The Avaya Connection

Industry experts across all product segments have unanimously agreed to the fact of the rising prominence of SMBs in India, as the key growth driver for the past three years. True to the fact, the SMB segment has proved its worth, featuring on the top priority list for all major IT giants in product category with even tier-I SIs framing the dedicated SMB and SME segments in their deliverables category. With the industry trend moving towards a more decentralised pattern of local offices rising to prominence than ever before and new companies keen to have a dedicated IT structure and policy in their annual fund, the SMB and the SME sectors have started to think about IT, similar on the lines of the mid-corporate.

Although a tight budget pose as a key challenge for any SMB, which is readily opting for virtualization and public cloud, the relative high budget of the SMEs is a key growth driver in the IT economy. Networking is a key portfolio in the hardware segment, coupled with the prominence of unified communication (UC). These two product categories, intertwined together forms one of the crucial components in any company, in terms of hardware deployments.

In the changing times of focus diversification on part of the vendors, Avaya, one of the leading companies in the UC space has clearly set its program, to build upon the enterprise segment of the mid-sizes in India. The criteria for the SME, according to Avaya, is however, companies in the range of Rs 1,000 crore, which clearly lays the importance of the medium-large enterprises in the country, which Avaya is targeting. The vendor has already entered into major deployments across the PSU vertical in aviation and is diversifying across the BFSI sector with its 'go-to-enterprise approach'. As a measure of securing itself in this vertical, Avaya is also concentrating over building up its channel-based focus on the enterprise channel players and has drawn up an elaborate plan for the cause. Not only has the vendor strengthened its global Avaya Connect program, to cater to the rising needs of the channel community, it has also laid a benchmarking criteria in this case and is being selective in appointing its partners globally.

“77 percent of our global business is driven by channels after the major restructuring we had done two years back. We are very strict in matters of certification through our Connect program and have disqualified some of our channel partners in North America, as they failed to qualify or undertake the Connect initiative,” said Jeremy Butt, VP-Global Channels, Avaya.

Besides getting rigid over the certification issue, the vendor has also initiated the Partner Relationship Management program, where all details of the channel partners are stored with their profiles, categories and key focus areas available to Avaya and the help-desk anytime. This implementation, according to Avaya has significantly reduced the 'cost hours' for the partners by 64 percent. “Next year ahead, partners will need to have proper certifications in place if they want to deal in high-end products. We are in the process of evolving our training program from a product-based training to a solutions-based one and have plans to implement major Web-based renovations in the APAC region,” Butt added.

From what Avaya has planned with respect to its training and certification programs for its partners, it seems that the UC major is in a mode to accommodate quality partners only in its portfolio and not necessarily seek a number advantage. Besides its elaborate partner training programs, the company is on a mode for acquisitions too, to expand its service and product base. With the success of integrating Nortel last year, Avaya is considering more acquisitions in North Asia next FY. “We have evolved from the production business towards a more solution-centric one, with repositioning the company September onwards. In this effort, we are transforming technology into end-user experience through our product lines and the service offerings,” said Francois Lancon, President, Avaya APAC.

Signaling a long-term branding, as well as sales increase strategy, Avaya will be soon partner with VMware over datacenter virtualization solutions. Also, the vendor has signed a contract with Skype over embedded software for its products in USA and will soon be implementing the same across Asia and is planning to evolve its premium 'contact center' into the 'hosted solutions' segment. “For our partners, we are keen not only in providing them with better after-sales support, but to help them in bagging contracts too. We have developed and will soon be implementing online solutions for the partners, where they can fetch help from the Avaya online experts to convert sales leads for better engagement with the potential clients,” said Jean Turgeon, VP and Global GM-Data Solutions, Avaya.

Besides opting for a complete repositioning of the company and focusing over its product lines, Avaya is targeting to evolve into the APAC zone, especially India with a complete new makeover and has set up aggressive targets in the SME vertical, especially in BFSI, PSU and other government verticals. With the onset of the new year, spending from the enterprise and the mid-corporate segment are expected to increase and Avaya seems keen and pretty geared up to take on the challenge to outbid its other competitors in the UC space.

Avishek Rakshit
(avishekr@cybermedia.co.in)
The author was hosted by Avaya in Macau