‘India a Key Focus Market for Avaya’

Avaya is a name to reckon with in the IP telephony space. Building on its
advantage of being traditionally strong in ‘voice’, it is hoping to garner a
greater marketshare–with enterprises moving to IP as the mode of
communication. Pragati Simlote of Cyber News Service interviewed Lawrence
Byrd, convergence specialist at Avaya, on the state of the Indian IP telephony
market, its potential and the advantages that India enjoys...

l What is
Avaya’s position in the Indian IP telephony space and how do you plan to
improve it?

Avaya is #1 in India in the IP telephony space, with a marketshare of 43%. From
28,000 total Avaya-sold agents, 20% are now IP-based. In future, we would like
to maintain and increase this share by focusing on our customers. The Indian IP
market is now expanding to the education and government sector and we want a
share of this pie too. India is one of the key focus markets for us.

l How do you
view the market in India and how is it going to grow?

The Indian IP telephony market has a lot of potential...India leads the
market in outsourcing contracts from the US. These contact centers were the
first to use IP telephony products and back-office operations. India is on top
of the outsourcing destination list–with benefits of location, skilled labor
force, and more.\

l What are the
trends in India relating to technology adoption?

In India, the trend is the reverse of that is being seen in the US. In the
US, it was enterprises that started using IP telephony first, and then it
trickled down to call centers. In India, contact centers are the first to use
this technology. To quote an example, a big US financial services organization
is using Avaya global connect solutions. Though the company is in the US, the IP
telephony phones are based in India and other countries. Thus, we can see that
the adoption of IP in the US has an effect in India through contact centers.

l What are the
advantages that Avaya has over competitors?

With the opening up of the IP market in India, a lot of enterprises will
move to IP as the mode of communication. Avaya has an edge over its competitors
in garnering greater market share as it has traditionally been in the voice
segment while other networking vendors moved from data to voice. In addition,
Tata Telecom has launched its range of enterprise-class Internet protocol
solutions (ECLIPS) for the enterprise segment. Avaya primarily concentrates on
the enterprise segment, while other companies have a broader focus. We have a
rich product portfolio and plan to enrich this further to put our customers on
the front seat.

l Tell us
something about Avaya’s relationship with the Tata Group?

Tata Telecom is an equal JV between Avaya and the Tata Group. Together, we are
offering advanced solutions giving today’s IP networks the build in security,
reliability, interoperability, business continuity, etc. Tata is our business
face in Indian and has a presence in 50 locations in India. There’s also a
learning process going on in, where we benefit from the experience that Tata
Telecom has in India and incorporate them in products that we develop.

l On plans for
India...

We will expand our product portfolio in India to meet the emerging
challenges and strengthen our market position. Our product releases would
include the latest releases of IP Telephony products with increased capabilities
and scalabilities, enabling third party integration with our software and
introduce multimedia contact centers in India. We also want to educate our
customers by interacting with them about the benefits and uses of IP.

Pragati Simlote

CNS