Avaya Holdings announced enhancements to its Edge Channel Partner Program as part of the strategy to fuel its channel partner growth.
The enhancements will improve Avaya channel partners’ ability to grow by stimulating sales of cloud solutions, leveraging a simplified incentive structure and more tailored benefits with an improved enablement model.
The company said the new channel program will expand Avaya channel partner community across multiple business types, including enterprise VARs, mid-market and small-medium businesses, system integrators and more.
“Some vendor programs leave channels confused with complex structures and incentive programs which can lead to misaligned sales behavior and issues in partner profitability,” Tim Banting, principal analyst at GlobalData, said.
The revised Avaya Edge channel program aims to enable growth regardless of the size or unique partner business model.
Avaya has signed 12 deals over $5 million and 117 deals over $1 million during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018.
Avaya said its fourth quarter revenue was $735 million, $43 million higher than the third quarter of 2018, and $55 million lower than the fourth quarter of 2017. Avaya’s gross margin for the fourth quarter was 53.1 percent vs 50.9 percent in the third quarter and 62.8 percent in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017.
Avaya has already made significant progress in growing channel partner business over the past year. The number of channel partners eligible for rebates increased by 281 percent between 2017 and 2018. The number of partners with more than 10 percent growth rose by 159 percent.
“Avaya Edge is now the only channel program in the industry to provide equal growth opportunities to partners of any size. Avaya has grown its public cloud seats 300 percent in the past year,” said Dino Di Palma, Avaya President, Americas Sales and Global Accounts.
Avaya will provide training, workshops and information on the Edge Partner Program at its upcoming annual user group conference from January 20 – 23.
Avaya CEO Jim Chirico and his executive team will present the company’s FY19 vision and channel strategy at Avaya ENGAGE, on January 21.
Rajani Baburajan
