"Avaya's biggest mandate in India is to tap the mid market'

Responsible for Avaya's Channel business across APAC and for all marketing including field execution in the APAC theatre, Dataquest met with Rick Seeto to their key areas of focus of 2013, how agrresive they are going for mid-market segment and how exactly their channel structure works in India. Excerpts:

3 areas to focus for 2013
Video is one such areas we are closley focusing on. We acquired radvision for rich portfolio of products. We are agrresivvely tapping BYOd as a trend and helping organisations to ahve virtual video rooms for conferencing, and other fucntions and capabilites. We wnat to drive and grow video.
Driving Mid Market UC environment especially IP telephony is another focus area. We wanted to bring the UC capability to mid market customers. We want to give them a complete UC environment with our rich portfolio.
Efficently drive the leadership in providing the best of breed contact center capabilities. We wanted to enhance that portfolio with new and innovative products and solutions and tools which is beyond voice. So, things like contacting customers through chat, IM, email even social media is what we are leveraging. So, we have tools,solutions and capabilities in our portfolio to stay ahead in leading the market in this sector.

Why Mid Market...
Mid market segment for Avaya is one of the most dynamic segments so far in last one year. We observed close to 30% growth in india in mid market for avaya in Q1 of FY13. We are looking at the same traction in comig months aswell. So, to tap mid market is the biggest mandate for Avaya in India
It has a vibrant growth and one of the key products which grew in mid market for us was IP office product.
I am pleased to see that many customers of this segment are more willingly to adopt technologies faster than large enterprises considering to stay ahead of the competiton as competitive dynamics in this segment works completely different. They have fast and quick adoption rate.
If you look at our sales figure, i would agree that mid market sector is willinging to take up such solutions. And Video is fastest growing segment and mid market is keen on taking video and drive its growth.

On the current channel structure:
Avaya has a couple of layers in the go-to-market model. We have an extensive network comprising platinum, gold, silver and authorized partners. We have a number of Tier I partners in India who help drive our enterprise market. They are equipped with well-developed sales, engineering and support skills. There is a Tier II structure particularly for expansion, geographical coverage and vertical coverage into the small or medium mid-market. We work in collaboration with our distributor partners to identify, onboard, recruit and enable a series of channel play for greater market reach.