While in Santa Clara for the recent Wainhouse UCC Summit, I managed to connect with some peeps at Avaya World Headquarters, and was pleasantly surprised with the vibe. Good Vibrations. Avaya’s had a tough run – they were behind the...
Dave is an independent analyst and founder of TalkingPointz which is focused on enterprise communications. In addition to this (free and paid) content on TalkingPointz, he contributes to industry sites, can be found at major industry events, and provides advisory services to vendors and financial analysts.
Avaya has definitely earned its lumps over the past few years: multiple platforms, a “let’s see what sticks to the wall” approach to product development, and trying to be everything to everyone. But here’s hoping that Avaya will finally consolidate and rationalize its product lines while figuring out what they really want to be. Gary Barnett and Enzo Signore on the product and strategy side are good guys to have as long as they have the strength to dispassionately choose winners and losers in their portfolio. And Andy is good at brand reclamation.
But Avaya has no Skype or WebEx or WhatsApp in its portfolio (yet). And it’s not seen either as pure cloud or as a Mitel-like virtualized solution. And Avaya isn’t a top-of-mind brand for the 20 and 30 somethings. I think Avaya has the tools and lab projects to be cool, but don’t know if they’re willing to cannibalize their current revenue to do it.