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Avaya Names First Distribution as Distributor in South Africa and the SADC Region

Distribution partner adds solutions for customer and team engagement to its world-class vendor portfolio

Johannesburg – South Africa, April 4, 2016: First Distribution, South Africa's leading distributor for datacentre, enterprise and cloud solutions, announced today it has been appointed as a distribution partner in South Africa and the SADC region for Avaya, a global leader in business communications, software, systems and services. The two companies will focus on making Avaya’s innovative technology available as cloud-based or hosted offerings across the region.

Avaya provides solutions and services for unified communications and collaboration, contact centre and customer experience management and networking, to public-sector organizations and enterprises of all sizes. Avaya is the only company specializing in simplifying complex business communications, built on open and mobile software platforms and supported by a robust underlying networking infrastructure. Thus, Avaya is uniquely placed to help organizations of all sizes in Africa drive digital transformation strategies.

First Distribution will work with cloud service providers and managed service providers to build out Avaya’s Unified Communications-as-a-Service, Contact Centre-as-a-Service, and Video-as-a-Service offerings and make them available as local offerings across the region. First Distribution will also offer the complete range of Avaya solutions, including Avaya’s innovative networking and wireless offerings.

Along with its hosted business, First Distribution established the first cloud-services brokerage in South Africa in 2014, with First for Cloud, which enables resellers to sell best-of-breed cloud services to their end-users.

First Distribution Managing Director, Debbie Abrahall, said: "First Distribution welcomes Avaya to our portfolio of best-of-breed products and solutions. As the worldwide leader in team engagement solutions based on unified communications and collaboration technologies, Avaya makes a great fit for us in terms of what they offer as well as the calibre of their products, solutions and global organisation. We look forward to working with them closely in the future."

Danny Drew, Managing Director, South Africa, Avaya, said: “As Africa looks to play a greater part in the global economy, Avaya is helping organizations across the region to meet their digital transformation challenges. By working with First Distribution, we can build the ecosystem to help enterprises leverage our solutions, make our offerings available in the model they want, and help them to achieve transformation at their own pace and path.”

Maryka Absil, Distribution and Midmarket Lead, South and Southern Africa, Avaya, said: “First Distribution allows us greater coverage and accessibility through their traditional distribution channel as well as through the new channels, First for Cloud and First Distribution’s successful Hosting aggregation models make available to us. We are excited to help build this new channel and successfully explore the opportunities it holds for both First Distribution and Avaya.”

About Avaya

Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact centre and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premise and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Development Platform enables third parties to create and customise business applications for competitive advantage. Avaya’s fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information, visit www.avaya.com/emea/

About First Distribution
First Distribution was established in 1984 and has grown to be a broad based, premium IT distribution company, providing enterprise ready solutions for the Southern African market. First Distribution is a value added distributor of leading global brands providing complex ICT solutions to the Enterprise and SME markets, focused around the Data Centre, Virtualisation, Hosted Applications and Cloud Based Services, Database and Middleware, Security and Network Infrastructure – backed up by Unparalleled Expertise.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should" or "will" or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya's filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact

ighorayeb@avaya.com

+971 4 4048275

tamzin.gray@firstdistribution.co.za

+2711 540 2640

michelle.samraj@bm-africa.com

+27 11 480 8526

About Avaya

Businesses are built by the experiences they provide, and every day, millions of those experiences are delivered by Avaya. Organizations trust Avaya to provide innovative solutions for some of their most important ambitions and challenges, giving them the freedom to engage their customers and employees in ways that deliver the greatest business benefits. Avaya contact center and communications solutions power immersive, personalized, and unforgettable customer experiences that drive business momentum. With the freedom to choose their journey, there’s no limit to the experiences Avaya customers can create. Learn more at https://www.avaya.com.