Avaya Holdings Corp. announced Chris McGugan has re-joined Avaya in a new role as Chief Technology Strategist. McGugan will lead Avaya’s technology strategy development to guide future investments. He will focus on assessing customer needs, market trends and how new and emerging technologies can drive value and improved customer experience as part of the digital transformation in communications that Avaya is leading. ††
In an industry undergoing a massive transformation, McGugan will help to ensure Avaya moves swiftly to deliver game-changing innovation to customers, and provide a path that enables customers to readily adopt new digital communications technologies and capabilities that optimize business performance.
“With his passion, energy, and market insights, Chris’s return to the company is a great win for Avaya, and for our customers,” said Jim Chirico, President and CEO, Avaya. “He brings deep experience in integrating new technologies to meet specific business objectives, which will help define our next steps as we continue to invest and lead the industry with transformative new technologies that bring real-world business benefits.”
With more than 25 years of experience in communications technology, McGugan is a proven leader who brings a wealth of contact center, cloud and IoT expertise in his return to Avaya. Most recently, he served as an operating executive with a major retailer, where he built out cloud and IoT operations to support strategic initiatives. In his previous tenure with Avaya, McGugan was Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology, and of Contact Center Solutions and Marketing. He has also held executive and management positions at Belkin, Cisco and Motorola/Symbol Technologies, in addition to several board advisory positions at technology companies around the globe.†
“Companies are just now beginning to understand how strategic communications technologies can benefit their business,” said Chris McGugan, Chief Technology Strategist, Avaya. “As we build our next-generation portfolio, it will be grounded in customer business cases, and combined with our deep communications expertise along with a path to modernization that leverages cloud and IoT, to take businesses to the next level of innovation.”
