Avaya 2012 Partner Conference: Five Trends to Watch

The VAR Guy is once again headed to Las Vegas, where he’ll be at the 2012 Avaya U.S./Gov Sales Leadership and Partner Conference. This year, Avaya is splitting its partner conferences into two events — one for its U.S. partners and another for its international partners. So what will our resident blogger be on the lookout for at this year’s event? Read on for the info.

Much has happened in the unified communications space in the past 12 months, and Avaya hasn’t been sitting on its hands watching the world go by. A slew of acquisitions, updates to its technology and even a new channel chief are setting the stage for some serious partner conversations. Chief among them:

1. New U.S. Channel Chief: Former VP of U.S. Channels Carol Neslund exited Avaya earlier this year to lead global sales at an alternative energy company, and Karl Soderlund, former senior vice president of worldwide sales and business development at WAN acceleration vendor Certeon, was tapped in October 2011 to lead Avaya’s U.S. channel efforts. What does Soderlund have in mind for Avaya’s partners in his new role?
2. New Technologies: Avaya has made a slew of acquisitions in the past 12 months as it  works to bolster its lineup of communications technologies, including phonetic search engine creator Aurix, UC security vendor Sipera and Swedish conferencing company Konftel. How will they shape the Avaya product roadmap?
3. The Aura Era: Now that the Aura platform has been Avaya’s de facto communications solution for the better part of two years and former-Nortel technology has been integrated into Avaya’s technology portfolio, are partners seeing real successes in the  marketplace?
4. Where’s Flare? Flare was introduced to a fair amount of fanfare, but since then hasn’t sparked much conversation among customers. Is Flare a technology ahead of its time? More importantly, does Avaya have plans to address its lackluster acceptance?
5. The UC Space: Avaya faces formidable competition from Polycom, Cisco Systems and even Microsoft in the unified communications market. What, if anything, does Avaya plan to do to further help set its solutions apart and help Avaya partners succeed?

Lots to cover in two days, but The VAR Guy brought his comfy shoes. Stay tuned as our resident blogger connects with Avaya execs including Soderlund, Worldwide Channels leaders Jeremy Butts and Tom Mitchell, and VP/GM of UC Infrastructure Anthony Bartolo for all the details.