atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General Telecom News Will Avaya Make It Through The New Year?

This shouldn't come as any surprise. The handwriting was on the wall almost from day one when they took over Lucent.

-Hal

To big to fail....

I knew they were incompetent way back when they took over Lucent and couldn't even figure out how to change the daylight savings schedule on the Partner ACS. Wasn't the IPO some other companies system that Avaya bought? I don't think they even had an engineer in the place, just bean counters. $$$$$$ for licenses, maintenance, training, tech support- you name it. This is what greed gets you.

See ya!

-Hal

What about their takeover of Nortel? That had to be costly as well. I'm glad to see them finally facing the music after the way they have bullied the industry and their customers for decades.

I thought that Alcatel took over Lucent for their central office equipment manufacturing and support. It was my understanding that Lucent spun off their small systems division to the then new Avaya, while the big stuff went to Alcatel.

Ed is correct. Lucent's central office equipment was aquired by Alcatel while the business product line was spun-off to a new stand-alone company (Avaya).

Rather than create a hybrid IP/TDM system in house, Avaya bought out the company that created the system now known as the IP Office.

I just feel sorry for all the dealers and their customers who hitched their wagons to them.

-Hal

For us former dealers, moving over to the recurring revenue model is a easy move. With or without us Hosted is making huge gains.

Unfortunately hosted is going to become the only viable solution in the future. Maybe not financially but from the dependability standpoint. Who wants equipment that will be obsolete or discontinued by the time the lease is up?

-Hal

Hal, you're right

I do some subcontract work we install a new Avaya switch in the Walmart store in Wainwright. My understanding is that Walmart was upgrading all their stores in Canada. It sure seems odd that a big store like that would not have done more research on the equipment that you are rolling out into all your stores. Huge cost to have to replace.

They won't file Chapter 7 and liquidate.

I'm guessing they will either restructure or the Phone System division / business will be sold off as an asset to someone. There is just too much of an existing base out there for it to disappear.

I was installing Merlins in brand new restaurants 20 years after it was discontinued.

I suspect that Avaya will make the upgrade path for the IPO to their server based IPO. Your server, their software. The "legacy" IPO hardware will be available on the secondary market though I don't know how they will handle all the friggin' licensing.

-Hal

Chapter 11 is debt re-settlement. I don't see them going away. It sure is making it easier to sell against them right now though.

I haven't seen a Walmart store with Avaya equipment in the states for a while. For a long, long time it was all Merlin Legend/Magix, but starting 6 or 7 years ago it all started going Cisco.

Even if they don't go away they won't have anything we would be interested in selling anymore.

-Hal

Hal is right about that

They should consult with Trump, he's come out on top with his bankruptcy's.

Let the beatings start

Avaya in all the Walmarts around here....

The Walmart in Danvers MA used to have Merlin Legend phones, but, they were changed to Cisco.

Cisco here also

Ken, do you mean that Cisco is on the way out like Avaya or that their equipment is in Wal-Mart stores there?

They use Cisco for there phone system

I think Avaya screwed up buying Nortel. They could have got that customer base without buying Nortel. The MICS and CICS where great platforms but the BCM was pretty poor. Plus they bought all the Option 81/ cs1000 stuff which was good as a TDM system but wasn't much on IP side. Avaya was king on the contact center side at one time. Another thing was developing new phones too often and Stopping support on great phones like the 5400 series phones. As for hosted being the way to go and future...ummmm tell that to someone that has more than 15 phones. We install voip/TDM and hosted....our customers are much more happy with voip/TDM. Once you get over 12 phones hosted gets expensive unles you have lots of toll...not to mention the bandwidth requirement to the web. Try replacing a good solid key system with hosted...they will come begging for keys system back. The most expensive part of any system is phones and hosted doesn't save any there. It suck as a customer when your internet dies on hosted and you can't even call the office next to you. A good solid TDM / voip with sip trunks is the way to go IMO

Agree- seems from the outside, armchair QB point of view that they were still following old business models.

If you already have products that do everything another system does, do you really need to buy it? Furthermore, do you really need to buy it, everything around it, the boxes it all came in and the truck it arrived on?

There was a reason Nortel was going under. Buying Nortel, especially lock, stock and barrel, looks like a poor decision. It may have just been old telecom reverence for the iconic Nortel name.

I'n not a fortune 500 CEO, but it looks like either targeted "cherry picking" Nortel purchases would have been better. Better still, buy rights to make & sell tightly integrated systems under your own brand (Nortel was circling the drain- they would have sold). Then you can market to Nortel customers with your own known and stable architecture, offering them "updated, enhanced and stabilized" systems.

OK I'm locking this as we are way off the rules of posting in this category.

Remember if you want to discuss anything other than the exact news release open a new topic in the proper category for off topic discussions.