“GITEX Technology Week is an exceptional event and we are always eager to participate in it. But this year we have a surprise for our customers and partners; we will broadcast our activities directly to almost 150 cities around the world, so that those who cannot attend are able to experience our presence virtually. It’s the perfect opportunity to find out about the latest technical solutions we have developed to enable business sustainability and the globalization of work.”
With this message, the president of Avaya in its international markets (EMEA & APAC), Nidal Abou-Ltaif kicks off the company’s participation at the annual GITEX event, which organizers say is the only global in-person tech event of the year. Abou-Ltaif adds that Avaya is stronger than ever and is ready to deal with the challenges the future holds, based on its growing capacity for cloud-based innovation and the confidence that its customers have shown in the company.
Earlier this month, Avaya posted its financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full financial year. Revenue for the quarter was $755 million, $35 million up from the previous quarter, and $31 million up from the year-ago period. This is the second quarter in row in which the company has posted year-over-year growth. Cloud, Alliance Partners and Subscription (what the company calls CAPS) revenue for the full year amounted to 26% of total earnings, compared to 15% in the previous fiscal year. And despite the pandemic, Avaya won over 1,500 new customers globally in its last quarter alone, recording a 50% increase from Q3.
The company’s revenue from Software and Services was 88%, while recurring revenue was 63% - both solid indicators of the company’s success in transforming its business, Abou-Ltaif says.
“This metric is important because it represents how far our business has come as a cloud and SaaS company, and is indicative of our transformation. It shows that we are on the right path, but it also further demonstrates the relevance of our technology and solutions in today’s market,” he explains.
To find out more about Avaya’s impressive fiscal year, and what visitors to GITEX can expect to see from the company, we sat down with Abou-Ltaif for his thoughts. Here’s what he said.
You are taking part in GITEX this year amid great global challenges. What is the purpose of your participation and how do you evaluate the decision to hold this event? And what is its impact on your business relationships?
It goes without saying that difficulties may sometimes impose new patterns and models of business and marketing on companies. And that includes the way we as an industry participate in exhibitions, conferences and other events. But the important thing is that, just as our partners and customers are always present, we will also be there to provide support and achieve success. We have full confidence in the decision of the Dubai World Trade Center to organize GITEX this year through a set of policies that allows social distancing while still enabling the success of the event. We have complete faith that the public safety policies being undertaken by the exhibition management this year allow for the safe participation of our employees, partners, customers and visitors.
GITEX for Avaya is a strategic platform for kick starting its strategy and, therefore, its go-to-market for the year. What are you doing to overcome the travel restrictions that, otherwise, would have seen hundreds of your customers from around the world visit your stand?
Year on year, we’ve hosted customers and partners at GITEX, from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region. Early on, we recognized that this will be a challenge this year, so we got ready to take Avaya at GITEX live to more than 150 cities and hundreds of our customers around the world, through a daily live broadcast. I am excited to have been able to mobilize my team and our partners to deliver on this mammoth initiative. It’s going to be our greatest show.
What will some of Avaya’s highlights be at the show?
Over the past two decades, we’ve used GITEX as a platform to demonstrate our commitment to addressing the economic, technological and social challenges of the day with solutions that meet the vast ambitions of our global customer base. This year, we composed solutions that help our customers achieve business sustainability, meet the challenges of the shift to work from anywhere, and more importantly, deliver on the overarching demand of an accelerated path to digital transformation.
We’re highlighting a cloud-based framework to deliver incredible customer and employee experiences in the ‘work-from-anywhere’ world, which has emerged over the course of the year. Our solutions support the creation of the digital workplace and future customer experience center through core capabilities combined with one of the industry’s richest ecosystems. Based on Avaya OneCloud, these technologies enable organizations to ‘compose’ solutions – using different elements to deliver desired outcomes – to create multiexperiences for employees and customers that are just as meaningful in the digital realm as they are in person.
Avaya OneCloud is a comprehensive multi-cloud portfolio and open application ecosystem, through which organizations can make every experience matter for the digital worker and customer.
UAE Only – What role does Avaya play in the ambitions of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates? How is this going to come to life at GITEX?
Along with having developed itself into a global business, technology, educational and research hub at an accelerated pace, Dubai is also set to be the remote working capital of the world through its newly launched Virtual Working Program. This is already garnering a fantastic response from workers around the world; a recent global poll run by Avaya showed that, for almost 22% of workers, Dubai would be the first choice if they could work from anywhere.
At GITEX, and with our Avaya OneCloud framework, we’re orchestrating collaboration and customer experience technologies that meets these ambitions, enabling a new world of healthcare, education, commerce and government services. Supported by artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning and analytics, the world of work of every student, patient, doctor and customer service agent is becoming more intuitive, more personalized and more secure than ever before.
