AVAYA BERLIN CONFERENCE
Butt trims channel in push for quality
AVAYA has announced a major cleansing of its EMEA channel in a strategic move designed to better support reseller partners committed to solutions provision.
“We are completely focused on becoming a solutions business and shifting from volume to value,” said Jan Lawford, Senior Director EMEA Channels at the vendor’s EMEA partner summit in Berlin.
And in a straight talking key note address Worldwide Vice President of Channels Jeremy Butt clearly spelt out his company’s desire to work with top performers and dispense with
partners not committed to providing customers with value based solutions.
“Customer satisfaction is now mandatory. We are looking for more rounded partner relationships to take to the market with more importance on product and solutions specialisation.
Grey imports war goes on
AVAYA channel chief Jeremy Butt has promised to continue his personal crusade against grey market activity. Butt told the conference that 31 cease-and-desist orders were issued by Avaya last year. Six resellers were de-authorised from the partner programme and another 11 were issued warnings. He said Avaya had also joined the Alliance for Grey Market and Counterfeit Abatement this year. “Avaya is attacking the grey market. These people are stealing from you,” he said.
Jeremy Butt: Sraight talking
Expertise and competency drives revenue and customer satisfaction drives growth. We will drive this aggressively going forward via the Avaya Connect partner programme focusing on factors that measure customer value.”
In other words partners that do not shape up will be shipped out.
Butt said that 1200 partners had already been shown the exit in the last 12 months and another 1000 had been identified for culling based on minimum revenue ceilings of £5000 for SME resellers and £50,000 for enterprise partners. The plan he said was aimed at weeding out “opportunists and ambulance chasers”.
Revised meritocracy processes outlined by Butt are likely to speed up the process of delivering committed partners. Butt said Avaya would now bring ISVs into the Avaya Connect programme and revealed that Platinum, Gold and Silver status would be based on customer satisfaction surveys.
“We will also be introducing partner scorecards. These will be monitored against average partner peer groups and will tell you how you
are doing with Avaya.”
And Butt confirmed that a larger proportion of marketing funds than those allocated last year would be rewarded in a discretionary manner in future.
“The business development fund is dead,” he told partner delegates. “There will now be no entitlement to money. In future, all marketing money will be discretionary which will provide greater flexibility to put money to the best plans. We are expecting channel account managers to sit down with you to discuss your marketing and business plan. If it makes sense and it is logical you will get marketing money.
“A lot of money was wasted last year because partners were not able to execute,” he added.
After the session Butt told Comms Dealer he was convinced some partners will find the move from volume to value hard to accept but defended his tough talking. “This industry doesn’t like giving out bad news but I believe honesty is the best way to develop proper relationships. It’s not personal it’s business.”
Avaya gunning for competitors
AVAYA executives speaking at the annual EMEA conference in Berlin were confidence personified, probably because they firmly believe they now have the product set to defeat major competitors Genesys, Cisco, Shoretel and Microsoft.
Alan Baratz, Avaya’s president of global communications solutions, revealed a four- point plan against these competitors encompassing video collaboration, mobile collaboration, enhancing the customer experience and network simplification.
Baratz said: “In the SME sector Avaya now has a 20% market share with 30 million users and IP Office 7.0 completes the integration of Nortel and gives us parity with Shortel.” He also claimed that Avaya’s IP Office architecture can scale up from 2 to 1,000 users on a single box, compared with four boxes for ShoreTel and three for Cisco.
In what he described as “the winner takes all contact centre market” where a
lot of deployments were “getting long in the tooth” Baratz said Avaya was already competing very successfully against Genesys with its SIP based solutions and intelligent call routing. “We are going after Genesys by taking back the agent desktop. With the Aura Contact Centre Suite we can own the whole stack,” he said.
“In the Enterprise and mid-market spaces Barataz said Avaya had an attack plan against Microsoft and Cisco with Aura and Flare providing one product suite for voice, video, mobile and real time communications. He stressed the letter could be now downloaded onto i-Pads via i-Tunes. “We can go after Cisco and Microsoft with network simplification, a smaller footprint, lower CAPEX, lower OPEX and lower carrier and admin costs . Only Avaya can deliver true scalability, reliability and continuity.
“And does anyone really want their comms systems operating on MS bluescreen,” he added.
WESTCON Convergence was awarded best EMA Distributor for outstanding revenue growth, partner recruitment and development throughout 2011 at the Berlin conference. “We have the largest number of Avaya accredited staff in EMEA with a proven ability to accelerate partner growth. We are truly honored that Avaya has chosen to recognize Westcon for this commitment,” said David Grant, Senior Vice President, who is pictured receiving his award from Avaya’s Jeremy Butt and Jan Lawford.
30 COMMS DEALER DECEMBER 2011
www.comms-dealer.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60