Meet the network integrator that took Hillsong to Avaya

With AGC Networks Australia country manager Tony Heywood.

What network product and services do you specialise in?

Avaya unified communications and contact centre, Avaya networking solutions, Avaya Scopia video solutions, Genesys hosted contact centre and Palo Alto networks enterprise security platform with Traps and Autofocus.

When did your company first get involved in this area?

AGC started in Australia in 2004 as a joint venture between Avaya and Tata. Our history is based on customer engagement. The security focus emerged in recent years when we kept identifying poorly implemented security in voice, video and contact centre environments.

What are your networking credentials?

In ANZ, AGC is the most certified Avaya platinum partner across all six pillars of its technology. Palo Alto Networks continues to grow in strength and relevance in the business. Being fully qualified from a design perspective, AGC continues to invest in certifications in Traps and Autofocus. With Genesys, AGC runs its global practice from New Zealand.

Heard about any cool networking developments recently?

Customers continue to be interested in hybrid and hosted models rather than pure cloud plays. The most aggressive revenue growth opportunities we’re experiencing are with Avaya networking technologies. In the past 23 months we have replaced incumbent vendors based on Avaya’s software-defined networking play.

Can you tell us about a recent networking deployment?

We replaced a long-time Cisco Nexus core network with Avaya SDN Fx at the Hillsong campus in Sydney.

What is driving customers’ networking projects?

Increasingly it is about having the infrastructure to support IoT and associated applications at wire speed.

Networking is...?

Networking is great if it is invisible (doesn't fail) and divisible by application.