Three years ago, Avaya began its trek to the cloud, evolving from selling primarily legacy technologies to enabling digital transformation for its customers. In fact, a lot has changed since the days of businesses being built on selling on-premises technology and doing in-person deployments, and the now cloud giant has brought its partners along on that same journey.
The pandemic has only accelerated this shift, changing how Avaya and other cloud communications companies interact with customers and partners. This includes everything from deployment, consumption models, and the way they reward partners for selling their solutions, I was told in a recent interview.
Fadi Moubarak, Vice President for Channels, Avaya International, told me this is the high-level chat he hopes to have with many of their partners at Avaya’s first-ever virtual partner summit. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of cloud-based, managed services, and subscription-based delivery models – with years’ worth of progress fast-forwarded to be contained within a few months. Cloud-based and subscription models have become the favored method of delivery for most of Avaya’s customers, which Moubarak says has had an impact on its channel partner community, telling me:
“In the past, customers expected partners to do in-person deployments and to support that technology in-person as needed. That’s all changed to ensuring these technologies are ready to use and that they need little-to-no provisioning”
This, he contends, is to address the dynamic business climate that’s creating both challenges and opportunities for Avaya and its partners. This includes the revenue model shift that the partner community is facing. “Customers look at new and efficient ways to consume different solutions, which is why partners have to now master the integration of our solutions into customer workflows,” he added.
Moubarak also shared with me that Avaya is working with its channel community to enable partners to evolve their value proposition so that they can meet expanding customer expectations in the age of cloud-based communications. The new environment in which we find ourselves is ideal for business-oriented partners, Moubarak said. He added that these partners are motivated to deliver the right technology for customers to consume, which can produce what he calls a “quick impact.” To support its partners in that transition, Moubarak says Avaya has expanded its rebate and incentive models, something it hopes to stress to its partner network at this year’s digital summit.
In total, Avaya expects more than 1,000 attendees at its virtual partner summit. According to Moubarak, Avaya is also set to make some key announcements to its partner community surrounding its CCaaS and public cloud offerings, which have seen a rise in consumption during the pandemic.
Want to join the conversation with Avaya and Moubarak at this year’s virtual partner summit? Registration is free, but you will have to contact your preferred Avaya distributor or channel account manager to join this exclusive event held this Thursday, November 19, 2020.
