Alan Masarek Discusses Avaya’s Future

I recently had the opportunity to interview Avaya CEO Alan Masarek to discuss his plans for Avaya, the concept of “Innovation Without Disruption,” and Avaya’s future. I’ve known Masarek for several years and had many interactions with him when he was CEO of Vonage. I know him to be open and transparent, as well as thoughtful and forward-thinking. 

During our interview, I posed questions from the Avaya customer and channel partner point of view, asking Masarek how he is reassuring customers and partners and helping them to be successful. We also discussed Avaya’s short-term and long-term roadmap, as well as how Avaya is reacting to the multitude of competitive pressures. 

Key takeaways from this interview include:

• “Innovation without disruption,” along with Avaya’s ability to sell both on-premises solutions and full multi-tenanted public cloud UCaaS and CCaaS offerings, enable Avaya’s large customer base to move to the cloud at their own pace.
• Avaya is providing value to customers while transparently sharing its roadmap and reliably delivering on what it promises in a trust environment.
• The Avaya Experience Platform, a converged agent and employee solution, is Avaya’s “north star” and the “heart, lung, and liver” of its customer experience solution. 
• Avaya is trying to be more focused and is end of lifing certain products so it can concentrate on the go-forward products, notably its Experience Platform.
• The company is listening to its customers and the voice of the customer is coming through loud and clear, helping to drive Avaya’s roadmap.  
• Avaya still has a lot of work to do.