The growth of the Indian small and mid-market segment is not hidden from anybody. There is not a single vendor operating in India, who is not familiar with this vertical. Avaya GlobalConnect, which is known for its communications offerings for large enterprises, has also riveted its eyes on this segment. Recently, VARIndia met Soum Mukherjee, Director & Head, SME Business, Avaya GlobalConnect, to know about the company’s SMB plans in India.
Soum says, “Avaya is known as an intelligent communications platform provider in India. The company’s philosophy is based on four pillars, i.e. IP Telephony, contact centre, unified communication and CEBP (communication- enabled business products). And these capabilities are intended for the large enterprises, but of late same capabilities have been positioned for SMBs as well.”
Non-technically, the focus of the company is on Voice, Data, Video and Security. The company offers IP office as a voice solution for the branch offices and OKI for PBX and KTS. And, on the video side, the company brings conferencing product from Polycom and Sony. Similarly, in the security space, Avaya brings Elitecore’s Cyberoam range of UTMs for the SMBs. Avaya also offers extreme data solutions to the SMBs through its business partners and VARs.
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Asked about why the company has taken up Cyberoam as the security partner, Soum added, “We wanted to bring out a security product, which does not have exposure and expertise in the market. And, we found Cyberoam is the right product for us.”
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“We are the marketing and sales organization. We do not do any R&D activities. We found that quality-wise Cyberoam solutions fit better in our scheme of things compared to the competitors, and at the price that the market was asking for. That is also another reason why we chose this brand and this is the same reason that we chose OKI for,” he added.
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Soum says, “Once a customer installs PBX, he wants to put some security on top of it so that there is no intrusion from outside into the data network and also installs switches and end-devices to connect with the communication devices.”
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The company today works with more than 60-plus partners for voice- and video-based products. For security solutions, the company has a slight different model as the company engages 12 regional distributors and they have close-to 600–700 resellers under them. Soum maintains, “Though it is not enough to match depth and breadth of the country, yet we have been able to be present distinctly across the geographies of the country and have been able to do a significant business.”
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Though the voice and video solutions’ partners are exclusive in nature, yet Avaya, going forward, will upgrade them for reselling security solutions as well and similarly it will happen with the security partners also. In-house, Avaya is equipped to manage the growth as it has deployed a group of sales people for each of the regions to interact with the partners. Besides, the company has a team of specialists for pre-sales support. The company has also a post-sales team for supporting the partners. Avaya has a logistic centre at Gandhinagar, Gujarat, which caters to the whole of India.
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Avaya’s SMB strategy gels well with its channel partners. The company also supports channel partners with necessary technical expertise for their customers. The company also supports them with necessary infrastructure and encourages them to use their resources.
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In order to help the customers find right solutions, Avaya has set up a concept centre at Mumbai, which is called by them as Customer Studio.
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At the Customer Studio, the company displays solutions that are relevant to the customer’s business. Soum says, “With critical inputs from our industry experts within AGCL, we now have an ability to understand various verticals and hence the customers better. We can hence proactively build solutions, personalize demonstrations and showcase them at the Customer Studio.”
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The solutions demonstrations are always done based on real-life scenarios from verticals that the customers can relate to. The company emphasizes on technology components as well as the business value propositions the solutions can make. That way, customers can connect with these solutions far more effectively.
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He adds, “Keeping the customers at the centre of things, we are now working with various partners and showing our customers end-to-end communication solutions under one roof.”Â
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In the end…
Even though there is no organized study of the market share of vendors or the solutions providers in the SMB market, yet Avaya is one of the largest players. As the convergence is taking place in the communications technology space, Avaya’s philosophy is about intelligent communications. It does not matter what are the underlying solutions, but Avaya ensures seamless connectivity over a rock-solid security layer. Therefore, the company is quite optimistic about its growth, which could be anywhere between 40 and 45 per cent this year.’
