Does Avaya’s Cloud Chief Have What it Takes?
UC Today’s analysis of Avaya’s new Cloud Chief, Gaurav Passi
Moshe Beauford
In the fourth quarter of 2018, Avaya reported $735 million in revenue.
It was also around this time, the company announced news of its new Cloud Chief – Gaurav Passi. Mr. Passi, replacing Mercer Rowe, is a recognized leader in the cloud comms industry, with over ten years of experience to bring to the role.
Prior to accepting the post at Avaya, Passi served as Executive Vice President of Products and Technology at Five9. There, he headed development, modernization, as well as growth for Five9’s contact center cloud management software. Mr. Passi also previously held senior leadership roles at P&L, Deutsche Telekom Hosted Business Services, Amdocs Inc. and Ciena Corporation.
Passi accepts challenge
At the time of appointment, Passi was charged with accelerating delivery of Avaya’s cloud solutions. Passi was, furthermore, tasked with increasing Avaya’s market share in the global UCaaS and CCaaS market. It was abundantly clear, then – he was more than qualified to lead the acceleration of Avaya’s penetration in such a strategic area.
To provide some pretext – in the third quarter of 2018, Avaya confined that its cloud-based platform had over three million of its cloud-based seats filled. The company showed no signs of slowing down, and today that number sits at over 3.5 million.
Across its private and public cloud portfolio in the UCaaS and CCaaS realm, Avaya, too, reported that its cloud-based solutions were 11 percent of its total revenue. These are the circumstances under which Mr. Passi took the helm.
So, how’s he stacking up to his initial challenge of accelerating the delivery of cloud innovation? Passi has now been on the job for over three months and we want to examine if he’s got what it takes to further establish Avaya as a global player.
Leading the way in cloud-innovation?
Earlier this year, Passi got the chance to show what he was made of. Avaya announced its new OneCloud ReadyNow private cloud offerings feature. Avaya’s latest comes preconfigured and allows ‘per-seat consumption’ as well as standard bundles of both UCaaS and CCaaS solutions.
This is all to help clients achieve scalability, security, and overall more flexibility. Said Gaurav:
“As the market leader with 145 million lines worldwide, Avaya is best equipped to help enterprise customers with their important cloud transition – working at scale and with the performance you can count on”
What’s the verdict?
It is, most certainly too soon to tell, but Avaya is continually at the forefront of innovation in UC.
What is clear, is that Avaya plans to dominate. Its OneCloud UC and CC solutions are available through a network of data centers located in the United States, Germany, and Singapore. This service is available in 34 countries.
Furthermore, the company will be expanding its network of global data centers in the coming months ‘to meet the growing needs of customers worldwide,’ according to a recent press release. The deck is most certainly stacked in your favor, and we’re rooting for you, Mr. Passi.
With your current vision – I believe you do have what it takes to keep Avaya on the cutting-edge of UC technology.
Good luck in the new role Gaurav – it’s a big one!
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