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As a leading vendor that supplies infrastructure and tools to help customers address business requirements around voice, data and unified communications, Avaya sees first-hand the biggest challenges companies are facing. But it also knows how to address them.
In this information packed podcast, we caught up with Steven Bandrowczak, Vice President of Global Accounts at Avaya, to get his thoughts on what he sees as the most vexing IT challenges of the day.
3 Biggest Challenges Facing IT
Without hesitation, Bandrowczak cites the bring your own device phenomenon as the # 1 trend, “in every industry, every size segment, every geography.” IT is no longer the final arbiter of what technology will be deployed, when and to whom. IT now has to be able to deliver services to whatever device their users may choose to employ – and to wherever they may be.
Which leads to a second phenomenon, that of the enterprise as the on-ramp and off-ramp to major consumer applications that are now becoming mainstream as part of business solutions. Those apps include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype, all of which are seeing increased use in businesses.
Third is the expectation of fast service delivery. “Both customers and internal end users are now looking for a time to service that is unprecedented in our history,” he says. Whereas once a CIO might tell you it’ll take 2 to 3 weeks to turn up a new user’s network profile and email account, that won’t cut it in an era when a user can get a Gmail account in mere minutes.
Better Infrastructure Faster
Addressing these challenges starts with building network infrastructure that can deliver services to end users no matter where they are, whether it’s a hotel in Thailand or a Starbucks in New York City. That’s a big shift from network architectures of the past, where you always knew where the origin and destination points were. Avaya addresses the issue in part with its Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA), which enables IT to quickly spin up virtual connections and paths to wherever their end customers might be.
What’s more, there’s no telling exactly what sorts of data will be going over these connections, whether a simple email or a massive video file – even to a smart phone. “So we have to build networks that are analogous to the carriers of 10 years ago,” Bandrowczak says. “They were building [networks] that that allowed them to scale and handle these massive applications. Carousel and Avaya together are providing carrier-grade network solutions into the enterprise.”
Addressing the Cloud
Cloud technology – whether private, public or hybrid – is also critical to meeting today’s IT challenges, and to incorporating social media like Facebook and Twitter. Customers are increasingly turning to desktop virtualization as a way to deliver a kind of private cloud service, where all applications are housed in the data center and delivered to the user’s device of choice. While the maturity level varies, “it’s absolutely an area we’re seeing our customers move to,” he says.
At the same time, many are moving to virtual applications to help address challenges such as social media. Companies increasingly want to be proactive about responding to what customers are saying about them on sites like Facebook and Twitter – especially the negative comments that can quickly do damage to a brand if the company fails to respond.
“Together with Carousel, we have the ability to go look for those things that are hurting company’s brands…then have cloud applications move them to your help desk, to your contact center [so you can] proactively respond,” Bandrowczak says. In essence, the tools turn social media sites into another avenue for customers into your contact center.
Listen to our podcast with Bandrowczak to get even more insight into the challenges facing businesses today and ideas on how Avaya and Carousel can help you not only address the top phenomenon facing IT, but turn them to your advantage.
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