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Avaya CEO: Running to Win: Page 3 of 3

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Avaya has some diverse and impressive competitors. You sit between large companies with broad portfolios and venture-funded startups. What's Avaya's approach to differentiation?

We're differentiated in many ways. First, we're the most trusted name in the industry, be it in tenure, experience, innovation, or technology. As a result, more than 90% of Fortune 100 companies rely on Avaya to run their daily operations. We're proven, have global reach and scale, and are the partner of choice. We're going to continue to build on our heritage of game-changing innovation -- leading the digital transformation. We have over 6,000 patents, over 2,000 engineers, and now the flexibility to increase our investment in R&D. Lastly, we're building out our ecosystem with our customers and partners to bring new and innovative solutions to the marketplace.

Even with the new debt restructuring, Avaya still has nearly $3 billion in debt. Does that concern you?

Our leverage ratio is 3.4x EBITDA, compared to over twice that prior to going through the process. Reducing our debt by over $3 billion frees up significant cash flow for the business to invest. You combine that with our best-in-class business model, meaning we are very profitable, generating a significant amount of cash, and we can now be aggressive where we weren't before. At this point in time, it's a good capital structure to move forward.

Do you feel relationships were damaged during Chapter 11?

From my perspective, anytime a company goes through a restructuring process, it's disruptive. As such, some relationships become strained and some relationships become stronger. That's a fact. Independent of this process, we live in a competitive world and need to earn our seat at the table each and every day.

Customers? No, I wouldn't say [the relationship was] damaged. But anytime someone goes into Chapter 11 it does raise concerns. So, we implemented weekly/monthly calls with top customers and partners. And throughout the process we've done what we said we were going to do. We over-communicated. And through each step of the process, we kept building confidence.

Employees? I can't give enough credit to our employees for how they handled restructuring. The teams were resilient, committed, and remained focused on customers -- great ambassadors. They didn't let things that they couldn't control get them down. [And they paid] a lot of attention to customer value.

To build on what I said, something we recognize and don't take lightly is that we have to reinforce the trust our customers and partners have given us every day. And it's measured by actions, not words. We don't take this for granted, and won't rest on our laurels. As we went through the debt-restructuring process, the silver lining was the realization of how committed the customer and partner community was. Internally, the teams didn't let themselves get too distracted. They didn't let things they couldn't control get them down.

Avaya's commitment to contact center is clear. How do you feel about UC?

We remain a leader in both, and UC remains a critical segment in our business. UC solutions remain critical for our customers, and even though the market is changing, there are areas of growth. Cloud is obvious, but also endpoint segments such as huddle rooms, and applications. Equinox Meetings Online is also in a growing market, and its native integration with a large installed base is a competitive advantage.

Tell me where Zang fits in your vision.

Zang is an innovative team that helps us develop cloud applications, such as Zang Spaces, which is being integrated into Equinox for adding collaboration features to our Web/video conferencing. The team is also focused on the expansion of the core technologies and how they will be deployed as we aggressively move more and more to the lower end of the UC market with cloud offerings.

Zang is also a cloud connectivity platform, which we've expanded internationally, and will accelerate our cloud efforts as it's our intention to also offer voice and messaging services to our customers -- some of them will prefer BYOC (bring your own carrier) but we are seeing demand for an end-to-end solution, including voice/SMS traffic. We plan additional investment into the platform to build out more synergies.

To capitalize on the opportunity with Zang, we're moving that team into the recently announced cloud business unit.

Hear more from Avaya at Enterprise Connect 2018, March 12 to 15, in Orlando, Fla. Register now

using the code NOJITTER to save an additional $200 off the Advanced Rate -- extended through this Friday, Jan. 19, or get a free Expo Plus pass.

Dave Michels is a contributing editor and analyst at TalkingPointz.

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