by Doug Watt
"Canada is a very large geography; you need a program that will allow you to leverage the channel partners," says Renzo Dipasquale, director of channels at Avaya.
"So now you have a channel army that understands and sells the value proposition of Avaya plus their value-added services and solutions in the marketplace, and it just makes a stronger value proposition for customers."
Just before Nortel was bought out in 2009, local tech firm Combat Networks became a partner with Avaya. Combat exclusively distributes network products from Avaya, focusing on telecommunications and integration for voice and data communications.
Combat enjoyed 36-per-cent growth year-over-year in 2010 and a 30-per-cent rise in head count. Combat vice-president Adam DaCosta expects to beat those growth numbers in 2011.
"What really helped accelerate us was that our competitors, Bell and Telus, no longer had that leverage over Nortel, what with a big U.S. company coming in and buying up all of Nortel's product," says Mr. DaCosta.
Software product creator Macadamian, which counts Avaya as a client, posted a 62-per-cent increase in revenue for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2011, capping seven quarters of successive growth.
"We were working with Nortel pre-bankruptcy and our relationship with Avaya has changed because we're now also doing the work that they purchased from Nortel," says Macadamian president Frédéric Boulanger. "(Avaya) having local leadership with what I'd call a significant footprint in Ottawa, it's certainly opening up some opportunities for us."
Avaya has more than 130 channel partners in Canada, authorized and certified to sell the company's array of products.
"Last year we grew our channel business nine per cent year-over-year in Canada," says Mr. Dipasquale.
"Our fastest growing segment of the market is the value-added reseller, the channel business," he adds. "Partners like Combat were beneficiaries of that - they grew their business significantly as well."
Combat was founded in 2001, heavily tied to Nortel Networks. The company's president and CEO, Rob Finucan, worked for Nortel and Combat began its life as a reseller of Nortel products.
"The tech bubble was bursting, but Nortel still had a very large grasp in terms of enterprise portfolios," Mr. DaCosta recalls. Like many resellers in Ottawa, Combat started with the federal government: the RCMP and the Department of National Defence were among its first clients.
As Nortel's slow decline began, Combat continued to invest in Nortel products. "We believed that even if Nortel was to completely go away there would still be a seven- to eight-year follow of transition from the Nortel portfolio," says Mr. DaCosta.
Current challenges for Combat include maintaining certifications and finding qualified engineers. "The more products we bring on, the more time and effort I have to spend in educating and certifying my staff," says Mr. DaCosta, who estimates that it costs around $200,000 to train an engineer and bring them up to speed for certification on a particular product. To maintain its platinum status with Avaya, Combat must meet annual revenue targets and maintain certification on its engineers.
For Combat and Macadamian, the issues surrounding Nortel are in the past.
"It was bad management," says Mr. DaCosta. "If you look at the product portfolio that we continue to service and support, some of these products have 10-year total cost of ownership and 10-year implementations and you're still able to upgrade that product and bring it up to speed with the latest technologies. Very few companies in this space today can promote that."
Says Mr. Boulanger: "It's not 2000 anymore. Ottawa has some rebuilding to do and we need to find our new voice."
