View From Avaya: Avaya CEO's wide ranging interview with Network World
I hope that many Avaya watchers and stakeholders have come across the excellent interview Kevin Kennedy, CEO here at Avaya, recently had with Tim Greene at Network World at HQ in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. The interview, titled Avaya CEO on Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and how to win over Nortel customers, touched on a very diverse set of work that has been completed or is in development here at Avaya and within the larger industry.
You really should click over to the interview and read the whole thing if you haven't already. I bet you come out of that with more knowledge and/or perspective around the current and future status of communication and collaboration.
Kennedy did not weigh in directly on our sustainability work here at Avaya and he was not asked about that part of our operations. However, I thought that he touched on a few issues that are tied very closely to work we are doing on sustinablity.
First, this quote caught my eye
We realize that in order to be able to compete with an industry of such giants we have to be fit for purpose. Example: We can do a unified communications deployment with two servers where it would take one competitor five, another 10. Our use of virtualization is more economical, if you will.
This benefit of some Avaya solutions is a real green savings that we offer to customers. With a significant reduction in the amount of servers used to power the network, the operational footprint and the attendant power, heating/cooling and carbon are all driven down. Virtualization empowers a sleeker IT footprint, and one that can support various organizations green vision.
Secondly, this quote addresses an area near and dear to my heart, social media
One is, is it possible to integrate easily the social media applications, be it Twitter, Facebook and others? And the answer to that is yes. Our [contact center and UC] products that come out next week are more friendly towards integration and enabling people to leverage what's out there in social networks than any generation before this...There's no doubt social media is penetrating both from use cases inside a company like Avaya as well as an intense need to realize that social media is becoming its own form of directory, if you will, that has to be integrated into contact centers and IP communications.
I am fascinated by the interaction between Avaya's own social media work and our offerings to customers to enable them to leverage social media in their own operations. Our launch announcement last week reinforced this connection, and what better way to field test cool new features and products than in our own social media program?
Lastly, this line from Kennedy reinforces a core vision I have for our general communication norms, People aren't stopping their use of the Internet and we expect that to continue. There is nothing I have seen in my own life and those around me to contradict this perspective. Who among your family and friends uses the internet less today than they did 3 years ago? With Avaya now having a suite of data offerings, we are better positioned to leverage the continued ramping up of internet usage and traffic, which sure seems like a smart place to be as a company considering the recent history of Internet usage.
Anyway, enough from me, you really should go read the original interview to get the full flavor - Avaya CEO on Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and how to win over Nortel customers.
