The Indian enterprise segment is undergoing a transformation, with the advent of concepts like bring your own device (BOYD) and technologies such as cloud computing. This, however, increases the complexity of networks and throws up the challenge of data security.
In this context, managed services provider companies like Avaya India help large and mid-size enterprises in the country to maximise their operations and streamline process.
In an interview with tele.net, Ajay Joseph, director, mid market, Avaya India, discusses the business opportunities presented by the enterprise segment and the emerging trends in the industry.
Excerpts?
What are the emerging trends and opportunities in the Indian enterprise segment?
The enterprise segment is witnessing a shift from a technology-centric to a user-driven IT environment. Leveraging IT as a way of achieving business priorities and objectives will result in the advent of several game-changing trends.
As organisations look to increase productivity, effective access to and integration of video solutions will deliver more effective collaboration, save time and increase efficiency. Taking the concept of ?video? out of boardrooms will be the key. Enterprises would be focusing on reducing complexity, enhancing flexibility, broadening access and supporting increased mobility.
If 2012 saw the emergence of the ?Bring Your Own Device? concept, 2013 will be the year of the ?Bring Your Own Applications? (BYOA) concept. Employees are increasingly using third party productivity applications and cloud services, without consulting the IT department. What chief information officers and IT managers have to pay heed to is effective and secure management of the BYOA concept. 2013 will see businesses demand effective access to scalable, sophisticated and real-time collaboration tools. The need for a fully integrated approach to telephony, video, networking and security will be pivotal.
Another area which seems to be witnessing increasing adoption is cloud computing. These services, enabled by virtualised data centres, for both enterprise and consumer markets are becoming more prevalent as customers are increasingly discovering the cost benefits and convenience of using computing services on the internet. Data centres will continue to evolve so that they can deliver any application, anywhere and anytime in the most cost effective manner.
What is the company?s strategy for promoting its business in mid-sized markets?
Our focus on the mid-sized market in India is fairly new, specifically because we are a growing organisation. We are focusing on this segment via our channel partners. We are in the process of recruiting several Tier II partners and hoping that ecosystem will take us to the mid-markets.
How is the company placed vis-a-vis other competition?
Avaya is the first to separate applications from infrastructure. This is aimed at creating a single communications platform to provision and manage communication-centric applications in a multi-vendor environment. For instance, with Avaya Aura, organisations can develop and deploy communications applications once because the architecture allows every employee access to any application. Enterprises simultaneously reduce costs and increase user productivity and choice. This is of particular importance during these challenging economic times where organisations want to see quicker returns on their investment.
What are the challenges before Avaya India?
As communications environments expand to support more multi-vendor devices and applications, interoperability concerns become more common. Insufficient standardisation across multiple platforms has created inefficiencies which could obstruct businesses and their operations. This is why Avaya has adopted a ?wrap-and-embrace? approach and provides open-source solutions which are integrated with commonly-used applications to provide the technology alignment and interoperability required to deliver mobile enterprise collaboration tools. Moreover, our solutions also help enterprises evaluate their business-critical applications to assure performance is as designed. One such example is the Avaya Stress Testing Service which analyses and verifies performance and interoperability regardless of implementation scope or complexity, so that enterprises can identify issues before rollout and mitigate the risk of post-implementation concerns.
