Avaya’s origins are in innovation – the objective of the spin-off from Lucent Technologies back in 2000 was to give the people who knew the business best the flexibility and focus to accelerate innovation and improve operations. So it has always been focused on innovating business communications. Avaya’s status as a private company has also allowed Avaya to transition very quickly from a product company to a software/services provider to a cloud-based solutions provider as the market has shifted.
Today, we are the only company that specializes in complex business communications with open and mobile software platforms and the network infrastructure to meet underlying needs.
Fadi Moubarak,
Channel Director, Asia,
Middle East and Afrcia,
Avaya
Avaya has, since its start, been a business communications solutions vendor. How has the company evolved and managed to stay relevant through the technology and market shifts from the time it was span off in 2000 as Lucent Technologies’ Enterprise Communications Group?
Apart from the technical innovation that we will talk about during the course of this interview, Avaya Transformation can be summarized with the following example:
By Spring time 2016 all our products will become Software capable of being ran on a virtualized environment with the option of being acquired based on a consumption model as private or public cloud setup.
This is a making our innovation available to all types of customers across the globe, thus playing a crucial role in the digital transformation journey going on in all markets.
Avaya has made several big shifts in the life of its business to adapt to new technology, but some critics in the Middle East say you haven’t moved fast enough. Is that fair criticism?
We’ve also been leading the transformation of different industries: Avaya is the only vendor that delivers an enterprise, end-to-end, automated network architecture in the market today. Our SDN-Fx architecture is the first to deliver automation and programmability from the network core to the user edge, providing “connect anything, anywhere” simplicity – the perfect platform for building Internet of Things strategies and to underpin smart transformation.
To take another example, Gartner has identified the “ambient user experience,” in which the customer experience seamlessly flows across different devices and interaction channels as the user moves from one place to another, as a key technology trend for the future. We announced last year, with Plantronics, the ability to move a session from a mobile device and transition it to our video conferencing solution based on Scopia technology. So, we have already started the journey toward the ambient user experience; we couldn’t deliver this technology to you now, or in the coming months if we had not started the journey years ago.
If you keep going down Gartner’s list of key technology trends, things like advanced machine learning, adaptive security architecture, the ability to dynamically automate security, and so on, you’ll be shocked to see that Avaya is such a strong innovator in the market place that probably 60-70% of those future things that are being predicted are already available to our customers. This is pretty powerful and a great testimonial of the strength of innovation that Avaya’s brought to the market place over the last two years through its transformation to make sure that we generate the right business outcomes in the marketplace.
How do you know when to move in a different direction in this business?
The answer from our perspective is very simple: Listen to our customers and through them to their customers. This is where everything starts. We either detect business challenges or see how to develop technologies to help address those, or we detect opportunities emerging from consumer changing needs. In all cases, we keep our business radars active at all times and always link our R&D efforts to business outcomes we want to achieve with our customers.
As a result, new technologies will dictate a change of direction in how a company like Avaya executes. As an example, taking an Opex model to the market is totally different from traditonal Capex offerings. BY the way, the Capex to Opex shift going on now is one of the major changes in our industry across many decades.
How has Avaya managed to navigate market transitions given the pace of change and the challenges the company has faced together with partners along the way?
The business world is more dynamic than ever. New rules – many yet unwritten – need to replace older, outmoded ones. Less than a decade ago, most companies equated what’s now called “cloud services” with Centrex; the move to software for real-time communications was just starting to turn into an upswing, although a large part of a partner’s revenue could still come from selling hardware: PBXs and telephones.
That’s all changed, and skills and programs need to move with the changes for partners and vendors to stay relevant. The key is all about meeting the people that you service, meeting your customer needs. Avaya’s high-touch, outcomes-focused approach enables us to know what the market trends are on local, regional and global levels.
As a company that does daily battle with bigger competitors, we view agility and adaptability as a competitive advantage. Our “stack” has to work better than our competitors’ which means we must work seamlessly across different functions, from sales to engineering to services.
Looking at Avaya’s track record, some partners question how Avaya, a company whose DNA is so deeply rooted in hardware can continue to win in a communications, network and infrastructure market that’s racing so quickly towards software. How is software increasingly becoming part of Avaya’s offerings?
As mentioned earlier, ALL our solutions are already offered as a software and even our SDN-FX Networking solutions will follow the same route. The Intelligence and innovation are no longer in the hardware but rather in the software. Consequently, Software is not Part of Avaya offerings, but rather it is the core of the offering. Hardware is restricted to peripherals only.
Nowadays there is a lot of emphasis from traditional hardware vendors on becoming software companies and upping their stakes. Does Avaya need to be seen as a software company here in the Middle East? What’s the plan to invest in software?
Avaya today is a software company: software and services accounted for over 71% of our total revenue in fiscal 2015 and by April 2016 we are going to offer all of our solutions in an “as-a-service” model – the only vendor in this space that is able to do so.
The number one driver for the move towards software is our customers are pushing us to be in that space: it doesn’t make any difference how clever we are or how good our products are, the bottom line is customers were saying “I am no longer going to pay for proprietary products, so don’t come in and try and sell me a solution that only works with Avaya equipment.”
If you are not becoming an application company then you are going the way of the dinosaur – people just aren’t going to buy from you anymore, the mind-set set has totally changed. The clever people who buy from us don’t care about the desktop phone, or the server, it’s not the important part of the solution. What lies at the other end of the cable is the investment that they are making.
That doesn’t mean that we are abandoning our current hardware business or partners that want to work with us in this space, we are still going to provide continuous support for our hardware. Many customers still want to get the whole package from us, including endpoints, handsets, physical servers and so on. However, these customers are increasingly seeing the hardware as just part of the package – they don’t call it hardware anymore, it’s “off the shelf.”
This software and services approach is going to become increasingly important in the region in 2016 as organizations across the Middle East embrace the opportunities created by digital transformation; this will be at the center of enterprise strategy across all industry segments and markets because it enables organizations to deliver different, better, customer experiences. IDC is predicting ICT spending across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa will top $260 billion in 2016 as organizations increase expenditure on mobility, cloud, social and Big Data initiatives to drive digital transformation.
Areas where we have invested in software include engagement, understanding that an omnichannel (video, voice, text) digitized world requires specific models to accommodate events in a consumer world and to process the desired outcomes in the enterprise. We’ve also created a software platform to automate workflows and integrations across communities on disparate systems. Our technology enables these workflows to be executed 10x faster than the competition.
Software development kits are fundamentally reshaping the landscape of every industry they touch. We have released Avaya Engagement Development Platform [EDP], a powerful new software development kit that makes it easy to embed business communications inside automated workflows and apps. It’s still early days, but we’re already seeing some really interesting applications being built on the platform — everything from elevator emergency buttons to video-enabled customer service over mobile devices.
On the other side of the portfolio, we’re incredibly proud of our work in software-defined networking through our Fabric Connect SDN switch technology. We’ve tackled some of the world’s most challenging networks — our network powers the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and powered the most recent Winter Olympics — and we believe we’re 12 to 18 months ahead of our competitors in next-generation networking.
Has Avaya shifted its R&D budget to focus more on software? If yes, what percentage of Avaya’s R&D budget would you say is for hardware vs. software?
Of course our R&D budget has shifted to software over the past several years, reflecting the changes in the industry, and our change as a company. Today, the majority of our R&D budget is focused on software.
What’s Avaya’s game plan for helping and guiding channel partners to capitalise on the rapidly shifting IT landscape in the Middle East?
As we continue to evolve into a solutions and services company, it is strategically important for us to reflect this transformation to the channel partners we work with. Value-based selling and the ability of channel partners to not only understand the IT requirements of our customers but their business outcomes, is key for us. Whether it is a large organization with a solid IT team, or smaller customers with limited or no in-house technology support, we work with our partners to transform the conversation from a product and discount-led selling approach to a value and outcomes-based one. This is a process that will not only show value in the immediate short term, but will surely also differentiate our partners as they expand into new solutions and new verticals.
We are also looking at specific verticals in order to build relevance; it is one thing to apply technology horizontally, but it’s much more powerful when you can come to a specific vertical market and get them to understand exactly what you can do for their business. We are working with our channel partners to give them the ammunition they need to go after vertical industry accounts, such as packaged solutions that have been proven enterprise-ready.
All of the above is complemented with an upgrade of our traditional pre-sales and post sales trainings to be made more solution oriented v/s product oriented, ie special focus on how to deploy and support a solution rather than one product at a time.
In addition, our rebate programs are also being re-designed to reward partners adopting the above described value based selling approach.
What software opportunities lie ahead for channel partners in the business communications, network and infrastructure market in the region?
There is significant interest in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model in the region where companies see great opportunity. The public cloud services market in the region has grown through the year as more organisations increase their use of applications across verticals. Avaya has focused on the transformation occurring in the industry and how channel partners can capitalize on the shift, particularly around cloud-delivered engagement solutions.
By Spring 2016, we are going to offer all of our solutions in an “as-a-service” consumable model – the only vendor in this space that is able to do so. This is a powerful statement for our partners. Some are fully prepared for this model, and some aren’t – we’re happy to work with both but for those who want to get into SaaS, we want to help them go after different customers and increase their business.
We’ve worked with partners to enable them to be there for customers who are increasingly moving from premises-based IT operations to cloud-based services. Many Avaya partners are now able to offer a cloud-based service through a wholesaler or distributor, or may be launching their own service based on Avaya Customer and Team Engagement solutions for enterprises or midmarket companies.
Avaya recently unveiled its Midmarket Select Program globally with select partners. When is the company planning to roll the full scheme in the Middle East and what will it encompass for partners that are selected to the programme?
By the time this article released, the MM Select program would have been released to our partners in Middle East.
The program includes a set of training tools, and special bundles to address the upper Mid-Market space, since those organizations are more and more having the same requirements are lager enterprise but are more challenged in terms of in house skills, thus the need to easy to implement and support solutions.
The above is surely complemented by a set of incentives to reward high performance partners.
What was the main motivation of launching the Avaya Midmarket Select Program, when the company already has the Avaya Connect programme? What will change with the new programme?
The mid-market is large, as large as the enterprise in many regions. The total addressable market of all IT spend globally in that space is about 61 percent, so we have a lot of room to grow there. The mid-market is also more resilient in an era of consolidation than the enterprise, and it is an opportunity that Avaya has not really captured its fair market share in it.
The main motivation behind our MM Select program is to make it simple to our partners to promote our MM solutions, and to our customers to acquire those. Customers in that space focus on functionality, agility and simplicity.
We are focused on moving from basic coverage of accounts to more consultative selling, and will have training and playbooks in place. In the mid-market, we will package our products to encourage partner investment and focus — in the market and across our product portfolio. Of course successful partners will be properly rewarded.
How many partner tiers will the Avaya Midmarket Select Program have in the Middle East and what will be an ideal number of partners to have on the programme?
We are not predefining those but rather setting some enrolment criteria that will be open to any partner, as long s they meet the criteria.
With the unveiling of the Avaya Midmarket Select Program, what will be the company’s main message to partners in the Middle East in 2016?
As we continue to evolve into a solutions and services company, it is strategically important for us to reflect this transformation to the channel partners we work with.
Value-based selling and the ability of channel partners to not only understand the IT requirements of our customers but their business outcomes, is key for us. Whether it is a large organization with a solid IT team, or smaller customers with limited or no in-house technology support, we work with our partners to transform the conversation from products and discounts led selling approach to value and outcomes based one.
This is a process that will not only show value in the immediate short term, but will surely also differentiate our partners as they expand into new solutions and new verticals.
With the rapid pace of transformation and transitions happening in the IT industry today, the big bets have been placed on the game-changers – cloud, mobility, IoT, security, social, analytics and big data. How is Avaya guiding partners to ensure they define their own future in which Avaya solutions will play a role in some or all of these areas?
Avaya provides a good proportion of the technology that is going to deliver on digital transformation and smart – but we don’t do it all. Avaya looks at fit-for-purpose, where we have chosen to invest, we take pride in becoming the best in that technology and take pride in delivering leadership and innovation in those spaces.
But we look to our partner community to help us deliver. For instance, take video surveillance; we don’t make video surveillance cameras, we don’t develop VSS systems, we don’t build the analytics for all systems, we don’t have firewalls, we don’t have IDS, we don’t have load balancers. We look to our partners for all of these.
The partner community now has an opportunity to bring all of these pieces together, augment their relevance to the executives, the CxOs, by being part of their strategic initiatives and this is where we need their help, we need their help to scale and we need their help to deliver on smart solutions.
Our partners have the golden opportunity to put these solutions together and generate a huge relevance to customers by meeting their solutions needs. The things that we do, we do better than the competition. The things that we do not do, we need our partner community to glue together.
How have are you motivating your partners to visualise the IT industry in 2016 and beyond?
The Middle East in General has always offered quality resources to the IT industry and partners generally compete on value, mainly created by the quality of their staff. Nevertheless, the customers’ digital transformation is putting stress on all stakeholders involved due to the complexity and sensitivity of the issue at hand. What we can do however is continue to work with the channel to enhance their skills and ensure that customers ‘ digital transformation is in good hands. It is a responsibility that Avaya takes very seriously as we continue to invest in shaping and sharpening the skills of our channel partners.
The most highly required skills at present are those related to mobility, cloud, security, and networking. Enabling transformation, understanding the big picture, and recognising the business challenges faced by organisations in the region are all very important attributes for the channel.
