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 '' ...

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 N ...

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 ...

, 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 ...

(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 te ...

, and Lucent subsequently spun off units of its own in an attempt to restructure its struggling operations. /sup> 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 s ...

, which was purchased in turn by

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

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, 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. ...

, Avaya refused to join the international community and withdraw from the Russian market. Research from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

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