MARKET REPORT AVAYA
“At the core we are still the same company, we are known for our technology expertise,
known for our innovation and company that has been around for over one hundred years,
Chris McGugan, SVP of Solutions
and Technology, at Avaya
centre agents using
contact centre tools. Anyone that
needs to deal with customers
like sales people, eld service
and things are like that are using
contact centre. One company
I interviewed recently had fty
contact centre agents, and one
hundred people who aren’t
agents using the tools. at
drives a di erent set of tools,
those people need to reach out
to people internally through
the extended enterprise but
also to the customer. I think
it is becoming necessary to be
able to deliver that from one
stack so you create consistent
communications between
and one that can be trusted.” Jim Chirico, CEO of Avaya
customer and employee
channels.”
After some huge movements
in the UC space of late, namely
the Zoom IPO, Microsoft’s
increasing dominance and of
course rumours surrounding
Avaya themselves I asked
what was driving some of this
change.
Evan Kirstel, B2B In uencer,
commented “We talked about
the Zoom IPO and how that
is validating that collaboration
and meetings are back. at
is squarely where Avaya is, by
bringing people together in
remote setting and making
meetings e ective and e cient
and meaningful again whether
it is video, audio or messaging
or something else. I think that
was a great validation of this
space and how important it is
to our work life to have good
meetings.”
The Acquisition
e rumours have ben ying
thick and fast regarding
a possible takeover by PE
money this year. Although
Chirico’s e orts have steadied
the revenue gures over 2018
the speculation may have
had an impact on sales. On
a recent earnings call, which
happened just after the event,
Chirico indicated the market
speculation may have been
the reason the company didn’t
perform to expectation in Q2.
Despite this, and looking
at the large deal activity, the
company still hauled in 78
deals over $1 million, 9 over
$5 million, and 2 over $10
million. GAAP revenue was
$709 million and their public
cloud seats increased by 165%
year-on-year.
Still, Chirico con rmed J.P.
Morgan has been instructed
to “assist in exploring strategic
alternatives intended to
maximize shareholder value.”
“ e board has not set
a timetable for the process,
nor has it made any decisions
related to any strategic
alternatives at this time,” he
told investors.
ED SAYS…
Avaya has fi nally realised they can’t do it all on their own and we are starting to
see some pretty interesting alliance partnerships being formed. The latest being
their IP Offi ce proposition now available through Google Cloud. I expect to see a
lot from the Avaya camp over the coming years as they look to battle the likes of
Cisco and Microsoft.
important. It’s important
because our customers have
made a signi cant investment
and they want us to continue
making that investment so that
they can move to the cloud if
and when they are ready.
e second pillar for
us is cloud. We have a real
di erentiator in the marketplace
in the ability to deliver a private
cloud service for our customers.
If you are a large enterprise you
won’t move to a public cloud
environment, but to provide
the capabilities and their own
hosted virtual private instance
at Avaya for critical enterprise
customers is a compelling
proposition. Core is important
in both private, public and of
course hybrid. We provide scale
no matter where you want to
move your business.
e third is in services.
We have over four thousand
services professionals working
in maintenance, working
in professional services and
working in private cloud
services. It is that expertise that
you (customers) can’t just grow
because its takes years and years
of experience. Our services
business is doing quite well.”
UC and CC markets
We are seeing convergence
taking place between two
of Avaya’s core markets. e
uni ed communications
(UC) and Contact Centre
(CC) markets are seeing some
convergence as non-agent sta
start to demand new tools from
the CC space.
Zeus Kerravala, Principal
Analyst at ZK Research
commented, “I was a bit of a
sceptic to begin with, do we
really need to bring the markets
together. What’s happening
now, as CC has become easier
to deploy, there is a lot of noncontact
30 | Comms Business Magazine | June 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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