IAUG facilitates interaction with users worldwide, plays an advocacy role in Avaya

New chapter chaired by Ali Sajwani, one of the region's leading CIOs

Dubai, UAE, 12 May 2015 - The International Avaya Users Group (IAUG), has announced today the launch of its Middle East, Africa and India Chapter for the region in presence to more than 200 of Avaya customers from across the region. The IAUG MEA & India chapter will consist of organizations across this region that use Avaya solutions and services, and will serve as the primary resource for advocacy within AVAYA, education, networking and support of the global Avaya community of customers and users.

Ali Sajwani, CIO of Emirates NBD and president of the newly formed IAUG MEA & India Chapter, said: "Technology conversations across the world, focus on the impact of four dimensions on businesses: mobile, social, analytics and cloud. The IAUG presents the opportunity for us, Avaya users, to be part of a journey that Avaya is taking to deliver effortless engagement solutions that address these dimensions."

Along with being a strong advocacy platform for Avaya users, the IAUG MEA and India chapter members will also benefit from increased education and training on all areas of communication technologies, access to a wide network of regional and global Avaya users to share solutions and solve common problems, as well as a direct access to various Avaya support programs.

Nidal Abou-ltaif, President, Avaya Global Growth Markets, said: "The IAUG is a substantial component of our commitment to engage with our customers. By supporting the IAUG launch, we are acknowledging the tremendous disruptive transformation our customers are going through. Our objective is to ensure that Avaya users have a strong advocacy platform within our organization, so we, in turn, continue being relevant to their business and their growth journey."

Sajwani ended saying:"We cannot have enough of technology vendors who are willing to listen, engage, react and deliver on the ambitions and visions of the region's enterprises. In fact, we don't expect less. It demystifies the vendor, demonstrates its humility and its willingness to roll up its sleeves, face up to the challenge and the transformation, and go to work on solutions that make a true difference.  We want to move towards becoming much stronger in the world of digitization; I also want to ensure that my community has reliable, consistent experience across all channels, from electronic to traditional.

As the leader of the IAUG regional Chapter, my responsibility is to make sure that positive change happens, and facilitate the creation of an environment that fosters relevant innovation."

"IAUG is excited to partner with Avaya to launch this expansion," said IAUG's Executive Director, Victor Bohnert.  "Giving a voice to the Avaya customers in this rapidly growing region is one of our top priorities.  With support from Avaya and leadership from customers in the region, we will be giving both Avaya and their customers a competitive advantage."

Read Mr. Ali Sajwani's blog "Avaya's Crowd-sourced innovation model with the IAUG"

Established in 2010, the International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) combines the earlier Avaya and heritage Nortel user groups into one of the world's largest international organizations for communications technology professionals. As the forum for the global Avaya customer community, IAUG provides a voice and resource for Avaya customers everywhere. For more information visit www.iaug.org. 

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About Avaya
Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premise and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Development Platform enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage.  Avaya's fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information, visit www.avaya.com

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© Press Release 2015