Monday Morning Impact – January 9

Avaya Partners with China’s Tencent Cloud to Offer Cloud-Based Services

Avaya has signed a strategic agreement with Tencent Cloud, a leading global cloud service provider, to help enterprise customers launch cloud-based communications services. The two companies will create a communications cloud ecosystem, combining Avaya’s strengths in contact center and unified communications solutions and services with Tencent’s social communications and broadcast technologies.

The move follows the announcement in March that the Tencent QQ instant messaging application is being integrated with Avaya’s contact center technologies to help companies deliver omnichannel customer experience.

As part of the agreement, Tencent and Avaya will also collaborate on disaster recovery efforts with Avaya providing safety strategies and mechanisms for cloud data centers, helping enterprises avoid IT deployment risks and safeguard data security. Tencent Cloud will offer disaster recovery mechanisms with remote disaster recovery capabilities.

Channel Impact^®
This agreement with Tencent Cloud is an essential part of Avaya’s strategy in China. As digital transformation accelerates, Avaya aims to innovate with more enterprises and partners, build an open and healthy cloud communications ecosystem.

Infoblox Launches Technology Alliance Partner Program

Infoblox Inc., the Silicon Valley-based network control company, has rolled out its new Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) Program, which is intended to help foster an ecosystem of technology partnerships to optimize network automation and better defend against cyber threats. The ecosystem approach helps enable integration with other cloud, network, and security solution partners for interoperability with Infoblox software to provide actionable insights that mutually benefit partners and customers.

“Today’s networks are becoming increasingly complex and use diverse deployment architectures including physical, virtual, and cloud,” said Kanaiya Vasani, vice president of corporate and business development, Infoblox. “At the same time, cybercriminals exploit network infrastructure, especially DNS, to spread malware and exfiltrate data. With the TAP Program, we’re building an ecosystem to provide the insight, control, and security that customers need to optimize and protect their networks.”

More than 30 technology partners have already signed up for the program and are participating in joint efforts with Infoblox.

Channel Impact^®
Technology alliance programs, such as this one, are often instrumental in assisting disparate organizations in piecing together comprehensive solutions that meet the business needs of their customers.

Unisys Appoints New Executives for Fed Cloud and Application Services

Unisys Corporation has announced the addition of two industry leaders to drive its Federal portfolio for cloud and infrastructure solutions and application services.

Gary Wang has joined Unisys Federal as vice president, cloud and infrastructure services, and will manage the company’s portfolio of cloud-related products and services for Unisys’ federal government clients. Wang most recently served as chief technology officer, cybersecurity and biometrics at IBM, where he led the cybersecurity and biometrics solution portfolio and service solution transformation. Prior to that, he held various senior executive roles at Lockheed Martin, where he was responsible for winning and delivering several large cloud and infrastructure contracts.

Meanwhile, Peter O’Donoghue has joined the company as vice president, applications services, Unisys Federal, and will perform a similar role managing the organization’s application modernization initiatives. O’Donoghue comes to Unisys from CSRA, where he served as vice president of solutions and alliances and as chief technology officer of the company’s civilian agencies business unit. In these roles, he led the company’s technical strategy to spur innovation and achieve transformational business growth by embracing next-generation technologies. He previously held several technical executive delivery and sales leadership roles at CSC in the US and Australia.

Wang and O’Donoghue will each report to Venkatapathi “PV” Puvvada, president of Unisys Federal, and will serve as key members of the Unisys Federal senior leadership team.

Channel Impact^®
Both executives are key acquisitions and well known in the industry.