NEWS INTERVIEW Parker sets out UK goals
success of my organisation is to work with the channel to allow them to deliver the complete solutions that users are looking for.”
David Parker
Four months ago David Parker took over the reigns as VP for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise UK and Ireland and since then his big focus has been to mirror the firm’s channel success across EMEA on home ground.
P
arker has a determination to drive Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s aggressive expansion in the UK and
Ireland by working through both single and two tier channel models. The company will work with Premium channel partners to target large and mid-sized companies and through distributors to sell to the SMB market. He believes that Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s position as a vendor using carrier-grade technology with an end-to-end enterprise communication solutions portfolio makes its product set desirable to a channel supplier. Because Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise only sells through the channel and is not over-distributed Parker believes this
gives its chosen channel partners an advantage in a crowded marketplace.
Parker has identified the vendor’s converged portfolio of voice, UC, Contact Centre and data as the key path to growth and is determined to work with channel to widen the market for this technology. “Our strong converged portfolio of voice, UC, Contact Centre and data is exactly what the market needs right now,” he said. “By evolving their IT infrastructure, along with introducing new communications technology, enterprises can significantly increase employee productivity, customer engagement and ultimately, business profitability. The major key for the
Parker has seen a huge shift in the market with regard to the explosion of devices and social media, mobile devices, smartphones and video, all being used within business. “This shift is dramatically changing how we communicate with each other on every level, both in a personal and business environment,” commented Parker. “Employees and customers are increasingly expecting to have the same experience whether at home or at work. And our channel strategy moving forward in 2012 will enable enterprises to address this challenge and change the conversation for their employees. That’s our overall goal. When we add to all this our new OpenTouch solution, we feel we have an offering to the market which matches the business drivers which we’re currently witnessing - the convergence of applications and networks and the requirements of enterprise users that are increasingly multi-device, multi-media and multi-party.”
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’ OpenTouch communications platform allows users to migrate with ease from communications that are primarily voice centric and one-to-one, to a solution that delivers multimedia, multi-party and multi-device communications. Last year, OpenTouch was awarded the 2011 Frost & Sullivan Europe ICT Award for Most Innovative European Communications Product of the Year, and it will form a big part of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s portfolio going forward in 2012. “Our product portfolio will allow our partners to provide end-to-end tailor-made multi-media, multi-device and multi-user communication solutions which can be deployed in any combination of cloud or data centre or CPE mode,” added Parker.
And he knows how to deliver this: After first driving strategic business in Northern Europe and then heading
up the UK and Ireland region, Parker has just spent the last two years in Paris heading up Alcatel- Lucent Enterprise’s channel strategy across EMEA, with additional global responsibility for major channel partners worldwide. “My experience helped me understand just what makes the company successful and channel-centric,” he said. “Seventy per cent of our global business resides in EMEA and I am looking forward to getting back into the field again to drive this channel success into the UK and Irish market. My job is to now evolve a real go-to-market strategy for our channel partners, whether that be more hosted, managed solutions, or further evolving the convergence of our key technologies.
Exciting journey “We’re going on an exciting journey and want to take our existing and new channels with us on this journey, to help them support customers and meet the challenge of the cloud as the market moves from a capex to an opex model. My time in Paris gave me great insight into this shift in focus for the channel, and has given me experience to address our evolving channel strategy in the UK and Ireland. For a while, it may be that we look at a hybrid model with both capex and opex offerings, and our carrier-grade technology places us in a position to be able to fulfil this need. The channel is heading towards more complex voice and data solutions and we’re keen to support our existing channel partners throughout this evolution.”
A key element in Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s strategy for 2012 will be to offer retraining in order to fulfil this need. “The data network has to be regarded as the common platform from which all other technology stems,” noted Parker. “It therefore has to be a key part of any company’s strategy in order to provide a solid network infrastructure for all other elements to be based on. The more we develop our communications portfolio the better our offering is to the channel, and the better our value to the end user.”
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