EVENTS Avaya
“We are going to co-develop products. The products are going to differentiated, with
a unique UI and UX for Avaya.“ Jim Chirico, CEO - Avaya
JIM CHIRICO, CEO OF AVAYA
CBM: Why did you choose RingCentral for your latest partnership?
Jim Chirico (JC): The logic is sound. They are the world leader in UCaaS
multi-tenant. Avaya did not have a solution in the multi-tenant unifi ed
communications space in the cloud, so it was a natural fi t.
We are going to co-develop products. The products are going to be
differentiated, with a unique UI and UX for Avaya. We are going to make
sure that the interoperability is seamless for the installed base and
those with Avaya gear out there. It will be frictionless from a commerce
perspective and we will be able to transition, if we want to, our
customers to the cloud.
CBM: What is Avaya gaining, or perhaps losing from this deal?
JC: Avaya is gaining, but more importantly our customers are gaining
from this deal. We have 100 million UC seats out there. Roughly a third
of those are under maintenance contracts so we have a very large
unmonetised base. So now we have an opportunity to get revenue as
we monetise that base over to Avaya. Secondly, we are controlling the
whole customer relationship, the whole lifecycle from end to end. Avaya
is doing the services, the selling, it’s an Avaya branded solution.
Equally as important is we are going to have a product to sell through
the Master Agent Network. We will not only provide a solution for our
current customers but also compete head to head with the number of
pure play providers out there today.
CBM: With the investors satisfi ed does that give Avaya breathing
room?
JC: There were three objects when we set out the strategic process
earlier this year. First and foremost was we wanted to get technology we
didn’t have on our portfolio. Secondly, we did want to return shareholder
value, that’s why we are in business. And thirdly, we wanted to deliver
the balance sheet. Partnering with the leader in UCaaS cloud solutions,
RingCentral, checks the fi rst box. We are now going to buy back $500m
in shares, which is a signifi cant amount of our share base. And we are
taking $250m off the balance sheet. We were able to check all three
boxes.
CBM: Could there be more to come from the RingCentral relationship?
JC: You never know. RingCentral is qualifying our devices, they will be
selling our devices so in essence RingCentral will be a Channel for
our endpoints on the RingCentral Offi ce platform. That is extremely
important to us, as well as RingCentral. You never know, we will see
where this goes. I have spent a lot of time with Vlad (RingCentral’s
CEO) over the last few months and both teams are excited, a soon as
we close the deal we have joint development teams which will hit the
ground running.
What will CEO Jim Chirico do next?
ZEUS KERRAVALA, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPLE ANALYST AT ZK
RESEARCH
CBM: WHY IS AVAYA CONCENTRATING ON THE CONTACT CENTRE?
ZK: “I think when you look at the 200-seat market and under for
Unifi ed Communications, that market is set to decline on pricing.
I think a lot of that is going to come from Zoom and Amazon and
companies like that. Really, their core product is something else and
they’re throwing in voice for free.
That gives Avaya a couple of choices. They could chase the
market down or they could offl oad that to RingCentral and focus
on something a lot more strategic. Those more strategic markets
are around Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS), and also Private
Cloud. One of the unique things about Avaya is they have an installed
base, which is bigger and more complex than almost anybody.
When you talk to some of their customers like Emirates Airlines and
Standard Chartered, they are very complex enterprises with complex
workfl ows. They require a lot of application integration which is not
something you buy off the shelf in the cloud.”
Customers and partners clamber to see
the latest from Avaya at Gitex
18 | Comms Business Magazine | November 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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