Avaya, a global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, plans to double its South African staff complement.
The company presently has a local staff of seven people and recently appointed Bridget Kelly, formerly of Business Connexion, as country manager.
According to Buddie Ceronie, VP for UK, Ireland and southern Africa, Avaya aims to improve its technical support and service delivery to its business partners and customers in the southern African region.
Ceronie says Avaya will maintain its indirect model of going to market through its business partners, which includes Dimension Data, Spescom and Business Connexion.
The company says it has no plans to open further offices in the region or the rest of the continent, and will continue to provide services from its local offices.
Ceronie projects there will be tremendous adoption of converged Internet Protocol (IP) networks in developed and developing markets. He notes that this will be good for the contact centre market as well as the general corporate networks market as companies begin to understand the benefits of migrating to IP-based networks.
"Other benefits that will encourage adoption are capabilities like modular messaging, fixed-mobile convergence and other mobility solutions."
Ceronie reveals that Avaya will soon bring an IP-based peer-to-peer telephony solution to market, that will primarily be targeted at the small and medium enterprise space.
"With regard to companies migrating to converged IP networks, Avaya saw 2005 as the inflection point and we see all the 400 million enterprise business telephone lines that are installed globally, gradually migrating to IP-based networks."
Increased revenue
This week the company released its results for its first fiscal quarter for 2006, reporting income from continuing operations of $71 million.
The company`s revenue for the first fiscal quarter of this year increased by 8.8% to $1.249 billion, compared to $1.148 billion for the corresponding period last year. This figure includes contribution from Tenovis, an enterprise communications systems and services company it acquired in November 2004.
Ceronie could not reveal how much the local operation contributed to earnings, but it is believed southern Africa was one of the biggest growth regions for Avaya, in terms of business, last year.
Avaya says its global communications systems revenue rose by 11.7% year-on-year and its global services by 5.8% in the period under review. It had operating income of $107 million, generated $106 million in operating cash flow and ended the quarter with $726 million in cash.
The company shipped its eight millionth IP line during this period, with shipments increasing by 16% compared to the same period last year.
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