![\"\"](\"\/Themes\/Release\/images\/responsive\/ettelecom-default.jpg\")
Now, the bankruptcy process is over, what’s next for a multinational like Avaya? How strong are you in terms of order book, balance sheet, and cash flow?
<\/strong>
The bankruptcy is completely done. We emerged formally on May 1. The way I have looked at the transformation of the company is in two broad groups: The financial restructuring and the business restructuring. We have reached an extraordinarily positive result in the financial restructuring.
The actual mechanics of this are that our lenders and investors wrote down what was $3.5 billion of long-term liability – all the way to $150 million. Then the same group invested $650 million of fresh capital in the form of debt. So what you end up with is the $650 million of new capital, plus the $150 million of the residual amount. So you have $800 million in the go-forward. That’s put together as a unitranche term loan that’s not due until the middle of 2028. But it leaves behind $650 million of fresh liquidity.
So what's the current debt you have?
<\/strong>
On a gross debt basis, for a company of our size with a couple of billion in revenue, you have modest debt with favourable repayment not due until 2028. And very little net debt when you subtract the cash. We have completed a series of right-sizing moves, and operational changes as well, so that we have the restoration of attractive levels of operating profit, and free cash flow. So, modest gross debt, very little net debt, and we generate cash. Avaya has always been quite profitable up until last year. We’re just restoring those traditionally high levels of profitability.
You said the company has $800 million in capital. How are you using it?
<\/strong>
We are actually investing in the product, in our people, in our distribution, and in our brand. That really speaks to the business restructuring. My experience specifically is having done transformations in this industry in the past. We have a program we refer to as ‘Destination Place to Work.’ In addition, we have a very deep product roadmap tied to the move to cloud, which is obviously the trend in our industry.
Customer delight is another priority area. We are a partner-led company; about 70% of global revenue is delivered via some third-party distribution channel. We are investing in the partner community throughout the world. We invest in our users group – we have an 18,000-customer-strong user group called the International Avaya Users Group<\/a> (IAUG). And then we’re investing in gathering CSAT data<\/a> as well as MPS data, and then we will convert that and actually bonus our people based on those results.
Avaya was known for a legacy hardware business. How are you embracing cloud as a part of your business transformation journey?
<\/strong>
Avaya was slower to the cloud than some because its customer base is so heavily over-indexed to the largest communications deployments in the world. Huge enterprises, business process outsourcing BPO) companies , and governmental agencies themselves were slow to the cloud and so Avaya was slower than others in its move to the cloud. Nonetheless, there is an inevitability in the move to cloud. We are benefited by the fact that Avaya turned aggressively towards developing its own cloud solution, which we recently branded as Avaya Experience Platform.
We have engineers working on a roadmap around our cloud initiatives very quickly because of the focus. CIOs of a very large deployment with thousands of seats are very mature, feature-rich and stable. What they don’t want to do is rip it out and suffer that disruption, but at the same time they want the innovation that’s delivered via the cloud. It’s innovation – chat, social, digital – without disruption – without ripping out what’s underneath. That has resonated really well.
As we are seeing much activity in the artificial intelligence (AI) space globally, how is Avaya integrating AI into its product portfolio?
<\/strong>
We are doing so in a very significant way. What’s very interesting is all the new features around AI – generative and otherwise – will continue to fundamentally change the contact center and the customer experience world. As a matter of fact, it’s a great advantage to us, being later to the cloud than others because it re-levels the playing field competitively, which is a very important point. AI takes form in many different ways when it’s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together.
And what’s your market share globally, and who are your closest competitors?
<\/strong>
On the contact center side, one out of every three agent seats in the world is Avaya. The core competitors in the premise world, with premise-architected solutions, are generally ourselves, Cisco<\/a>, Genesys<\/a> to a lesser extent, and some other firms that have exited like Alcatel-Lucent. In the premise world, the number of competitors is few and getting fewer. On the cloud side, there’s a whole raft of competitors. We have our cloud initiatives, so does Genesys<\/a>, and Cisco<\/a>, and there have been many others that have started over the last many years.
How are you looking to increase your market share including in the cloud space?
<\/strong>
First and foremost, in terms of market share, we have this incredible install base who are on some level of cloud journey. Cloudifying the install base, we are the incumbent, and have enormous power. That goes back to the strategy: innovate those where we are the incumbent, and avoid the disruption. Others can’t do that. When getting over to the cloud side, the way to win is typically not on a single feature – it’s the package. We clearly have the software, and we understand the software extremely well, and we almost invented these categories back when these things were delivered via premise.
Read also<\/h4><\/a><\/figure>Avaya partners Startek to offer packaged customer experience services across global markets and India<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
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乐动娱乐招聘ETTelecom采访:亚美亚眼睛AI彻底改变客户体验
“人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC一起,“Masarek说。
亚美亚技术,统一通信和联络中心解决方案提供商,认为它的出现从破产转型,一步加强资本结构。美国跨国公司的目标是增加其每年2亿美元花在产品创新,和看到的人工智能(人工智能)作为一个级别的球员,可以从根本上改变接触中心业务,提高客户体验。在一个交互ETTelecom Muntazir乐动娱乐招聘阿巴斯的亚美亚全球首席执行官Alan Masarek会谈在公司的资产负债表,金融重组,产品创新,cloud-led转换、使用人工智能(AI),和印度市场。编辑摘录。
破产程序结束了,接下来是什么等跨国亚美亚吗?你有多强的订单,资产负债表,现金流?
破产是完全完成。我们在5月1日正式出现。我看了公司的转型两大类:财务重组和业务重组。我们已达到一个非常积极的结果在财务重组。
这是我们的实际力学放贷机构和投资者写下了35亿美元的长期责任——1.5亿美元。然后同一集团投资6.5亿美元的新资本形式的债务。所以你最终得到的是6.5亿美元的新资本,加上1.5亿美元的余额。所以你有8亿美元在前进。这是放在一起作为一个unitranche定期贷款这不是由于直到2028年中期。但它留下了6.5亿美元的新的流动性。
那么当前的债务呢?
在总债务的基础上,对一个公司的大小有几十亿的收入,有适度的债务与有利的还款等到2028年。和很少的净债务减去现金。我们已经完成了一系列的裁员行动,和操作的变化,所以我们有吸引力的恢复营业利润的水平,和自由现金流。适度的总债务,净负债很少,我们挣到钱。亚美亚直到去年一直相当有利可图。我们只是恢复那些传统上高水平的盈利能力。
你说公司拥有8亿美元的资本。你是怎么用的呢?
我们实际上是投资产品,在我们的人来说,在我们的分布,以及我们的品牌。真正说到业务重组。我特别有经验在这个行业在过去做转换。我们有一个项目我们称之为“目的地的地方工作。此外,我们有一个很深的产品路线图与移动到云,这显然是我们行业的趋势。
客户愉快是另一个优先领域。我们是一个partner-led公司;大约70%的全球收入是通过一些第三方分销渠道。我们投资在世界各地合作伙伴社区。我们投资于我们的用户群,我们有一个18000 -客户强烈的用户组被称为国际亚美亚用户组(IAUG)。然后我们在收集投资CSAT数据以及国会议员数据,然后我们将转换实际上奖金基于这些结果我们的人民。
亚美亚被称为传统的硬件业务。你拥抱云的一部分你的业务转型之旅吗?
亚美亚是慢到云比一些,因为它的客户基础是严重over-indexed世界上最大的通讯的部署。巨大的企业,业务流程外包业务流程外包)公司和政府机构自己云比较慢,所以亚美亚是比别人慢的移动到云上。尽管如此,移动到云的必然性。我们受益,亚美亚大举转向开发自己的云解决方案,我们最近品牌作为亚美亚体验平台。
我们工程师在一个路线图云计划很快因为焦点。cio的一个非常大的部署数以千计的座位是非常成熟,功能丰富的和稳定的。他们不想做的是拆掉,遭受破坏,但同时他们希望通过云计算的创新。它的创新——聊天、社交、数码-不中断没有撕出的下面。已经产生了共鸣。
我们看到许多活动在全球人工智能(AI)空间,亚美亚将人工智能集成到其产品组合是怎样的?
我们这样做在一个非常重要的方式。非常有趣的是所有的新特性在AI -生成,否则将继续从根本上改变世界呼叫中心和客户体验。,事实上,这是一个很大的优势,是后来到云比其他人因为它re-levels竞技场有竞争力,这是一个非常重要的一点。人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC聚在一起。
和你的市场份额在全球范围内,和你最近的竞争对手是谁?
在呼叫中心方面,世界上每三个代理席位是亚美亚。核心竞争对手在世界的前提,与premise-architected解决方案,通常是自己,思科,Genesys在较小程度上,像阿尔卡特-朗讯(alcatel - lucent)和其他一些公司退出。在世界的前提,竞争者的数量少之又少。在云计算方面,有一系列的竞争对手。我们有云计划,那么Genesys,思科,已经有很多人已经开始在过去的许多年。
你想要增加你的市场份额包括云空间?
首先,在市场份额方面,我们有一个令人难以置信的安装基础,而在某种程度上的云的旅程。Cloudifying安装基础,我们是现任总统,拥有巨大的权力。回到策略:创新这些我们现任,避免干扰。别人不能那么做。当获取到云身边,赢得通常不是一个单一的特性——它是包。我们显然有软件,和我们理解的软件非常好,我们几乎发明了这些类别的时候这些东西是通过前提。
你投资多少在产品创新和研发在加州大学和CC组合?你能提供一个电话号码吗?
今天我们花在产品和工程集团,2亿美元一年,这一数字将继续增加。我说很难具体多少,但我们已经支出水平非常有意义。我们有1700名工程师,其中三分之一是在印度,我们将继续在这个领域进行投资。
你还与RingCentral紧密合作。你的印度和其他市场策略呢?
在两类,加州大学和CC,我们谈了很多关于我们如何移动on-prem CCaaS呼叫中心,我们称之为亚美亚体验平台。在加州大学空间,因为它移动到云,与RingCentral UCaaS,我们有一个关系,重塑他们的产品和交付在一个品牌命名亚美亚云办公。亚美亚云办公有14个地区。RingCentral没有进入印度市场。与加州大学客户UCaaS,我们有自己的解决方案,这是我们的核心是在现在,亚美亚空间。这是我们合作的产品,它提供了集成视频、语音、消息传递、screenshare,并发聊天。这对我们现有的前提下解决方案创建一个在印度UCaaS等价。
回到印度,印度市场的路线图,包括投资和员工吗?你是否想要增加你的员工在印度吗?
是的,我们绝对是增加我们在印度员工。今天,我们在印度有1200名员工。超过500人研发。另外大约有500人支持和服务,客户体验,和平衡销售和跨职能领域。我们继续在印度投资于印度的计划在自力更生。我们是投资。1,我们是一个主要供应商的许多政府机构、像Aadhaar的社会保障体系,基本服务整个人口。我们非常参与应急响应服务,也支持各种智能城市项目。
你谈到了在印度劳动力1200人。有你想增加数量,我们说,在接下来的几年?
我认为很容易你就会看到一个在未来两年增加超过20%。
什么是亚美亚的总收入的贡献来自印度吗?
我们不将其分解方法。20亿美元的收入,约35%来自我们所说的国际市场,这是欧洲、亚洲次大陆。印度是一个非常重要的因素对公司的市场,然后很明显我们大量的劳动力。在印度超过20%的劳动力。
<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>Avaya<\/a> Technologies, the unified communications and contact centre solutions provider, sees its emergence from bankruptcy as transformational, and a step to strengthen capital structure. The US multinational is aiming to increase its $200 million annual spend in product innovation, and sees artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI<\/a>) as a level player that can fundamentally change contact centre business and enhance customer experience. In an interaction with ETTelecom's Muntazir Abbas, Avaya<\/a>'s global CEO Alan Masarek<\/strong> talks on the company's balance sheet, financial restructuring, product innovation, cloud-led transformation, use of artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI), and India market. Edited excerpts.
Now, the bankruptcy process is over, what’s next for a multinational like Avaya? How strong are you in terms of order book, balance sheet, and cash flow?
<\/strong>
The bankruptcy is completely done. We emerged formally on May 1. The way I have looked at the transformation of the company is in two broad groups: The financial restructuring and the business restructuring. We have reached an extraordinarily positive result in the financial restructuring.
The actual mechanics of this are that our lenders and investors wrote down what was $3.5 billion of long-term liability – all the way to $150 million. Then the same group invested $650 million of fresh capital in the form of debt. So what you end up with is the $650 million of new capital, plus the $150 million of the residual amount. So you have $800 million in the go-forward. That’s put together as a unitranche term loan that’s not due until the middle of 2028. But it leaves behind $650 million of fresh liquidity.
So what's the current debt you have?
<\/strong>
On a gross debt basis, for a company of our size with a couple of billion in revenue, you have modest debt with favourable repayment not due until 2028. And very little net debt when you subtract the cash. We have completed a series of right-sizing moves, and operational changes as well, so that we have the restoration of attractive levels of operating profit, and free cash flow. So, modest gross debt, very little net debt, and we generate cash. Avaya has always been quite profitable up until last year. We’re just restoring those traditionally high levels of profitability.
You said the company has $800 million in capital. How are you using it?
<\/strong>
We are actually investing in the product, in our people, in our distribution, and in our brand. That really speaks to the business restructuring. My experience specifically is having done transformations in this industry in the past. We have a program we refer to as ‘Destination Place to Work.’ In addition, we have a very deep product roadmap tied to the move to cloud, which is obviously the trend in our industry.
Customer delight is another priority area. We are a partner-led company; about 70% of global revenue is delivered via some third-party distribution channel. We are investing in the partner community throughout the world. We invest in our users group – we have an 18,000-customer-strong user group called the International Avaya Users Group<\/a> (IAUG). And then we’re investing in gathering CSAT data<\/a> as well as MPS data, and then we will convert that and actually bonus our people based on those results.
Avaya was known for a legacy hardware business. How are you embracing cloud as a part of your business transformation journey?
<\/strong>
Avaya was slower to the cloud than some because its customer base is so heavily over-indexed to the largest communications deployments in the world. Huge enterprises, business process outsourcing BPO) companies , and governmental agencies themselves were slow to the cloud and so Avaya was slower than others in its move to the cloud. Nonetheless, there is an inevitability in the move to cloud. We are benefited by the fact that Avaya turned aggressively towards developing its own cloud solution, which we recently branded as Avaya Experience Platform.
We have engineers working on a roadmap around our cloud initiatives very quickly because of the focus. CIOs of a very large deployment with thousands of seats are very mature, feature-rich and stable. What they don’t want to do is rip it out and suffer that disruption, but at the same time they want the innovation that’s delivered via the cloud. It’s innovation – chat, social, digital – without disruption – without ripping out what’s underneath. That has resonated really well.
As we are seeing much activity in the artificial intelligence (AI) space globally, how is Avaya integrating AI into its product portfolio?
<\/strong>
We are doing so in a very significant way. What’s very interesting is all the new features around AI – generative and otherwise – will continue to fundamentally change the contact center and the customer experience world. As a matter of fact, it’s a great advantage to us, being later to the cloud than others because it re-levels the playing field competitively, which is a very important point. AI takes form in many different ways when it’s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together.
And what’s your market share globally, and who are your closest competitors?
<\/strong>
On the contact center side, one out of every three agent seats in the world is Avaya. The core competitors in the premise world, with premise-architected solutions, are generally ourselves, Cisco<\/a>, Genesys<\/a> to a lesser extent, and some other firms that have exited like Alcatel-Lucent. In the premise world, the number of competitors is few and getting fewer. On the cloud side, there’s a whole raft of competitors. We have our cloud initiatives, so does Genesys<\/a>, and Cisco<\/a>, and there have been many others that have started over the last many years.
How are you looking to increase your market share including in the cloud space?
<\/strong>
First and foremost, in terms of market share, we have this incredible install base who are on some level of cloud journey. Cloudifying the install base, we are the incumbent, and have enormous power. That goes back to the strategy: innovate those where we are the incumbent, and avoid the disruption. Others can’t do that. When getting over to the cloud side, the way to win is typically not on a single feature – it’s the package. We clearly have the software, and we understand the software extremely well, and we almost invented these categories back when these things were delivered via premise.
Read also<\/h4><\/a><\/figure>Avaya partners Startek to offer packaged customer experience services across global markets and India<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
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<\/a><\/figure>Avaya partners Startek to offer packaged customer experience services across global markets and India<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":100469352,"title":"Infosys launches generative AI services suite","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/enterprise-services\/infosys-launches-generative-ai-services-suite\/100469352","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"enterprise-services"}],"related_content":[],"msid":100469516,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"ETTelecom Interviews: Avaya eyes AI to radically change customer experience","synopsis":"\"AI takes form in many different ways when it\u2019s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together,\" says Masarek.","titleseo":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_link":"\/author\/479234376\/muntazir-abbas","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/479234376.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":true,"msid":479234376,"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_seo_name":"muntazir-abbas","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"analytics":{"comments":0,"views":481,"shares":0,"engagementtimems":2164000},"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ETTelecom","artdate":"2023-05-24 13:33:55","lastupd":"2023-05-24 16:17:58","breadcrumbTags":["Avaya","AI","enterprise services","International Avaya Users Group","CSAT data","artificial intelligence","Cisco","Genesys","Avaya Cloud Office","interviews"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience"}}" data-authors="[" muntazir abbas"]" data-category-name="Enterprise Services" data-category_id="915" data-date="2023-05-24" data-index="article_1">
乐动娱乐招聘ETTelecom采访:亚美亚眼睛AI彻底改变客户体验
“人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC一起,“Masarek说。
亚美亚技术,统一通信和联络中心解决方案提供商,认为它的出现从破产转型,一步加强资本结构。美国跨国公司的目标是增加其每年2亿美元花在产品创新,和看到的人工智能(人工智能)作为一个级别的球员,可以从根本上改变接触中心业务,提高客户体验。在一个交互ETTelecom Muntazir乐动娱乐招聘阿巴斯的亚美亚全球首席执行官Alan Masarek会谈在公司的资产负债表,金融重组,产品创新,cloud-led转换、使用人工智能(AI),和印度市场。编辑摘录。
破产程序结束了,接下来是什么等跨国亚美亚吗?你有多强的订单,资产负债表,现金流?
破产是完全完成。我们在5月1日正式出现。我看了公司的转型两大类:财务重组和业务重组。我们已达到一个非常积极的结果在财务重组。
这是我们的实际力学放贷机构和投资者写下了35亿美元的长期责任——1.5亿美元。然后同一集团投资6.5亿美元的新资本形式的债务。所以你最终得到的是6.5亿美元的新资本,加上1.5亿美元的余额。所以你有8亿美元在前进。这是放在一起作为一个unitranche定期贷款这不是由于直到2028年中期。但它留下了6.5亿美元的新的流动性。
那么当前的债务呢?
在总债务的基础上,对一个公司的大小有几十亿的收入,有适度的债务与有利的还款等到2028年。和很少的净债务减去现金。我们已经完成了一系列的裁员行动,和操作的变化,所以我们有吸引力的恢复营业利润的水平,和自由现金流。适度的总债务,净负债很少,我们挣到钱。亚美亚直到去年一直相当有利可图。我们只是恢复那些传统上高水平的盈利能力。
你说公司拥有8亿美元的资本。你是怎么用的呢?
我们实际上是投资产品,在我们的人来说,在我们的分布,以及我们的品牌。真正说到业务重组。我特别有经验在这个行业在过去做转换。我们有一个项目我们称之为“目的地的地方工作。此外,我们有一个很深的产品路线图与移动到云,这显然是我们行业的趋势。
客户愉快是另一个优先领域。我们是一个partner-led公司;大约70%的全球收入是通过一些第三方分销渠道。我们投资在世界各地合作伙伴社区。我们投资于我们的用户群,我们有一个18000 -客户强烈的用户组被称为国际亚美亚用户组(IAUG)。然后我们在收集投资CSAT数据以及国会议员数据,然后我们将转换实际上奖金基于这些结果我们的人民。
亚美亚被称为传统的硬件业务。你拥抱云的一部分你的业务转型之旅吗?
亚美亚是慢到云比一些,因为它的客户基础是严重over-indexed世界上最大的通讯的部署。巨大的企业,业务流程外包业务流程外包)公司和政府机构自己云比较慢,所以亚美亚是比别人慢的移动到云上。尽管如此,移动到云的必然性。我们受益,亚美亚大举转向开发自己的云解决方案,我们最近品牌作为亚美亚体验平台。
我们工程师在一个路线图云计划很快因为焦点。cio的一个非常大的部署数以千计的座位是非常成熟,功能丰富的和稳定的。他们不想做的是拆掉,遭受破坏,但同时他们希望通过云计算的创新。它的创新——聊天、社交、数码-不中断没有撕出的下面。已经产生了共鸣。
我们看到许多活动在全球人工智能(AI)空间,亚美亚将人工智能集成到其产品组合是怎样的?
我们这样做在一个非常重要的方式。非常有趣的是所有的新特性在AI -生成,否则将继续从根本上改变世界呼叫中心和客户体验。,事实上,这是一个很大的优势,是后来到云比其他人因为它re-levels竞技场有竞争力,这是一个非常重要的一点。人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC聚在一起。
和你的市场份额在全球范围内,和你最近的竞争对手是谁?
在呼叫中心方面,世界上每三个代理席位是亚美亚。核心竞争对手在世界的前提,与premise-architected解决方案,通常是自己,思科,Genesys在较小程度上,像阿尔卡特-朗讯(alcatel - lucent)和其他一些公司退出。在世界的前提,竞争者的数量少之又少。在云计算方面,有一系列的竞争对手。我们有云计划,那么Genesys,思科,已经有很多人已经开始在过去的许多年。
你想要增加你的市场份额包括云空间?
首先,在市场份额方面,我们有一个令人难以置信的安装基础,而在某种程度上的云的旅程。Cloudifying安装基础,我们是现任总统,拥有巨大的权力。回到策略:创新这些我们现任,避免干扰。别人不能那么做。当获取到云身边,赢得通常不是一个单一的特性——它是包。我们显然有软件,和我们理解的软件非常好,我们几乎发明了这些类别的时候这些东西是通过前提。
你投资多少在产品创新和研发在加州大学和CC组合?你能提供一个电话号码吗?
今天我们花在产品和工程集团,2亿美元一年,这一数字将继续增加。我说很难具体多少,但我们已经支出水平非常有意义。我们有1700名工程师,其中三分之一是在印度,我们将继续在这个领域进行投资。
你还与RingCentral紧密合作。你的印度和其他市场策略呢?
在两类,加州大学和CC,我们谈了很多关于我们如何移动on-prem CCaaS呼叫中心,我们称之为亚美亚体验平台。在加州大学空间,因为它移动到云,与RingCentral UCaaS,我们有一个关系,重塑他们的产品和交付在一个品牌命名亚美亚云办公。亚美亚云办公有14个地区。RingCentral没有进入印度市场。与加州大学客户UCaaS,我们有自己的解决方案,这是我们的核心是在现在,亚美亚空间。这是我们合作的产品,它提供了集成视频、语音、消息传递、screenshare,并发聊天。这对我们现有的前提下解决方案创建一个在印度UCaaS等价。
回到印度,印度市场的路线图,包括投资和员工吗?你是否想要增加你的员工在印度吗?
是的,我们绝对是增加我们在印度员工。今天,我们在印度有1200名员工。超过500人研发。另外大约有500人支持和服务,客户体验,和平衡销售和跨职能领域。我们继续在印度投资于印度的计划在自力更生。我们是投资。1,我们是一个主要供应商的许多政府机构、像Aadhaar的社会保障体系,基本服务整个人口。我们非常参与应急响应服务,也支持各种智能城市项目。
你谈到了在印度劳动力1200人。有你想增加数量,我们说,在接下来的几年?
我认为很容易你就会看到一个在未来两年增加超过20%。
什么是亚美亚的总收入的贡献来自印度吗?
我们不将其分解方法。20亿美元的收入,约35%来自我们所说的国际市场,这是欧洲、亚洲次大陆。印度是一个非常重要的因素对公司的市场,然后很明显我们大量的劳动力。在印度超过20%的劳动力。
<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>Avaya<\/a> Technologies, the unified communications and contact centre solutions provider, sees its emergence from bankruptcy as transformational, and a step to strengthen capital structure. The US multinational is aiming to increase its $200 million annual spend in product innovation, and sees artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI<\/a>) as a level player that can fundamentally change contact centre business and enhance customer experience. In an interaction with ETTelecom's Muntazir Abbas, Avaya<\/a>'s global CEO Alan Masarek<\/strong> talks on the company's balance sheet, financial restructuring, product innovation, cloud-led transformation, use of artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI), and India market. Edited excerpts.
Now, the bankruptcy process is over, what’s next for a multinational like Avaya? How strong are you in terms of order book, balance sheet, and cash flow?
<\/strong>
The bankruptcy is completely done. We emerged formally on May 1. The way I have looked at the transformation of the company is in two broad groups: The financial restructuring and the business restructuring. We have reached an extraordinarily positive result in the financial restructuring.
The actual mechanics of this are that our lenders and investors wrote down what was $3.5 billion of long-term liability – all the way to $150 million. Then the same group invested $650 million of fresh capital in the form of debt. So what you end up with is the $650 million of new capital, plus the $150 million of the residual amount. So you have $800 million in the go-forward. That’s put together as a unitranche term loan that’s not due until the middle of 2028. But it leaves behind $650 million of fresh liquidity.
So what's the current debt you have?
<\/strong>
On a gross debt basis, for a company of our size with a couple of billion in revenue, you have modest debt with favourable repayment not due until 2028. And very little net debt when you subtract the cash. We have completed a series of right-sizing moves, and operational changes as well, so that we have the restoration of attractive levels of operating profit, and free cash flow. So, modest gross debt, very little net debt, and we generate cash. Avaya has always been quite profitable up until last year. We’re just restoring those traditionally high levels of profitability.
You said the company has $800 million in capital. How are you using it?
<\/strong>
We are actually investing in the product, in our people, in our distribution, and in our brand. That really speaks to the business restructuring. My experience specifically is having done transformations in this industry in the past. We have a program we refer to as ‘Destination Place to Work.’ In addition, we have a very deep product roadmap tied to the move to cloud, which is obviously the trend in our industry.
Customer delight is another priority area. We are a partner-led company; about 70% of global revenue is delivered via some third-party distribution channel. We are investing in the partner community throughout the world. We invest in our users group – we have an 18,000-customer-strong user group called the International Avaya Users Group<\/a> (IAUG). And then we’re investing in gathering CSAT data<\/a> as well as MPS data, and then we will convert that and actually bonus our people based on those results.
Avaya was known for a legacy hardware business. How are you embracing cloud as a part of your business transformation journey?
<\/strong>
Avaya was slower to the cloud than some because its customer base is so heavily over-indexed to the largest communications deployments in the world. Huge enterprises, business process outsourcing BPO) companies , and governmental agencies themselves were slow to the cloud and so Avaya was slower than others in its move to the cloud. Nonetheless, there is an inevitability in the move to cloud. We are benefited by the fact that Avaya turned aggressively towards developing its own cloud solution, which we recently branded as Avaya Experience Platform.
We have engineers working on a roadmap around our cloud initiatives very quickly because of the focus. CIOs of a very large deployment with thousands of seats are very mature, feature-rich and stable. What they don’t want to do is rip it out and suffer that disruption, but at the same time they want the innovation that’s delivered via the cloud. It’s innovation – chat, social, digital – without disruption – without ripping out what’s underneath. That has resonated really well.
As we are seeing much activity in the artificial intelligence (AI) space globally, how is Avaya integrating AI into its product portfolio?
<\/strong>
We are doing so in a very significant way. What’s very interesting is all the new features around AI – generative and otherwise – will continue to fundamentally change the contact center and the customer experience world. As a matter of fact, it’s a great advantage to us, being later to the cloud than others because it re-levels the playing field competitively, which is a very important point. AI takes form in many different ways when it’s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together.
And what’s your market share globally, and who are your closest competitors?
<\/strong>
On the contact center side, one out of every three agent seats in the world is Avaya. The core competitors in the premise world, with premise-architected solutions, are generally ourselves, Cisco<\/a>, Genesys<\/a> to a lesser extent, and some other firms that have exited like Alcatel-Lucent. In the premise world, the number of competitors is few and getting fewer. On the cloud side, there’s a whole raft of competitors. We have our cloud initiatives, so does Genesys<\/a>, and Cisco<\/a>, and there have been many others that have started over the last many years.
How are you looking to increase your market share including in the cloud space?
<\/strong>
First and foremost, in terms of market share, we have this incredible install base who are on some level of cloud journey. Cloudifying the install base, we are the incumbent, and have enormous power. That goes back to the strategy: innovate those where we are the incumbent, and avoid the disruption. Others can’t do that. When getting over to the cloud side, the way to win is typically not on a single feature – it’s the package. We clearly have the software, and we understand the software extremely well, and we almost invented these categories back when these things were delivered via premise.
Read also<\/h4><\/a><\/figure>Avaya partners Startek to offer packaged customer experience services across global markets and India<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":100469352,"title":"Infosys launches generative AI services suite","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/enterprise-services\/infosys-launches-generative-ai-services-suite\/100469352","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"enterprise-services"}],"related_content":[],"msid":100469516,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"ETTelecom Interviews: Avaya eyes AI to radically change customer experience","synopsis":"\"AI takes form in many different ways when it\u2019s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together,\" says Masarek.","titleseo":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_link":"\/author\/479234376\/muntazir-abbas","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/479234376.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":true,"msid":479234376,"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_seo_name":"muntazir-abbas","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"analytics":{"comments":0,"views":481,"shares":0,"engagementtimems":2164000},"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ETTelecom","artdate":"2023-05-24 13:33:55","lastupd":"2023-05-24 16:17:58","breadcrumbTags":["Avaya","AI","enterprise services","International Avaya Users Group","CSAT data","artificial intelligence","Cisco","Genesys","Avaya Cloud Office","interviews"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience"}}" data-news_link="//www.iser-br.com/news/enterprise-services/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience/100469516">
<\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":100469352,"title":"Infosys launches generative AI services suite","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/enterprise-services\/infosys-launches-generative-ai-services-suite\/100469352","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"enterprise-services"}],"related_content":[],"msid":100469516,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"ETTelecom Interviews: Avaya eyes AI to radically change customer experience","synopsis":"\"AI takes form in many different ways when it\u2019s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together,\" says Masarek.","titleseo":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_link":"\/author\/479234376\/muntazir-abbas","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/479234376.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":true,"msid":479234376,"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_seo_name":"muntazir-abbas","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"analytics":{"comments":0,"views":481,"shares":0,"engagementtimems":2164000},"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ETTelecom","artdate":"2023-05-24 13:33:55","lastupd":"2023-05-24 16:17:58","breadcrumbTags":["Avaya","AI","enterprise services","International Avaya Users Group","CSAT data","artificial intelligence","Cisco","Genesys","Avaya Cloud Office","interviews"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience"}}" data-authors="[" muntazir abbas"]" data-category-name="Enterprise Services" data-category_id="915" data-date="2023-05-24" data-index="article_1">
乐动娱乐招聘ETTelecom采访:亚美亚眼睛AI彻底改变客户体验
“人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC一起,“Masarek说。
亚美亚技术,统一通信和联络中心解决方案提供商,认为它的出现从破产转型,一步加强资本结构。美国跨国公司的目标是增加其每年2亿美元花在产品创新,和看到的人工智能(人工智能)作为一个级别的球员,可以从根本上改变接触中心业务,提高客户体验。在一个交互ETTelecom Muntazir乐动娱乐招聘阿巴斯的亚美亚全球首席执行官Alan Masarek会谈在公司的资产负债表,金融重组,产品创新,cloud-led转换、使用人工智能(AI),和印度市场。编辑摘录。
破产程序结束了,接下来是什么等跨国亚美亚吗?你有多强的订单,资产负债表,现金流?
破产是完全完成。我们在5月1日正式出现。我看了公司的转型两大类:财务重组和业务重组。我们已达到一个非常积极的结果在财务重组。
这是我们的实际力学放贷机构和投资者写下了35亿美元的长期责任——1.5亿美元。然后同一集团投资6.5亿美元的新资本形式的债务。所以你最终得到的是6.5亿美元的新资本,加上1.5亿美元的余额。所以你有8亿美元在前进。这是放在一起作为一个unitranche定期贷款这不是由于直到2028年中期。但它留下了6.5亿美元的新的流动性。
那么当前的债务呢?
在总债务的基础上,对一个公司的大小有几十亿的收入,有适度的债务与有利的还款等到2028年。和很少的净债务减去现金。我们已经完成了一系列的裁员行动,和操作的变化,所以我们有吸引力的恢复营业利润的水平,和自由现金流。适度的总债务,净负债很少,我们挣到钱。亚美亚直到去年一直相当有利可图。我们只是恢复那些传统上高水平的盈利能力。
你说公司拥有8亿美元的资本。你是怎么用的呢?
我们实际上是投资产品,在我们的人来说,在我们的分布,以及我们的品牌。真正说到业务重组。我特别有经验在这个行业在过去做转换。我们有一个项目我们称之为“目的地的地方工作。此外,我们有一个很深的产品路线图与移动到云,这显然是我们行业的趋势。
客户愉快是另一个优先领域。我们是一个partner-led公司;大约70%的全球收入是通过一些第三方分销渠道。我们投资在世界各地合作伙伴社区。我们投资于我们的用户群,我们有一个18000 -客户强烈的用户组被称为国际亚美亚用户组(IAUG)。然后我们在收集投资CSAT数据以及国会议员数据,然后我们将转换实际上奖金基于这些结果我们的人民。
亚美亚被称为传统的硬件业务。你拥抱云的一部分你的业务转型之旅吗?
亚美亚是慢到云比一些,因为它的客户基础是严重over-indexed世界上最大的通讯的部署。巨大的企业,业务流程外包业务流程外包)公司和政府机构自己云比较慢,所以亚美亚是比别人慢的移动到云上。尽管如此,移动到云的必然性。我们受益,亚美亚大举转向开发自己的云解决方案,我们最近品牌作为亚美亚体验平台。
我们工程师在一个路线图云计划很快因为焦点。cio的一个非常大的部署数以千计的座位是非常成熟,功能丰富的和稳定的。他们不想做的是拆掉,遭受破坏,但同时他们希望通过云计算的创新。它的创新——聊天、社交、数码-不中断没有撕出的下面。已经产生了共鸣。
我们看到许多活动在全球人工智能(AI)空间,亚美亚将人工智能集成到其产品组合是怎样的?
我们这样做在一个非常重要的方式。非常有趣的是所有的新特性在AI -生成,否则将继续从根本上改变世界呼叫中心和客户体验。,事实上,这是一个很大的优势,是后来到云比其他人因为它re-levels竞技场有竞争力,这是一个非常重要的一点。人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC聚在一起。
和你的市场份额在全球范围内,和你最近的竞争对手是谁?
在呼叫中心方面,世界上每三个代理席位是亚美亚。核心竞争对手在世界的前提,与premise-architected解决方案,通常是自己,思科,Genesys在较小程度上,像阿尔卡特-朗讯(alcatel - lucent)和其他一些公司退出。在世界的前提,竞争者的数量少之又少。在云计算方面,有一系列的竞争对手。我们有云计划,那么Genesys,思科,已经有很多人已经开始在过去的许多年。
你想要增加你的市场份额包括云空间?
首先,在市场份额方面,我们有一个令人难以置信的安装基础,而在某种程度上的云的旅程。Cloudifying安装基础,我们是现任总统,拥有巨大的权力。回到策略:创新这些我们现任,避免干扰。别人不能那么做。当获取到云身边,赢得通常不是一个单一的特性——它是包。我们显然有软件,和我们理解的软件非常好,我们几乎发明了这些类别的时候这些东西是通过前提。
你投资多少在产品创新和研发在加州大学和CC组合?你能提供一个电话号码吗?
今天我们花在产品和工程集团,2亿美元一年,这一数字将继续增加。我说很难具体多少,但我们已经支出水平非常有意义。我们有1700名工程师,其中三分之一是在印度,我们将继续在这个领域进行投资。
你还与RingCentral紧密合作。你的印度和其他市场策略呢?
在两类,加州大学和CC,我们谈了很多关于我们如何移动on-prem CCaaS呼叫中心,我们称之为亚美亚体验平台。在加州大学空间,因为它移动到云,与RingCentral UCaaS,我们有一个关系,重塑他们的产品和交付在一个品牌命名亚美亚云办公。亚美亚云办公有14个地区。RingCentral没有进入印度市场。与加州大学客户UCaaS,我们有自己的解决方案,这是我们的核心是在现在,亚美亚空间。这是我们合作的产品,它提供了集成视频、语音、消息传递、screenshare,并发聊天。这对我们现有的前提下解决方案创建一个在印度UCaaS等价。
回到印度,印度市场的路线图,包括投资和员工吗?你是否想要增加你的员工在印度吗?
是的,我们绝对是增加我们在印度员工。今天,我们在印度有1200名员工。超过500人研发。另外大约有500人支持和服务,客户体验,和平衡销售和跨职能领域。我们继续在印度投资于印度的计划在自力更生。我们是投资。1,我们是一个主要供应商的许多政府机构、像Aadhaar的社会保障体系,基本服务整个人口。我们非常参与应急响应服务,也支持各种智能城市项目。
你谈到了在印度劳动力1200人。有你想增加数量,我们说,在接下来的几年?
我认为很容易你就会看到一个在未来两年增加超过20%。
什么是亚美亚的总收入的贡献来自印度吗?
我们不将其分解方法。20亿美元的收入,约35%来自我们所说的国际市场,这是欧洲、亚洲次大陆。印度是一个非常重要的因素对公司的市场,然后很明显我们大量的劳动力。在印度超过20%的劳动力。
<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>Avaya<\/a> Technologies, the unified communications and contact centre solutions provider, sees its emergence from bankruptcy as transformational, and a step to strengthen capital structure. The US multinational is aiming to increase its $200 million annual spend in product innovation, and sees artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI<\/a>) as a level player that can fundamentally change contact centre business and enhance customer experience. In an interaction with ETTelecom's Muntazir Abbas, Avaya<\/a>'s global CEO Alan Masarek<\/strong> talks on the company's balance sheet, financial restructuring, product innovation, cloud-led transformation, use of artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI), and India market. Edited excerpts.
Now, the bankruptcy process is over, what’s next for a multinational like Avaya? How strong are you in terms of order book, balance sheet, and cash flow?
<\/strong>
The bankruptcy is completely done. We emerged formally on May 1. The way I have looked at the transformation of the company is in two broad groups: The financial restructuring and the business restructuring. We have reached an extraordinarily positive result in the financial restructuring.
The actual mechanics of this are that our lenders and investors wrote down what was $3.5 billion of long-term liability – all the way to $150 million. Then the same group invested $650 million of fresh capital in the form of debt. So what you end up with is the $650 million of new capital, plus the $150 million of the residual amount. So you have $800 million in the go-forward. That’s put together as a unitranche term loan that’s not due until the middle of 2028. But it leaves behind $650 million of fresh liquidity.
So what's the current debt you have?
<\/strong>
On a gross debt basis, for a company of our size with a couple of billion in revenue, you have modest debt with favourable repayment not due until 2028. And very little net debt when you subtract the cash. We have completed a series of right-sizing moves, and operational changes as well, so that we have the restoration of attractive levels of operating profit, and free cash flow. So, modest gross debt, very little net debt, and we generate cash. Avaya has always been quite profitable up until last year. We’re just restoring those traditionally high levels of profitability.
You said the company has $800 million in capital. How are you using it?
<\/strong>
We are actually investing in the product, in our people, in our distribution, and in our brand. That really speaks to the business restructuring. My experience specifically is having done transformations in this industry in the past. We have a program we refer to as ‘Destination Place to Work.’ In addition, we have a very deep product roadmap tied to the move to cloud, which is obviously the trend in our industry.
Customer delight is another priority area. We are a partner-led company; about 70% of global revenue is delivered via some third-party distribution channel. We are investing in the partner community throughout the world. We invest in our users group – we have an 18,000-customer-strong user group called the International Avaya Users Group<\/a> (IAUG). And then we’re investing in gathering CSAT data<\/a> as well as MPS data, and then we will convert that and actually bonus our people based on those results.
Avaya was known for a legacy hardware business. How are you embracing cloud as a part of your business transformation journey?
<\/strong>
Avaya was slower to the cloud than some because its customer base is so heavily over-indexed to the largest communications deployments in the world. Huge enterprises, business process outsourcing BPO) companies , and governmental agencies themselves were slow to the cloud and so Avaya was slower than others in its move to the cloud. Nonetheless, there is an inevitability in the move to cloud. We are benefited by the fact that Avaya turned aggressively towards developing its own cloud solution, which we recently branded as Avaya Experience Platform.
We have engineers working on a roadmap around our cloud initiatives very quickly because of the focus. CIOs of a very large deployment with thousands of seats are very mature, feature-rich and stable. What they don’t want to do is rip it out and suffer that disruption, but at the same time they want the innovation that’s delivered via the cloud. It’s innovation – chat, social, digital – without disruption – without ripping out what’s underneath. That has resonated really well.
As we are seeing much activity in the artificial intelligence (AI) space globally, how is Avaya integrating AI into its product portfolio?
<\/strong>
We are doing so in a very significant way. What’s very interesting is all the new features around AI – generative and otherwise – will continue to fundamentally change the contact center and the customer experience world. As a matter of fact, it’s a great advantage to us, being later to the cloud than others because it re-levels the playing field competitively, which is a very important point. AI takes form in many different ways when it’s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together.
And what’s your market share globally, and who are your closest competitors?
<\/strong>
On the contact center side, one out of every three agent seats in the world is Avaya. The core competitors in the premise world, with premise-architected solutions, are generally ourselves, Cisco<\/a>, Genesys<\/a> to a lesser extent, and some other firms that have exited like Alcatel-Lucent. In the premise world, the number of competitors is few and getting fewer. On the cloud side, there’s a whole raft of competitors. We have our cloud initiatives, so does Genesys<\/a>, and Cisco<\/a>, and there have been many others that have started over the last many years.
How are you looking to increase your market share including in the cloud space?
<\/strong>
First and foremost, in terms of market share, we have this incredible install base who are on some level of cloud journey. Cloudifying the install base, we are the incumbent, and have enormous power. That goes back to the strategy: innovate those where we are the incumbent, and avoid the disruption. Others can’t do that. When getting over to the cloud side, the way to win is typically not on a single feature – it’s the package. We clearly have the software, and we understand the software extremely well, and we almost invented these categories back when these things were delivered via premise.
Read also<\/h4><\/a><\/figure>Avaya partners Startek to offer packaged customer experience services across global markets and India<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":100469352,"title":"Infosys launches generative AI services suite","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/enterprise-services\/infosys-launches-generative-ai-services-suite\/100469352","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"enterprise-services"}],"related_content":[],"msid":100469516,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"ETTelecom Interviews: Avaya eyes AI to radically change customer experience","synopsis":"\"AI takes form in many different ways when it\u2019s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together,\" says Masarek.","titleseo":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_link":"\/author\/479234376\/muntazir-abbas","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/479234376.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":true,"msid":479234376,"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_seo_name":"muntazir-abbas","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"analytics":{"comments":0,"views":481,"shares":0,"engagementtimems":2164000},"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ETTelecom","artdate":"2023-05-24 13:33:55","lastupd":"2023-05-24 16:17:58","breadcrumbTags":["Avaya","AI","enterprise services","International Avaya Users Group","CSAT data","artificial intelligence","Cisco","Genesys","Avaya Cloud Office","interviews"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience"}}" data-news_link="//www.iser-br.com/news/enterprise-services/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience/100469516">
乐动娱乐招聘ETTelecom采访:亚美亚眼睛AI彻底改变客户体验
“人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC一起,“Masarek说。
读到
破产程序结束了,接下来是什么等跨国亚美亚吗?你有多强的订单,资产负债表,现金流?
破产是完全完成。我们在5月1日正式出现。我看了公司的转型两大类:财务重组和业务重组。我们已达到一个非常积极的结果在财务重组。
这是我们的实际力学放贷机构和投资者写下了35亿美元的长期责任——1.5亿美元。然后同一集团投资6.5亿美元的新资本形式的债务。所以你最终得到的是6.5亿美元的新资本,加上1.5亿美元的余额。所以你有8亿美元在前进。这是放在一起作为一个unitranche定期贷款这不是由于直到2028年中期。但它留下了6.5亿美元的新的流动性。
那么当前的债务呢?
在总债务的基础上,对一个公司的大小有几十亿的收入,有适度的债务与有利的还款等到2028年。和很少的净债务减去现金。我们已经完成了一系列的裁员行动,和操作的变化,所以我们有吸引力的恢复营业利润的水平,和自由现金流。适度的总债务,净负债很少,我们挣到钱。亚美亚直到去年一直相当有利可图。我们只是恢复那些传统上高水平的盈利能力。
你说公司拥有8亿美元的资本。你是怎么用的呢?
我们实际上是投资产品,在我们的人来说,在我们的分布,以及我们的品牌。真正说到业务重组。我特别有经验在这个行业在过去做转换。我们有一个项目我们称之为“目的地的地方工作。此外,我们有一个很深的产品路线图与移动到云,这显然是我们行业的趋势。
客户愉快是另一个优先领域。我们是一个partner-led公司;大约70%的全球收入是通过一些第三方分销渠道。我们投资在世界各地合作伙伴社区。我们投资于我们的用户群,我们有一个18000 -客户强烈的用户组被称为国际亚美亚用户组(IAUG)。然后我们在收集投资CSAT数据以及国会议员数据,然后我们将转换实际上奖金基于这些结果我们的人民。
亚美亚被称为传统的硬件业务。你拥抱云的一部分你的业务转型之旅吗?
亚美亚是慢到云比一些,因为它的客户基础是严重over-indexed世界上最大的通讯的部署。巨大的企业,业务流程外包业务流程外包)公司和政府机构自己云比较慢,所以亚美亚是比别人慢的移动到云上。尽管如此,移动到云的必然性。我们受益,亚美亚大举转向开发自己的云解决方案,我们最近品牌作为亚美亚体验平台。
我们工程师在一个路线图云计划很快因为焦点。cio的一个非常大的部署数以千计的座位是非常成熟,功能丰富的和稳定的。他们不想做的是拆掉,遭受破坏,但同时他们希望通过云计算的创新。它的创新——聊天、社交、数码-不中断没有撕出的下面。已经产生了共鸣。
我们看到许多活动在全球人工智能(AI)空间,亚美亚将人工智能集成到其产品组合是怎样的?
我们这样做在一个非常重要的方式。非常有趣的是所有的新特性在AI -生成,否则将继续从根本上改变世界呼叫中心和客户体验。,事实上,这是一个很大的优势,是后来到云比其他人因为它re-levels竞技场有竞争力,这是一个非常重要的一点。人工智能形式在许多不同的方式面向客户。你能够捕捉声音流数据。考虑自然语言理解,你抄写和元数据,所以你所说的一切都是可搜索的。这就是为什么我坚信加州大学和CC聚在一起。
和你的市场份额在全球范围内,和你最近的竞争对手是谁?
在呼叫中心方面,世界上每三个代理席位是亚美亚。核心竞争对手在世界的前提,与premise-architected解决方案,通常是自己,思科,Genesys在较小程度上,像阿尔卡特-朗讯(alcatel - lucent)和其他一些公司退出。在世界的前提,竞争者的数量少之又少。在云计算方面,有一系列的竞争对手。我们有云计划,那么Genesys,思科,已经有很多人已经开始在过去的许多年。
你想要增加你的市场份额包括云空间?
首先,在市场份额方面,我们有一个令人难以置信的安装基础,而在某种程度上的云的旅程。Cloudifying安装基础,我们是现任总统,拥有巨大的权力。回到策略:创新这些我们现任,避免干扰。别人不能那么做。当获取到云身边,赢得通常不是一个单一的特性——它是包。我们显然有软件,和我们理解的软件非常好,我们几乎发明了这些类别的时候这些东西是通过前提。
你投资多少在产品创新和研发在加州大学和CC组合?你能提供一个电话号码吗?
今天我们花在产品和工程集团,2亿美元一年,这一数字将继续增加。我说很难具体多少,但我们已经支出水平非常有意义。我们有1700名工程师,其中三分之一是在印度,我们将继续在这个领域进行投资。
你还与RingCentral紧密合作。你的印度和其他市场策略呢?
在两类,加州大学和CC,我们谈了很多关于我们如何移动on-prem CCaaS呼叫中心,我们称之为亚美亚体验平台。在加州大学空间,因为它移动到云,与RingCentral UCaaS,我们有一个关系,重塑他们的产品和交付在一个品牌命名亚美亚云办公。亚美亚云办公有14个地区。RingCentral没有进入印度市场。与加州大学客户UCaaS,我们有自己的解决方案,这是我们的核心是在现在,亚美亚空间。这是我们合作的产品,它提供了集成视频、语音、消息传递、screenshare,并发聊天。这对我们现有的前提下解决方案创建一个在印度UCaaS等价。
回到印度,印度市场的路线图,包括投资和员工吗?你是否想要增加你的员工在印度吗?
是的,我们绝对是增加我们在印度员工。今天,我们在印度有1200名员工。超过500人研发。另外大约有500人支持和服务,客户体验,和平衡销售和跨职能领域。我们继续在印度投资于印度的计划在自力更生。我们是投资。1,我们是一个主要供应商的许多政府机构、像Aadhaar的社会保障体系,基本服务整个人口。我们非常参与应急响应服务,也支持各种智能城市项目。
你谈到了在印度劳动力1200人。有你想增加数量,我们说,在接下来的几年?
我认为很容易你就会看到一个在未来两年增加超过20%。
什么是亚美亚的总收入的贡献来自印度吗?
我们不将其分解方法。20亿美元的收入,约35%来自我们所说的国际市场,这是欧洲、亚洲次大陆。印度是一个非常重要的因素对公司的市场,然后很明显我们大量的劳动力。在印度超过20%的劳动力。
Now, the bankruptcy process is over, what’s next for a multinational like Avaya? How strong are you in terms of order book, balance sheet, and cash flow?
<\/strong>
The bankruptcy is completely done. We emerged formally on May 1. The way I have looked at the transformation of the company is in two broad groups: The financial restructuring and the business restructuring. We have reached an extraordinarily positive result in the financial restructuring.
The actual mechanics of this are that our lenders and investors wrote down what was $3.5 billion of long-term liability – all the way to $150 million. Then the same group invested $650 million of fresh capital in the form of debt. So what you end up with is the $650 million of new capital, plus the $150 million of the residual amount. So you have $800 million in the go-forward. That’s put together as a unitranche term loan that’s not due until the middle of 2028. But it leaves behind $650 million of fresh liquidity.
So what's the current debt you have?
<\/strong>
On a gross debt basis, for a company of our size with a couple of billion in revenue, you have modest debt with favourable repayment not due until 2028. And very little net debt when you subtract the cash. We have completed a series of right-sizing moves, and operational changes as well, so that we have the restoration of attractive levels of operating profit, and free cash flow. So, modest gross debt, very little net debt, and we generate cash. Avaya has always been quite profitable up until last year. We’re just restoring those traditionally high levels of profitability.
You said the company has $800 million in capital. How are you using it?
<\/strong>
We are actually investing in the product, in our people, in our distribution, and in our brand. That really speaks to the business restructuring. My experience specifically is having done transformations in this industry in the past. We have a program we refer to as ‘Destination Place to Work.’ In addition, we have a very deep product roadmap tied to the move to cloud, which is obviously the trend in our industry.
Customer delight is another priority area. We are a partner-led company; about 70% of global revenue is delivered via some third-party distribution channel. We are investing in the partner community throughout the world. We invest in our users group – we have an 18,000-customer-strong user group called the International Avaya Users Group<\/a> (IAUG). And then we’re investing in gathering CSAT data<\/a> as well as MPS data, and then we will convert that and actually bonus our people based on those results.
Avaya was known for a legacy hardware business. How are you embracing cloud as a part of your business transformation journey?
<\/strong>
Avaya was slower to the cloud than some because its customer base is so heavily over-indexed to the largest communications deployments in the world. Huge enterprises, business process outsourcing BPO) companies , and governmental agencies themselves were slow to the cloud and so Avaya was slower than others in its move to the cloud. Nonetheless, there is an inevitability in the move to cloud. We are benefited by the fact that Avaya turned aggressively towards developing its own cloud solution, which we recently branded as Avaya Experience Platform.
We have engineers working on a roadmap around our cloud initiatives very quickly because of the focus. CIOs of a very large deployment with thousands of seats are very mature, feature-rich and stable. What they don’t want to do is rip it out and suffer that disruption, but at the same time they want the innovation that’s delivered via the cloud. It’s innovation – chat, social, digital – without disruption – without ripping out what’s underneath. That has resonated really well.
As we are seeing much activity in the artificial intelligence (AI) space globally, how is Avaya integrating AI into its product portfolio?
<\/strong>
We are doing so in a very significant way. What’s very interesting is all the new features around AI – generative and otherwise – will continue to fundamentally change the contact center and the customer experience world. As a matter of fact, it’s a great advantage to us, being later to the cloud than others because it re-levels the playing field competitively, which is a very important point. AI takes form in many different ways when it’s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together.
And what’s your market share globally, and who are your closest competitors?
<\/strong>
On the contact center side, one out of every three agent seats in the world is Avaya. The core competitors in the premise world, with premise-architected solutions, are generally ourselves, Cisco<\/a>, Genesys<\/a> to a lesser extent, and some other firms that have exited like Alcatel-Lucent. In the premise world, the number of competitors is few and getting fewer. On the cloud side, there’s a whole raft of competitors. We have our cloud initiatives, so does Genesys<\/a>, and Cisco<\/a>, and there have been many others that have started over the last many years.
How are you looking to increase your market share including in the cloud space?
<\/strong>
First and foremost, in terms of market share, we have this incredible install base who are on some level of cloud journey. Cloudifying the install base, we are the incumbent, and have enormous power. That goes back to the strategy: innovate those where we are the incumbent, and avoid the disruption. Others can’t do that. When getting over to the cloud side, the way to win is typically not on a single feature – it’s the package. We clearly have the software, and we understand the software extremely well, and we almost invented these categories back when these things were delivered via premise.
Read also<\/h4><\/a><\/figure>Avaya partners Startek to offer packaged customer experience services across global markets and India<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":100469352,"title":"Infosys launches generative AI services suite","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/enterprise-services\/infosys-launches-generative-ai-services-suite\/100469352","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"enterprise-services"}],"related_content":[],"msid":100469516,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"ETTelecom Interviews: Avaya eyes AI to radically change customer experience","synopsis":"\"AI takes form in many different ways when it\u2019s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together,\" says Masarek.","titleseo":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_link":"\/author\/479234376\/muntazir-abbas","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/479234376.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":true,"msid":479234376,"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_seo_name":"muntazir-abbas","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"analytics":{"comments":0,"views":481,"shares":0,"engagementtimems":2164000},"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ETTelecom","artdate":"2023-05-24 13:33:55","lastupd":"2023-05-24 16:17:58","breadcrumbTags":["Avaya","AI","enterprise services","International Avaya Users Group","CSAT data","artificial intelligence","Cisco","Genesys","Avaya Cloud Office","interviews"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience"}}" data-news_link="//www.iser-br.com/news/enterprise-services/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience/100469516">
<\/a><\/figure>Avaya partners Startek to offer packaged customer experience services across global markets and India<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/a><\/figure>Avaya to increase India workforce by 20%: CEO Alan Masarek<\/a><\/h5><\/div><\/div><\/div>
How much investment are you making in product innovation and R&D across the UC and CC portfolios? Can you provide a number?
<\/strong>
Today we spend, in the product and engineering group, $200 million a year, and that number will continue to increase. It’s hard for me to say specifically how much, but we’re already spending at levels which are very meaningful. We have 1,700 engineers, almost a third of whom are in India, and we’ll continue to invest in that area.
You also work very closely with RingCentral. What’s your strategy for India and other markets with them?
<\/strong>
In the two categories, UC and CC, we’ve talked a great deal about how we’re moving the on-prem contact center to CCaaS, which we call Avaya Experience Platform. In the UC space, as it moves to the cloud, UCaaS, we have a relationship with RingCentral where we rebrand their product and deliver it under a brand named Avaya Cloud Office<\/a>. Avaya Cloud Office<\/a> is available in 14 territories. RingCentral does not have a presence in the Indian market. As those UC customers move to UCaaS, we have our own solutions, the core of which is what we’re on right now, Avaya Spaces. This is our collaboration product, which provides integrated video, voice, messaging, screenshare, concurrent chat. This pairs with our existing premise solutions to create a UCaaS equivalent in India.
Coming back to India, what is your roadmap for the India market, including investment and headcount? Are you looking to increase your headcount in India?
<\/strong>
Yes, we are definitely increasing our headcount in India. Today we have about 1,200 employees in India. A little over 500 are in R&D. About another 500 are in support and services around that customer experience, and the balance are in sales and cross-functional areas. We continue to invest throughout India in India’s own initiatives around self-reliance. We are investing across the board. One, we are a major vendor to many of the governmental agencies, like the Aadhaar social security system, basically servicing the entire population. We are very involved in emergency response services, and also supporting various smart city initiatives.
You talked about a workforce of 1,200 in India. Is there a number you’d want to increase to, let’s say, over the next couple of years?
<\/strong>
I think very easily you’ll see an increase over the next couple of years in excess of 20%.
What is the contribution from India to Avaya’s overall revenue?
<\/strong>
We don’t break it down all that way. Of the $2 billion in revenue, about 35% come from what we call international markets, which is Europe, Asia and the sub-continent. India is a very significant contributor to the company both in terms of the market, and then obviously where we have a great deal of our workforce. More than 20% of our workforce is in India.
<\/body>","next_sibling":[{"msid":100469352,"title":"Infosys launches generative AI services suite","entity_type":"ARTICLE","link":"\/news\/enterprise-services\/infosys-launches-generative-ai-services-suite\/100469352","category_name":null,"category_name_seo":"enterprise-services"}],"related_content":[],"msid":100469516,"entity_type":"ARTICLE","title":"ETTelecom Interviews: Avaya eyes AI to radically change customer experience","synopsis":"\"AI takes form in many different ways when it\u2019s customer-facing. You are able to capture the voice stream as data. Think about natural language understanding, you transcribe it and the metadata comes with it, so everything you have is searchable. This is why I believe so strongly that UC and CC come together,\" says Masarek.","titleseo":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience","status":"ACTIVE","authors":[{"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_link":"\/author\/479234376\/muntazir-abbas","author_image":"https:\/\/etimg.etb2bimg.com\/authorthumb\/479234376.cms?width=100&height=100&hostid=268","author_additional":{"thumbsize":true,"msid":479234376,"author_name":"Muntazir Abbas","author_seo_name":"muntazir-abbas","designation":"Editor","agency":false}}],"analytics":{"comments":0,"views":481,"shares":0,"engagementtimems":2164000},"Alttitle":{"minfo":""},"artag":"ETTelecom","artdate":"2023-05-24 13:33:55","lastupd":"2023-05-24 16:17:58","breadcrumbTags":["Avaya","AI","enterprise services","International Avaya Users Group","CSAT data","artificial intelligence","Cisco","Genesys","Avaya Cloud Office","interviews"],"secinfo":{"seolocation":"enterprise-services\/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience"}}" data-news_link="//www.iser-br.com/news/enterprise-services/ettelecom-interviews-avaya-eyes-ai-to-radically-change-customer-experience/100469516">
<\/a><\/figure>
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