What do you do for an encore if you are the Avaya Canada president after successfully integrating Nortel?
For starters, you start outperforming the market in Canada. That’s what Ross Pellizzari, president of Avaya Canada, and his team at the Canadian subsidiary did this year.
Avaya’s Americas International president, John DiLullo, told CDN that Avaya’s business in unified communications and contact centres has met expectations, especially in Canada where the IP Office products grew a whopping 296 per cent. The Canadian operation grew 21 per cent.
Related story: Avaya wants channel to follow the yellow brick road
Now that the Nortel integration is complete, going forward the networking vendor has set its sights on recruiting more channel partners. But Avaya no longer considers itself a networking vendor. Avaya has redefined itself as a collaboration company.
The new direction meant changes to its channel program that will see partners rewarded more for delivering value-based solutions over straight volume selling.
The Nortel integration also made Avaya a channel first organization. In the past, Avaya was known, before the acquisition, as a vendor with only one solution provider in Canada. Avaya now has between 75 to 80 per cent channel sales.
Pellizzari also drove the business towards the SMB in 2011. He put in place a policy where as Avaya will only conduct business through the channel to SMBs.
Other highlights from the year include: Avaya acquiring U.K.-based Aurix, a vendor of speech analytics and audio data mining technology. Version 2.5 of web.alive signalled Avaya will be more aggressive in pushing the platform.
Avaya also launched IP Office 7.0, the latest version of its unified communications product for small and medium-sized enterprises. It also announced plans for a US$1 billion IPO.