Avaya Explains Why They've Declared Bankruptcy (networkworld.com) 68
Friday Avaya's Corporate Treasurer explained why they're filing for a chapter 11 "restructuring." After examining their debt, "we decided it was a critical next step in our transformation from a hardware company to a software and services company and the best path forward for our customers, partners and employees."
skidv writes:
ZDNet breaks down the deal... "Avaya noted that its foreign affiliates aren't included in the filing and will operate as normal. Avaya said the $725 million in debtor-in-possession financing, via Citibank, is enough to minimize disruption and continue business operations." Not surprising, Avaya has canceled the planned IPO.
PC World reports that Avaya "emerged from Lucent Technologies in 2000 with a focus on phone switches, enterprise networking gear, and call-center systems. But with the shift toward mobile phones and cloud-based tools for communication, and a tight market for enterprise network equipment, the company has been changing its focus... Like much of the networking and collaboration industry, Avaya is looking toward software-defined networking, IoT, and cloud-based platforms that work on many different devices and the web."
PC World reports that Avaya "emerged from Lucent Technologies in 2000 with a focus on phone switches, enterprise networking gear, and call-center systems. But with the shift toward mobile phones and cloud-based tools for communication, and a tight market for enterprise network equipment, the company has been changing its focus... Like much of the networking and collaboration industry, Avaya is looking toward software-defined networking, IoT, and cloud-based platforms that work on many different devices and the web."
Carly Fiorina bashing (Score:1)
Coming 3.. 2.. 1..
But really, telecom equipment is no longer a great industry to be in.
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The ONLY industry that's great to be in is social media. If there ain't an app involved, and you don't have a billion users, you're going to be super poor extra soon.
"OK, everybody who thinks this has a lifespan more than 5 years or so raise their hands."
"Yes, Mr. Zuckerborg, we understand your take on this, anybody else?"
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Oh look it's another Facebook denier. Don't bother telling me you don't use Facebook. Here's the thing you're you're forgetting. Women are spawning more children every day. You're just getting older every day. All of those children will be on Facebook. And you will be dead.
I don't use Facebook. (Score:2)
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Those stupid gossipy idiots are the people who pay for your salary, assuming you even have a job, if not, they pay tax that pays your welfare checks.
Wrap your brain around the network effect. Everybody is on Facebook because everybody is on Facebook.
If you want to be nobody, that's fine, just don't tell everybody you hate their stupid guts, because they might vote to eliminate your livelihood or, depending on how much of a fucking asshole you are, just come to kill you.
Jesus. Are you a fucking FB shareholder?
If so, just say so.
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Hardware in general, in the West, is career suicide, personal hara-kiri. I feel super bad for the kids that are going to university in EE here in Montreal. What are they expecting to achieve by this?
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It sure is for China.
Avaya has been making horrible equipment, especially for IP phones. If you want to make equipment that's closed source, closed to literally everything, require purchasing licenses just to add an extra phone and is incompatible with everything (Left overs from the Nortel era), what do you expect? They are still popular in the used phone system market, since they work good enough, but you no longer have support for it, other than your phone guy. Want to add a phone? What a big headache...
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It sure is for China.
Avaya has been making horrible equipment, especially for IP phones. If you want to make equipment that's closed source, closed to literally everything, require purchasing licenses just to add an extra phone and is incompatible with everything (Left overs from the Nortel era), what do you expect? They are still popular in the used phone system market, since they work good enough, but you no longer have support for it, other than your phone guy. Want to add a phone? What a big headache... Their much touted scalability is quite a sham when it requires a team of people just to add phones.
Meanwhile, I bought my office Yealink IP phones and they work great and literally compatible with everything, SIP (of course), including adding address books, supports VPN connections and very easy to manage. They also look great, sound great and the color touch screen is a big plus. They're not exactly cheap either. Yealink also doesn't handcuff me with licensing, restrictions and fees. Works great with Asterisk and I can add as many damn phones as I please.
People still need these phones, they're not going away any time soon, unless cellphones start linking your business phone extension, but a lot of people don't like doing that either. Much of the telecomms business moved onto VOIP providers, IP phones that work and your local IT support.
Many companies are moving towards software phones that support chat, voice, and video conferencing (i.e. Skype for Business) for office workers. That way you can work from another desk, at home, etc. while having the same phone number. Physical phones and phone systems are no longer being invested in.
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I haven't looked at the Yealink IP phone, but I do see advertisements for them from my telecom vendors. We settled on Polycom phones a while back. We upgraded to SoundPoint IP 650s and have been very happy. They are sufficiently open, although their config stuff is a bit obtuse. But at least it's all open enough to do what I want relatively easily. They just work and sound great. We looked at Avaya a while back, and everyone with prior experience we talked to said "run away!"
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Telecom industry is doing just fine (there is this thing called the internet and mobile phone/data telecoms) but if you are a legacy telecom supplier selling voice switches and landline phones then you should have seen the writing on the wall many years ago.
Let me guess: They can't pay their bills (Score:1)
What is your opinion on call center software? (Score:1)
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Everyone still needs someone to bitch at when equipment or services don't work. Call centers are still actually surprisingly profitable. There are great margins in a call center, and the CC business probably the only reason why Avaya is still afloat (And thus the reason they are not selling of the Call Center portion of their business to pay off the debtors).
Avaya provides and creates a lot more than just Call Recording Software. The real money is quickly turning in to multi channel delivery. Phone calls
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I am curious. What do you think is the best call center software?
The software sitting between two ears, when being allowed to operate.
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I think it depends on how complex the workflows are in the call center and which integrations you need. There isn't a simple best.
As for call recording. Recording calls isn't so trivial as you add integrations. Say for example you add telepresence. Agent X dials from his cell on the road. Does his dial route through your PBX and get recorded or does it go direct and not get recorded? If it goes through your PBX how do you make is seamless? How do you classify these calls. How do you attach metadata?
Who? (Score:2)
It's not like I follow telecom news, but I never heard of them.
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A lot of companies like Avaya have fallen as comm tech is changing. AT&T spun off Lucent which spun off Avaya.
Adapt and survive, or fail. Capitalism working properly is creative destruction.
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To me, Avaya seems badly managed. (Score:2)
To me, Avaya seems badly managed. The Avaya web site home page [avaya.com] is topped with useless pictures. The Avaya Product page [avaya.com] was apparently written by someone with no technical knowledge. There are useless photos at the bottom.
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They are one of the biggest players. An industry standard. You definitely don't follow telecom. :)
The new "I got nothin'" (Score:3)
Like much of the networking and collaboration industry, Avaya is looking toward software-defined networking, IoT, and cloud-based platforms that work on many different devices and the web."
So, you failed as a business at what you specialized at, and now you're going to "pivot" to a field that's already over-crowded with others who've failed and are making the same pivot.
A couple of years ago it was Apps Apps Apps. Now it's IoT IoT IoT. Sturgeon was an optimist.
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Sturgeon was an optimist.
No, it's a fish.
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Sturgeon's law. "Ninety percent of everything is crap". Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud."
My corollary: 90%? You're an optimist. 99.99% of everything on the internet is crud. And most of the rest is worse.
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So, you failed as a business at what you specialized at, and now you're going to "pivot" to a field that's already over-crowded with others who've failed and are making the same pivot.
No, no. They have no idea what to do because people don't want super-expensive lock in to overly complex products, so they are throwing out the latest buzz-phrases in order to seem relevant to investors. What are they going to make an IoT smoke detector that costs $500 and requires an annual service contract?
Not Suprising to an extent. (Score:1)
We recently replaced a 30 phone system, which took an entire 3ft x 10ft x 10ft closet of traditional copper PBX and replaced everything with POE Phones running on switch-gear. The new phone system is the size of a SOHO router. We even got it financed as part of a deal from our ISP and installed at multiple locations for ~100 phones total. New phone system requires some PBX experience to understand, and object oriented programming to understand, but the GUI is easy and it gives me all kinds of features I'
Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
Although we have lots of money and good prospects in our new products we don't want to pay our bills to our old suppliers. So we will shaft our old suppliers by getting out of paying them by using Chapter 11 financial magic. The following was not said: and management will be able to award itself bumper bonuses next year as a result.
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Chapter 11 really is an abusive mechanism responsible for shafting many many third parties while allowing the company that filed for Chapter 11 to essentially continue unharmed. In recent years it has been used in the US airline industry to get out of union contracts, dump unwanted long term aircraft leases (in several cases the lessor had to destroy the aircraft because it had been parked up by the airline for multiple years without inspection or maintenance, and thus was unable to be flown without signif
Avaya Phones (Score:2)
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Avaya systems are a breeze to set up if you have a proper MPLS setup. Clunky, yes they are physically clunky units and poorly-balanced on weight distribution.
Something's not right here (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is the same as (or similar to) that happened to Nortel...they had a lot of debt, were hemorrhaging money, but will had decent revenue and profits from some of the centers. January 14, 2009 they filed for chapter 11 under the guise that it would help them focus on restructuring...a few months later they sold the profitable elements to other companies (including a chunk to Avaya I believe) leaving the unpolished turds behind to die (which in all honesty, wasn't that much). They were unable to see how to
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Avaya is probably 40-50% of the business phones out there and probably 90% of the phones used in call centers. There's no way they shouldn't be profitable.
And Vlasic had a huge percentage of the pickle market before it filed for bankruptcy. Market share by itself tells you nothing.
Avaya was sitting on $6 billion in debt [bloomberg.com] and most recently reported $58 million in quarterly profits [yahoo.com]. Do the math.
Moody's downgraded them twice last year, from nearly the junkiest of junky junk to something a bit junkier [moodys.com].
The only surprising thing is that they held off the inevitable as long as they did.
I suppose (Score:2)
Vlasic got Walmarted for lack of a better term. They entered into distribution deals with Walmart, expanded to meet the demand and then when Walmart saw their high debt to income ratio made them vulnerable they threatened to renege on the deal. I remember the CEO being furious because Walmart had them selling gallon jars of
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Those sorts of companies tend to be top-heavy which gets them involved in a lot of large government contracts, large enterprises etc but also makes them very, very expensive. This is great in economic bubbles because companies will tend to throw lots of money at them, smaller companies and during economic downturns (which has pretty much defined the last decade) even bigger companies tend to go with alternatives in these situations and over the past two decades VoIP and Asterisk has been eating Avaya for br
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How do pickles go bad, they should last for like a decade at least before they start disintegrating. Pickling is one of the most ancient methods of preserving foods and was done for really long boat voyages. I have sauerkraut that has been there for 2 years (covered with brine) that remains edible.
I highly doubt a bad deal with WalMart was the only problem, business deals go two ways and you are not required to make a deal and if you are reliant on one of your buyers not to pull the rug from under you, then
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Some people might think that it was never edible.
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Traditional pickles are fermented. Fermented pickles (fermented anything, really) is the stuff that keeps forever due to the lactic acid produced during fermentation.
The stuff Vlasic sells is "fresh pack," not fermented (as your sauerkraut was), using vinegar as a preservative. Totally different stuff...
That said: I've never thrown out pickles for "being old," even when I buy them in enormous containers.
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Avaya is probably 40-50% of the business phones out there and probably 90% of the phones used in call centers. There's no way they shouldn't be profitable.
Office phones are going the way of the buggy whip.
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stadium, sigh (Score:1)
near me in san jose, there is an avaya stadium.
pure wasted money. pure ego.
and now, they want to go bankrupt and leave their creditors high and dry?
sounds so republican. given today's climate, I bet they'll be just fine once they dump their debt, fuck over everyone and continue on.
sigh...