By Tom Noda
Since its decision to divert from its telecommunication equipment business six years ago, Avaya now claims it has turned into a “major infrastructure software company.”
Ed Doctolero, country manager of Avaya Philippines, said the company has largely transformed as a provider of end-to-end communication systems from being a communications hardware maker some years back.
“The company’s business is now 70 percent infrastructure software and only 30 percent on call center infrastructure,” Doctolero said.
Doctolero said their latest business model is a result of the $2.5-billion investment in research and development made by Avaya to reshape its collaboration portfolio.
“Majority of our revenue is now on applications and no longer on fixed assets,” Doctolero said
He said Avaya’s mission now is to make business collaboration and communications solutions to be simple and effective to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
“A lot of enterprises are not doing it because of the complexity and cost,” Doctolero said, noting holistic collaboration solutions are really needed since mobility is now becoming a key factor in business.
Only recently, Avaya announced a set of new software and cloud-based services designed to transform the way enterprises and organizations work.
Doctolero said enterprises are now built for today’s needs, especially with the arrival of the so-called Generation Y or “millenials” in the workforce. Millenials refer to young career-minded people born in 1983 to 2000.
Those belonging to Generation Y are said to work and think differently as they expect immediate response. These are persons who grew up with faster performing PCs, powerful mobile computing devices, improved Internet speed, innovative software technologies, and rich social media environment.
“Companies of today, in order to attract or maintain employees, need to adapt to people belonging to Generation Y that are entering the workforce,” Doctolero said.
Avaya recently launched its new set of offerings, namely IP Office 9.0, Avaya Aura, and Avaya Messaging Service (AMS).
IP Office 9.0 is designed to enable SMEs to function as big corporations as it moves up to support 2,000 users in a single software platform capable of deploying in as little as one hour.
Meanwhile, the Avaya Aura is an all-new software platform that dissolves the complexity of embedding collaboration and communications capabilities into business applications, making it possible to quickly develop creative new ways of doing business.
AMS, initially available only in North America, is a service that promises to provide real-time mobile collaboration and communications via the cloud for any size business, using any vendor?s platform.
AMS extends SMS messages to and from smartphones, tablets, notebooks and desktop devices, allowing one-number communications via text messaging.
