At this year’s GITEX Technology Week, global tech player Avaya will showcase how its innovative solutions can help organisations keep up with changing customer expectations. The company will demonstrate the power of the composable enterprise and how its solutions can accelerate digital transformation.
We caught up with Avaya International president Nidal Abou-Ltaif to know more about the company’s GITEX participation and vision for a digital future.
What are the key highlights of your participation at this year’s GITEX?
We’re going into GITEX 2021 at an incredibly exciting time. After seeing the world struggle with the difficulties of the pandemic for the last 18 months, we’re finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The world is returning to normal; GITEX will be completely in-person again, and international travel is opening up.
But what’s even more exciting is the transformation that’s currently taking place across almost every business sector. The pandemic showed us there is no one-size fits all model for the new ways of delivering experiences, and enterprises realise that their customers and employees expect personalised experiences, wherever they are, and however they’re choosing to interact.
Governments and businesses are waking up to this fact – the pandemic accelerated these customer and employee demands, particularly on the digital front, and now there’s this huge transformation agenda taking place. This is very obvious at the regional level, where you have governments setting out their visions for a post-pandemic world, and the private sector is following. We see the UAE aiming to build the best and most dynamic economy in the world, with significant investments being made in upskilling young talent and creating a nation of coders. Likewise, we see Saudi Arabia investing $1.2 billion in technology initiatives.
As a technology leader, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be in this region.
And at GITEX 2021, we’re essentially answering the question of how businesses can keep up with all of this change. We recognise the challenges and opportunities within the world, and we understand that delivering unforgettably positive experiences is among the most powerful differentiators for businesses today.
So we’ll be showing that, to deliver those experiences, a ‘composable’ approach is needed. What do we mean by composable? Well, to keep up with these ever-changing customer expectations, business providing great experiences can’t be satisfied with monolithic, apps in a cloud world. Instead, they need solutions that can be composed, as needed, regardless of whether the application sits on-prem or in the cloud.
We’re also showcasing the composable solutions that enterprises need to succeed in this new world – with Avaya OneCloud, our AI-powered experience platform at their core, and several Experience Builders using them to show how businesses can meet the API economy head-on.
And in line with the aspirations of the UAE to create a tech-savvy workforce – and our own dedication towards growing and nurturing talent in the region – we’ve partnered with the GITEX High Flyer initiative. This is one of the largest and most ambitious technologies internship programmes to be launched in the region, and we’re providing support to the initiative by empowering participants with our strong legacy of innovation and communications expertise, and taking on five winning students for internships at the end of the programme.
Like I said, there’s a lot happening, and it’s exciting.
What differentiates Avaya’s participation this year as compared to previous years?
Every year, GITEX becomes a platform for us with which to announce strategic initiatives, stage global technology launches, and really connect with our customers on the challenges they’re facing and how we can solve them. This year will be no different – it’s just the content of our conversations with customers continues to evolve.
Today, we fully expect to be talking about ‘Total Experience’, encompassing an entire customer journey from web enquiry to after-sales support and beyond, with our customers. When today’s consumers connect with organisations, they want experiences that are simple and seamless. If the company that they are counting on cannot provide them with what they need, these customers will go find another company that can. And the only way to satisfy these customers is by addressing the ‘Total Experience’ and composing personalised customer journeys for them.
And of course we’ll show just how to do that with the Avaya OneCloud solutions we’ll have on stand.
Why are tech shows such as GITEX important despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic? What does this global tech event mean for your company?
GITEX remains one of our top strategic launchpads for new technology launches, and we place a lot of value on the customer engagement we gain from it.
Last year, it’s fair to say we missed meeting a lot of our customers in-person, but we overcame the challenge through technology, conducting a live broadcast to over 100 cities across the world.
This year, we can certainly say that the hybrid model is here to stay. We’re incredibly excited to be welcoming a large number of international customers to our stand, but we’ll also be taking GITEX to the world with a live broadcast from the show floor. And it’ll be bigger, better and more relevant to our customers than ever before.
Which technologies should organisations focus on to remain competitive in the hybrid era?
We know that consumer and employee demands are constantly changing. And, despite the extremely positive environment we find ourselves in, we know that the current situation can still be fluid. So for a business, it can be difficult to keep pace and be flexible – especially if you’re using older technology that prevents you from quickly rolling out new services.
The approach we’re proposing with Avaya OneCloud means embracing agile, services-based applications with large ecosystems that enable capabilities to be quickly composed as and when needed. And the composability of the technology is key – it’s no longer good enough to say that a deployment will take six months. You need to be able to deploy new technologies and capabilities within hours.
How is Avaya enabling regional organisations to embrace a bold digital future?
A bright light has been shone on the need for agility and adaptability. Many organisations with inflexible applications have struggled to respond as quickly as necessary to the new changes and demands that have been placed on them over the last 18 months. And consumers have grown accustomed to contactless and self-service, as well as virtual engagement. Today, only the companies that can meet these demands will thrive.
With Avaya OneCloud, we’re providing the flexibility and speed to value that organisations need to succeed in this new world. It’s helping organisations realise the power and potential of an API-based model and create the composable enterprise, with features that can be composed in minutes with modular capabilities. It also provides the AI capabilities that can offer human-like, automated support that speeds responsiveness. And it delivers evolved workstream collaboration that supports the composable enterprise while enabling organisations to move at the speed of their customers and employees.
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