Avaya Holdings Corp., often shortened to Avaya (), is an American
multinational technology company
A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services.
Details
According to ''Fo ...
headquartered in
Durham Durham most commonly refers to:
*Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham
*County Durham, an English county
*Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States
*Durham, North Carolina, a city in No ...
,
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...
,
that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform includes
unified communications
Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept describing the integration of enterprise communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, voice (including IP telephony), mobility features (including e ...
(UCaaS), contact center other services.
The company provides services to 220,000 customer locations in 190 countries.
History
In 1995,
Lucent Technologies
Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...
was spun off from
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...
, and Lucent subsequently spun off units of its own in an attempt to restructure its struggling operations.
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Avaya was then spun off from Lucent as its own company in 2000 (Lucent merged with
Alcatel Alcatel may refer to:
* Alcatel, a former French telecommunications equipment company, which became Alcatel-Lucent and is now part of Nokia
* Alcatel Mobile, a brand of mobile phones, tablets and wearables, formerly a joint venture between Alcatel ...
SA in 2006, becoming
Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...
, which was purchased in turn by
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...
in 2016). It remained a public company from 2000 to 2007. In October 2007, Avaya was acquired by two private-equity firms,
TPG Capital
TPG Inc., previously known as Texas Pacific Group and TPG Capital, is an American investment company based in Fort Worth, Texas. The private equity firm is focused on leveraged buyouts and growth capital. TPG manages investment funds in growth c ...
and
Silver Lake Partners
Silver Lake is an American global private equity firm focused on investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries. Founded in 1999, the firm is one of the largest technology investors in the world. Its investment holdings have ...
, for $8.2 billion.
On January 19, 2017, Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
On December 15, 2017, it once again became a public company, trading under the NYSE stock ticker AVYA.
Management
*President & CEO - Alan Masarek
*CFO - Kieran McGrath
*Chief Revenue Officer - Stephen Spears
*Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel - Shefali Shah
*Senior Vice President, Engineering - Todd Zerbe
Acquisitions and partnerships
Since 2001, Avaya has sold and acquired several companies.
Through Nortel's bankruptcy proceedings, assets related to their Enterprise Voice and Data business units were auctioned. Avaya placed a $900 million bid, and was announced as the winner of the assets on September 14, 2009.
In 1985, Performance Engineering Corporation (later PEC Solutions) was formed to offer technology services to government customers. On June 6, 2005, Nortel acquired PEC Solutions to form Nortel PEC Solutions. On January 18, 2006, Nortel PEC Solutions was renamed Nortel Government Solutions. On December 21, 2009, Avaya acquired Nortel's government business as part of the company's assets sale.
In October 2019, Avaya entered into a strategic partnership with
RingCentral
RingCentral, Inc. is an American publicly traded provider of cloud-based communication and collaboration products and services for businesses.
CEO Vlad Shmunis and CTO Vlad Vendrow founded the company in 1999. Investors included Doug Leone, Se ...
and together, introduced a new unified communications as a service solution called Avaya Cloud Office ( "ACO"'')''. RingCentral also contributed $500 million to be the exclusive provider of the new Avaya UCaaS offer.
Locations and customers
Avaya's headquarters are located at 2605 Meridien Parkway, Durham, North Carolina.
In 2020, the company had a presence in approximately 190 countries.
The company claims that its cloud services are utilized by over 90% of the Fortune 100 organizations.
Avaya enterprise customers include: Apple, AT&T, Dell, CVS Health, as well as government orginizations.
Avaya sponsors the IAUG
users' group
A users' group (also user's group or user group) is a type of club focused on the use of a particular technology, usually (but not always) computer-related.
Overview
Users' groups started in the early days of mainframe computers, as a way to sh ...
and training programs for
IT professional certification in the use of Avaya's products.
Patents
Avaya has over 4,400 patents and patents pending. In January 2021, the company disclosed it had received its 600th patent for Contact Center technologies, which was granted for AI in "chatbot socialization."
Controversy
During the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...
, Avaya refused to join the international community and withdraw from the Russian market. Research from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
updated on April 28, 2022, identifying how companies were reacting to Russia's invasion identified Avaya as one of the "Companies that are scaling back some significant business operations but continuing some others...".
References
External links
*
*
Official Canadian partner site
{{Authority control
2000 establishments in California
2007 mergers and acquisitions
Alcatel-Lucent
American companies established in 2000
Companies based in Santa Clara, California
Electronics companies established in 2000
Multinational companies headquartered in the United States
Networking companies of the United States
Networking hardware companies
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Silver Lake (investment firm) companies
Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Software companies established in 2000
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Telecommunications companies established in 2000
Telecommunications companies of the United States
Telecommunications equipment vendors
TPG Capital companies
Videotelephony
VoIP companies of the United States
2011 initial public offerings
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2017
2018 initial public offerings
Software companies of the United States