Avaya is embracing a less-is-more philosophy regarding its managed services program for the channel. At its 2010 Global Sales and Americas Partner Conference this week in Nashville, Avaya unveiled a retooling of its managed services program. Here are the details.

Dubbed Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services, the program enables partners to choose how involved they want Avaya to be in providing managed services to their end user customers.

“From a go-to-market standpoint, we are moving to a partner-based environment where we will rely on them to offer what they want,” said Ed Nalbandian, vice president of Avaya Operations Services. That means partners can tap Avaya to provide soup-to-nuts service. Or not.

There are three tiers to the program: Monitor, which includes service desks, notification, and some monitoring services; Operate, which includes all Monitor services, plus the handling of technology configurations, incident and service management and other maintenance issues; and Optimize, which includes everything in the prior two levels, plus system administration, available and capacity services and consulting.

Global Reach

The program, which is aligned with ITIL standards, also provides partners with a global reach, which allows them to service customers with locations outside North America – good news for those with Fortune 500 accounts and those with multi-vendor environments.

Avaya is doing an about-face of sorts, getting rid of its previous hand-holding philosophy that at times could feel more like restraints. “We had some tools and proprietary knowledge we kept to ourselves in supporting managed services,” Nalbandian admitted.

The new program, however, unshackles channel partners so they can – at last – be the one throat to choke if they want to be. The idea is to enable partners to develop a deeper relationship with their end user customers.

“Avaya hasn’t made it easy for partners to deliver and make money on managed services,” Nalbandian said.

Avaya Partner-Enabled Managed Services also offers a private-labeling option, enabling partners to call their own any customer-facing service that Avaya provides. That, too, can be tiered to whatever the customer wants, from level one support to installs and upgrades.
Of course, with the new levels of responsibility heaped on the partner come certifications. “The more they do, more certified they must be,” Nalbandian said.

The global rollout of ITIL-based services will occur over the next four to five months, Nalbandian said, but the program is ready to roll immediately.

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