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Friday, August 21, 2009
IBM vet Ali tries out new ventures at Avaya
MHT's Rodney Brown: App developers see opportunity in new iPhone
MHT's Galen Moore: Hiring trends and opportunities
Breaking down the MIT $100K
After 13 years doing just about everything at IT giant IBM Corp., Mohamad Ali has embarked on a new venture as the top local official at telecommunications equipment company Avaya Inc. The company provides business telephone, call center and other communications services to businesses.
Since joining Avaya (NYSE: AV) last month, Ali, who is the senior vice president for corporate development, has been splitting his time between Massachusetts and Avaya’s headquarters in Basking Ridge, N.J., getting to know the company’s products and strategy inside an out. As time progresses, he plans on using the unified communications technology his company sells to other corporations to cut their travel and conferencing costs to reduce his own shuttling up and down the East Coast. Despite the new job, he plans to continue serving on boards like those of smart-grid chip maker Ember Corp. as well as the planned Massachusetts IT Collaborative.
He recently spoke with reporter Jackie Noblett about his new role at Avaya.
Q: What is it about Avaya that was initially appealing to you?
A: In the consumer space, you’re seeing companies start up that allow you, for example, when you’re on the phone and you want to show someone a picture, you can do that. I think that over time what you’re going to see is you’ll be able to seamlessly share that experience with someone 3,000 miles away, and I think that will happen in the enterprise as well. When I met with the folks at Avaya, that was the vision that we shared: how do we enable that experience. They’re one of the most viable companies in this space.
Q: What exactly is your role at Avaya?
A: My role has three pieces. The first is mergers and acquisitions, and that’s effectively looking to find innovation outside the company. The second is the emerging product division, developing the innovation from the inside, and the third is strategic partnerships, where large companies do some sort of co-development work.
Q: What from your background at IBM translates to your new role at Avaya?
A: Before I was in software at IBM I worked in the hardware division, but a lot of what we are doing at Avaya is software. The data network itself is much more of a utility, but that allows you to build rich applications on top of the data, like click-to-talk and others.
Q: You were well known at IBM for your merger and acquisition skills, bringing local companies into the Big Blue fold. Boston has a lot of communication and networking startups, so do you see the company taking an interest in what’s going on in the area?
A: I’m already doing that, but I can’t talk about it.
Q: So you agree with the notion that Massachusetts has something to offer to companies like Avaya?
A: There’s a tremendous amount of development going on in this area, and it would behoove us to mine that innovation.
Q: Avaya is not known for its technical presence in Massachusetts. Do you see yourself helping Avaya play a larger role in the local technology community?
A: Part of what I would like to see happen is that we can continue the development of the Massachusetts innovation economy... In the personal communication space, Massachusetts has 200 mobile companies and the largest legacy wired communication firms, so somehow Avaya should be able to collaborate in those areas where we have expertise. By my work in the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and the IT Collaborative, just through my participation, I think you’ll see Avaya come up more and more.
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