Growth and inclusivity drive Avaya’s channel strategy for 2019

Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE:AVYA) today announced new measures aimed at enabling channel partner growth. The announcements were made at the Avaya Partner Summit 2019 in Dubai, where the company is hosting the EMEA and APAC regions’ leading channel heavyweights, market movers and technical and sales leaders.  

The new measures, which come as an update to the Avaya Edge partner program, will provide a path for channel partners to move from one value proposition to more advanced ones – moving to solution selling; and from solution selling to innovation building; and from innovation building to enabling true business transformation.

The updates to Avaya Edge also place an emphasis on partner inclusivity, aiming to enable growth regardless of the size or business model of the channel partner. This means that Avaya Edge is now the only channel program in the world to provide equal growth opportunities to partners of any size.

“Our own growth is inexorably linked to the growth of our partners, regardless of where they sit today on the Avaya Edge Program. Our growth strategies need to align with those of our partners if we’re to succeed in our goals,” said Fadi Moubarak, Vice President – Channels, Avaya International.

“Avaya wants its channel partners to continue growing – pure and simple. As a result, in 2019, we’ll be focusing our efforts on three key areas to enable that. There will be a bigger emphasis on cloud; we will enable the delivery of complete solutions that build on our market-leading, API-driven ecosystem; and we will deliver new technologies and innovations that offer answers to genuine business challenges.”

With the Edge Program, Avaya has already made significant progress in growing partner business over the past year. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of partners eligible for rebates increased by 281%, and there was a 159% increase in the number of partners who had seen more than 10% growth. The company’s strategy for 2019 will be to build on these positive results.

Much of the coming year’s focus will be on empowering channel partners to more easily roll out cloud-based products as cloud adoption continues to skyrocket. With offerings for both the mid-market and the enterprise, Avaya’s range of cloud-based services continues to expand, and is expected to provide significant growth opportunities for both large and small channel partners in 2019.

Avaya is also leveraging its market-leading, open standards-based communications platforms to encourage and empower channel partners to provide holistic solutions to their customers. Solutions made available through the Avaya DevConnect and Avaya A.I.Connect programs, for example, bring leading technology disruptors with readily integrated technology solutions into Avaya’s channel. Through the programs, these solutions are made available to channel partners, who can use them to propose innovative, vertical-specific technologies for their customers.

Alternatively, Avaya’s open ecosystem can be leveraged by channel partners to build their own solutions. With many of Avaya’s most successful partners having built new innovations on top of Avaya’s platforms for their customers, Avaya is rolling out new tools and APIs that enable and encourage channel partners to take the lead on innovation.

These solutions, and more, are being demonstrated at the Avaya Partner Summit 2019, taking place in Dubai from December 4 to 5, 2018. From embedding AI and biometrics into communications workflows to creating seamless omni-channel experiences, summit visitors will find real, working solutions to the biggest business challenges that companies face.

“It is our role as a technology vendor to provide our partners with opportunities to continue growing and transforming as the market shifts. Our aim with this event is to continue in our efforts to help empower our channel partners, enabling them to realize even greater levels of growth with Avaya,” added Moubarak.