Avaya is formalizing an outsourcing service it has been offering select clients for the past year. The service, Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions, manages all of a company’s communications operations, regardless of age, location or vendor. It is part of the company’s portfolio of Managed Services.
“This is a custom managed service targeted at companies in the enterprise space as opposed to the mid- sized space,” Ed Nalbandian, the head of the Avaya Managed Services division, told CRM Buyer.
“It is also designed for those companies with aging infrastructure to give them a way to reduce the cost and risk of replacing or managing that infrastructure,” he said.
Customized Solutions
Since the soft launch of the service a year ago, Avaya has brought on board about 15 clients, Nalbandian said. The contract value of the deals inked so far ranges from US$10 million to $150 million. Now that Avaya is formalizing the service, Nalbandian said the company is hoping to have between 35 and 40 clients.
The service will customize just about any element of a company’s communications environment. This could include applications for unified communications, contact centers or data networking and video communications. It will also integrate the client’s IT processes into the customized solution, as well as manage related services such as production, billing and operations.
It provides support via nine global Network Operation Centers, or NOCs, that have 3 million communications ports under contract. The service also provides customers with Service Level Agreements on availability and reliability.
It uses a communications management platform called “the Matrix” — a predictive, cloud-based Web portfolio that gives users insight into the performance of Avaya’s services.
Two Buckets
The companies that have been using the service fall into two buckets, Nalbandian said. One group tends to have aging technologies and wants to move to the next generation of solutions but has budget constraints.
For these companies, Avaya structures a per user, per month pricing structure — one that takes into a account a company’s operating expense issues, he said.
“There is no upfront payment, there is a three-to-five year term, and we include equipment, implementation and management for that period,” said Nalbandian.
It appeals to those companies that want to migrate to a new technology at their own pace and at a controlled cost, he said.
The second type of client also has aging infrastructure, but it doesn’t necessarily want to migrate to a next-gen solution. Possibly it can’t keep up with the skill set necessary to make the change, Nalbandian said. At any rate, it would like to hand over the operation and maintenance of what it does have to somebody else.
“We are seeing a lot of demand for this,” Nalbandian concluded — “the ability to selectively outsource.”
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