Avaya, which supports the majority of services that the legacy G-series gateways supported. Some of the differences of note are outlined below. The G-series gateways:
Additionally, the DevConnect Full Stack deployment guide does not cover the G450 gateway; the product documentation must be used for deployment.