Avaya
More info
- Released
- 2000
- Predecessor
- Lucent Technologies
- Type
- Enterprise communications
- Website
- avaya.com
Lucent's old business phone systems, spun off in 2000 and locked in a near-permanent struggle with its debt ever since.
In 2000 Lucent spun off its enterprise communications business: PBXs like Definity, voicemail and contact centres, inherited from AT&T's business side. Avaya became one of the big names in office telephony and followed the market over to VoIP and SIP.
In 2007 private equity firms Silver Lake and TPG bought it for $8.2 billion, and the loans came along. In 2009 it picked up the enterprise unit of bankrupt Nortel. None of it helped: Avaya filed for Chapter 11 in 2017, sold its networking unit to Extreme Networks, and was back in court in 2023. Meanwhile, the calls moved to Teams and Zoom.