Avaya grabs Vietnam to support regional momentum

This move is to support Avaya’s Asia-Pacific momentum and complement its strong channel partner-led go-market strategy. VIR’s Hoang Anh talked with Avaya Asean’s managing director Ray Teske about the company’s development strategy in Vietnam.

Why did you choose Vietnam?

Avaya products and solutions have been in Vietnam for nearly 18 years through our distributor Westcon and 37 other partners. However, there are three reasons for our full present investment in Vietnam this time. Firstly, although the world’s downturn and the high inflation, Vietnam still has bright points such as high growth and is on the way to recover with other countries in the region.

The IDC report predicts IT spending in Vietnam will grow by 19 per cent in 2012. Not only that, we see the government’s great commitment for investment in information and communication technologies (ICT) industry. The government pledged to invest $8.5 billion in the ICT sector over next 10 years according to the White Paper in Vietnam ICT Report 2011. It also hoped to attract $5 billion in foreign investments into the IT industry by 2015.

With the opening of new Vietnam office, we are following Avaya’s continued growth in Vietnam and the Asia Pacific region and illustrate Avaya’s commitment to the region. In specific, Vietnam is not our biggest market but fastest growing one in the region, with the current growth at 10 times within five years especially in enterprise telephony, internet protocol and contact centres. We still expect the growth in two digits in the future.

What are Avaya’s key strengths to compete with other competitors in the industry?

Avaya through its philosophy in the “Power of We” demonstrates how technology can help people collaborate more easily, allowing easier access to information across devices and platform-fostering greater productivity.

We have strength in a number of vertical sectors including government and telco sectors such as hospitality, healthcare and education but most notably in financial services which is traditionally an early adopter of new technology solutions. In Asia-Pacific, we are the market leader in call centre, voice response, enterprise messaging and audio conference with 46.1, 21.1, 23.8 and 32.3 per cent market shares, respectively. Currently, we account for 34 per cent enterprise telephony market share in Vietnam. Again, we target to continue to become the leader in business communication and collaboration systems and services in Vietnam.

With the Vietnam representative office, what will Avaya contribute to Vietnam’s ICT industry?

The investment is our strong commitment to Vietnam and we are in align with Vietnamese government’s initiatives to strengthen research capacity in ICT sector. Given that, 14 year relationship with TMA Solutions resulting in best supplier for outsourcing software development is an example. We have been working with local software outsourcing company TMA Solutions for several years to support the development and testing of a number of Avaya’s unified communications and contact centre solutions.

TMA Solutions was recently recognised at the Avaya Global Supplier Forum in Singapore as Best Supplier for Outsource Design Services. This award actually surprised companies in the world, meaning that Vietnam with skilled ICT talents stamps a bill to the world’s ICT outsourcing map.

In Vietnam, via 37 regional and local partners, we are providing the state-of-art solutions to all sectors of the economy to enable world class collaboration in this country. Avaya’s unique combination of communications applications, software and services helps companies simplify complex communications and integrate with technologies from other vendors, enabling customers to unlock value and potential from their network.
 
What is Avaya’s product portfolio for customers in Vietnam and which is the most important customer segment for Avaya Vietnam, large-scale companies or Small and middle-sized enterprises (SMEs)?

For large scale enterprises, we will focus on user applications and devices integration with business and social apps and infrastructure. Furthermore, the planned acquisition of Radvision, announced in March 2012, will create them compelling and differential solution designed to accelerate the adoption of video collaboration.

To SMEs that represent such a large proportion in Vietnam and are very active and have great potentials for future development, Avaya know that they may sacrifice a small portion to spend on IT to leverage the communications efficiency in business operations. But, there are many ways in which SMEs can maximise their return on suitable investment and develop an IT strategy that will unlock business value.

Avaya’ internal research shows savings for companies deploying Avaya’s universal collaboration solutions to be able to save up to 43 per cent in capital expenditures and 30 per cent in operation expenses against other solutions. Avaya’s one typical product for SMEs is Avaya internet protocol office platform which is built up from the ground up specifically for SMEs. It delivers the communications capabilities with the ability to grow from as small as a five-user single site to 1,000-user multisite organisation by the end of this year.