INTERVIEW
People Talk to People
Comms Business Magazine talks to Ali Hastings, Regional Channel Leader at Avaya UK&I about IP Telephony and
how Avaya is approaching the market with a more rounded and more complete set of solutions for 2020
With the likes of Facebook
and Microsoft making big
waves in the industry is the
IP telephony market just on
borrowed time.
From an Avaya perspective for
our 100 million users worldwide
we have oerings in UC&C
cloud already, will be launching
our UCaaS product, Avaya
Cloud Oce this July and
September will see the launch of
our CPaaS solution.
Covid-19 will accelerate
the progress of Digital
Transformation (DX) but in
an immediate reaction to the
crisis many enterprises are
using social consumer platform
media streams in their business.
Avaya has been building
enterprise grade apps that have
been through an enterprise
hardening and testing process
that results in a better product
with a feature richness of the
applications – not just the voice
element.
Is ISDN end of life still a major
driver for the march towards
hosted telephony?
e end of ISDN as a driver has
been around for a number of
years and people have moved to
IP based systems for exibility
and cost. In the API world in
which we now live organisations
are looking for solutions; our
CPaaS oering due to launch
in September will integrate SIP
directly on to the platform, real
time comms will be embedded
Ali Hastings, Regional Channel Leader at Avaya UK&I
into their business which will
bring further business benets.
Our CPaaS proposition
comes as a result of our Esna
acquisition ve years ago and
our current Spaces product is a
result of that move.
Has Microsoft delivered a
killer blow to the market with
its Direct Routing proposition
or is this another Channel
opportunity?
No. e advantage of the
Avaya portfolio is that we can
bundle all these applications,
in the channel community you
need to innovate. For example;
this is not entirely Microsoft
doing this on their own – they
are working through a small
number of globally based
partners – basically excluding
resellers. ere’s no value here
for managed services providers
who have a wider wrap to oer
users, for example security.
Going single vendor has not
worked for customers.
What do partners really want
out of an IP proposition?
Sticky product, margin rich,
solid network uptime, or all of
the above? Can one service
provider really cover all the
bases?
Resellers have changed and
are today driven by the client
outcome. e rules UCaaS,
CPaaS and CCaaS state that
solutions do not have to be based
entirely on any single one of those
solutions – it can be a blend of
solutions. With CPaaS you pay
for what you consume – it’s a
catalyst for DX and an evolution
from IP Telephony. Today, 80%
of web trac is API driven and
underpinned by CPaaS.
Have the larger providers like
Daisy and Gamma taken the
legs out of the market with
their ability to offer super
bundled propositions?
ese bundles are three or four
years old and yes, we did not have
an oering at that time but there
is no margin in them anyway.
We’re moving to an approach
where solutions are consumable -
a blend of capabilities because as
we know, one size does not t all.
How will Avaya be
differentiating their ACO from
that of RingCentral?
We are not really playing in that
space. Globally we have taken
the global leader for UCaaS and
matched it up with our huge
customer base and R&D. We
had no time to build our own
platform and compete, so this
was a sensible move.
We are developing new
features for ACO plus adding
our branch networking
capabilities. ere are things we
are able to do as Avaya, that were
previously not possible, that we
can take to market - we already
have a go to market plan for
ACO ready for July launch in
the UK. We’ll have features and
functionality RingCentral don’t
have and a large customer base.
Looking ahead more people
will be working from home –
telephony is as relevant today as
it’s ever been. People want to talk
to people and it’s better served by
automation.
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