Avaya made quite the splash at GITEX this year, with a huge booth full of offerings to show their customers, and a focus on helping consumers understand how Avaya can make the world of communication more streamlined for every industry. Since 2018, and the exit of Chapter 11 will mark a significant transition for the Avaya brand, I was keen to speak to the leaders in the business about the ways that the company will be evolving in the coming years.
Fortunately, I had a chance to sit down for an interview with the CTO for Avaya, Laurent Philonenko, who shared his insights with me, and a group of my peers at the GITEX conference.
What Significant Changes Have You Seen in Your Time as CTO?
Laurent Philonenko has been the CTO for Avaya for four years now, so the first thing I wanted to know was which big changes he’s noticed during his time in the position. He began by acknowledging that we’re living in an era of rapid change, where evolution in the technology world appears to be constant:
“The environment for communication four years ago was very different to what we have today. Four years ago, we were looking at the functionality of voice in the enterprise. Now, we’re considering customer experience, combined technologies, security, and a range of concerns we never imagined before.”
“New strategies like cloud computing have emerged, and our customers are facing different issues that we need to help them address. One of the things I’ve noticed is that our partnerships have grown increasingly important over the years. No matter who you are, it’s impossible to satisfy all customer needs, so it’s important to become part of a network that allows you to react quickly, and provide the solutions customers need.”
Interestingly, on the Avaya stand at GITEX, many of the products and solutions shown weren’t under an Avaya flag. Instead, Avaya has been showing use cases that work with their partners and customers, with their services in the background.
What is the Avaya Business Model Now?
With so many changes happening for Avaya, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the brand is in fact a hardware and software vendor, or whether they’ve evolved into something else. Laurent noted that the company received the award for “Software Vendor of Year” the day before at ICT Achievement Awards:
“While we certainly do a lot of software, we also want to be an integrator, delivering solutions and applications to our customers. If you look at our business today, it’s essentially built around software and services. However, we’re also considering devices too. For Avaya, it’s all about delivering innovation to strengthen the UC space.”
Laurent went on to note that Avaya has many customers and partner options to consider. “Our number one vertical is healthcare, but we’re also big in financial and contact centres too. The government is becoming more significant for us, and we’re considering partnerships to become more vertical. In fact, we’re working with traditional partners, alongside system integrators too.”
How Is Avaya Applying the Blockchain to UC?
One of the biggest announcements that Avaya has made recently, is their decision to start investing in blockchain technology. Currently, Laurent suggested that they’re exploring various use options for the technology, with one option being the consideration of contact centre fraud, and fraud management.
“The blockchain allows for transactions and communications between customers and contact centres to be made more secure. Not only is the security in the blockchain very significant, but the system simply makes the contact centre safer, because you can see what happened, and where.”
With the blockchain, it’s possible to track information securely within an environment. From the perspective of fraud, for instance, you can store an identity in the blockchain, then refer to it when necessary. If that identity needs to be changed, you can see the information that led to the change, and who made the update.
“The blockchain is opening up new opportunities for us to start doing things differently from a security perspective.”
What Significant Changes are Coming for Avaya?
Now that Avaya is exiting chapter 11 fitter and more agile than ever before, I was interested to learn what we can expect to see next from the communications giant. Laurent commented that the first area that company would be focusing on, is unified communications, pushing more cloud, more analytical solutions, and more artificial intelligence into the world of the contact centre.
“In the next few weeks, we’re going to be launching something called “AI Connect“, which will start off with 15 partners – some big, some small. Basically, this solution will allow us to work with other people to bring new AI solutions to our customers.”
“Whether you’re looking for a new virtual assistant, conversational interfaces, or predictive sentiment analysis, we’re going to create a platform for AI growth.”
After that, Avaya will begin to do more in the cloud, making their platform more agile and assisting companies in their transition to the hybrid environment. “Of course, we’ll always be focusing on delivering more functionality, and better solutions to our customers too.”
How Will Avaya Remain Competitive?
Although Avaya is certainly moving into a space of strength this year, it’s worth noting that there are a lot of different options on the UC market at present. The first point of differentiation that Avaya will be focusing on, is making their products more “customer-led”. Laurent noted:
“We’ll be defining how people prefer to communicate, and how we can change our products to meet customer needs.”
Additionally, Avaya will continue to offer price competitiveness, innovative products, and on-demand strategies for their customers.
