Avaya appoints former channel boss to UK&I MD role

Avaya has appointed its former European channel head as its latest UK and Ireland managing director as it looks to increase its move into the cloud.

Steve Joyner steps into the managing director role after most recently running the channel in Europe and has a CV that includes plenty of roles working with partners.

He has been at Avaya since 2009, when the firm acquired Nortel and has been credited in his last position for improving the firm's various channel programmes and expanding its partner base across Europe.

Joyner's priority in his new role will be the accelerate the move towards becoming a cloud-centric comms player and giving the business more scope for future expansion.

“Steve’s appointment comes at an exciting time for Avaya with our transition to cloud and the strategic partnership with RingCentral and introduction of Avaya Cloud Office. The company is poised to offer a real competitive advantage by providing our customers with a seamless journey to cloud communications. With his extensive industry experience, Steve will be instrumental in delivering our global cloud-first strategy in the region," said Ronald Rubens, vice president, Europe, Avaya.

In response, Joyner said that it was an important time to be stepping into the UK&I managing director role and he would be looking to the channel to help deliver growth.

"The company has continued to lead the market in customer and employee experience in recent years and we’re ready to go even further in 2020. I look forward to working with the team here to drive growth and bring even more value to our partners and customers in the UK and Ireland with our full suite of cloud-first solutions," he said.

At the close of last year MicroScope canvassed the industry for predictions and Rick Hawkes, engineering manager at Avaya, focused heavily on the prospects for those partners that could adopt emerging technologies, like 5G and AI, and combine them with the cloud.

“There is a huge opportunity for channel partners to retain and grow high-margin businesses by embracing these new technologies and integrating them with cloud platforms, which are set to replace the traditional on-premise services that they have been offering as of late. Communications vendors offer equally consumable services as the likes of Netflix or Amazon Prime, and if partners wish to drive revenue growth, they must follow suit and become the ‘content providers’ that create the value or ‘pull’ needed for customers to be attracted to the platform. Vendors will therefore need their partners more than ever," he stated.