Avaya's revised go-to-market strategy for Aura Communications Manager could have potentially silenced the vendor's voice in the very market where it wants to make most noise, providing an opportunity for IP Netix to turn up the volume as a staunch Avaya services partner, says Managing Director Kevin Boyer.
The impact of IP Netix's role in Avaya's mid-market campaign is considerable and draws on Boyer's in-depth knowledge of Avaya systems and the channel, all qualities that secured him a Comms National Award in the Best Installer/Maintainer category this year. "I identified a gap in the marketing strategy for the Avaya Aura Communications Manager," he commented. "Even major resellers find it hard to justify the costs of having staff and accreditations to install and maintain Aura.
"At the same time Avaya adopted a channel only sales and maintenance policy for the UK, downsizing and making engineering staff redundant. Consequently there was a gap between Avaya's sales drive for Aura through partners and the channel's ability to offer consultancy, installation and service contracts for such a sophisticated system. I established IP Netix to fill this gap and the business has been a year-on-year success. As the mid-market is evolving into the bottom end of the enterprise market, we have brought our enterprise delivery skills into that space which has been a great success."
While Avaya's channel revamp went against the grain of its mid-market ambitions it paved the way for IP Netix to become a highly valued partner closely aligned to the vendor's roadmap. Boyer has expanded the company's portfolio to mirror Avaya's kit bag, and he is currently embarking - with much determination - on a mission to address the fast growing mid-market sector with Avaya's IP Office and ACCS products. Boyer has also added data networking (Fabric) skills, video conferencing and workforce optimisation to the IP Netix portfolio, enabling the company to deliver specialist services across the entire Avaya range for business partners.
IP Netix now manages over 300,000 endpoints across multiple platforms in six continents. The business has grown to currently employ 22 people, with engineering teams working on projects that range from single site deployments to fully hosted Avaya solutions with over 20,000 endpoints. "For us to be successful we need our channel business partners to be successful," added Boyer. "Our channel approach is based on partnership and strategic engagement. Through partnership and early engagement we can bring additional value by helping to qualify, shape, develop and ultimately close opportunities."
Boyer hasn't always been working in the comms sector. He undertook a career change from materials handling equipment for Rollertruck with a first foray into the telecoms sector as a sales consultant with Telephone Rentals in 1997. He then joined Shipton Communications selling SDX systems when ISDN2 to the desk was first introduced. And moved to Pink Telecom where he spent over ten years, latterly operating as Commercial Development Manager. In 2006 Boyer left Pink and started his first successful business, Phase Telecom. As a specialist in consultancy for the Symbian mobile operating system, Boyer worked in particular on the VoIP integration for Symbian.
With IP Netix he has built a multi-million pound company without venture capital or other external investments. Since conception, IP Netix has adopted a 100 per cent channel only sales strategy, an approach that has been endorsed by Avaya UK which recommends the company to the business reseller community as a 'preferred' services partner. "Feedback suggests that our approach is increasingly important to business partners," said Boyer. "Many have suffered negative experiences having introduced a services partner to the end customer only to lose secondary business (support contracts, upgrades etc) to the partner who contracted the end user directly. Therefore, we remain diligent and unwavering in our indirect approach."
Boyer is carefully planning to double the size of the business and recruit more engineering resources in specialist areas. He has already deployed a full management structure including the addition of subject matter experts. IP Netix is also gearing up to move to larger premises that will house a state of the art Avaya portfolio demonstration suite exclusively for the use of partners. "I started IP Netix in the middle of the UK's largest recession," stated Boyer. "At the time people told me I was mad, but it was the best decision I ever made."•