Avaya Continues Push Toward Midmarket, Cloud Solutions

Avaya is making a concerted effort to shed its image as an enterprise PBX and unified communications supplier as the company focuses on delivering mobile and cloud-centric collaboration solutions.

Expanding mobile options and building out cloud services were key selling points at this year’s Avaya Executive Partner Forum in Cancun, Mexico, where executives stressed the importance of helping partners to profit by giving midmarket customers improved mobile communication options.

The new direction reflects the growing importance of enterprise as-a-service models and the market potential of public and private cloud services to improve enterprise communication and provide cyber-security in a mobile-first workforce, according to Pierre-Paul Allard, Avaya’s senior vice president of Worldwide Sales and president of Global Field Operations.

“Cloud is making disruptive innovation a reality,” said Allard. “Mobility is key because it is the epitomy of BYOD. Avaya is all about application enablement.”

Avaya will work to transition from being product-focused to delivering more services as it looks to provide customers with an “everything-as-a-service” model, he stressed.

This year’s strategy is a continuation of the ideas discussed during last year’s Executive Partner Forum, where execs pledged to provide partners with more sales opportunities and focus on developing its midmarket solutions. In October, the company launched its new channel partner program with revised membership requirements and additional certification areas.

While it’s important to note that Avaya has made some significant strides in developing its cloud services solutions over the past year, its still too early in the game to be overly optimistic about the company’s program, given the amount of competition it faces in the cloud services market. Avaya will have to contend with industry giants the likes of Microsoft (MSFT) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) as it makes the full shift toward cloud-based services as well as a growing number of born-in-the-cloud solution providers. Avaya likely still has a long journey ahead if it hopes to become a top player in the space.