back to article Avaya's bankruptcy protection is a 'good thing,' says Europe North veep

Ronald Rubens, Europe North veep at telecommunications biz Avaya, is busy doing some serious damage limitation, after the US Avaya parent company filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this week. When Rubens and Gary Barnett, senior VP and general manager of engagement solutions at the biz, spoke to El Reg last week, it was …

  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    But surely customers must be alarmed at hearing the word “bankruptcy” applied to their critical communications supplier?

    Their main business in the UK are PBXes and while they are sort-a critical they do not break easily and there is plenty of people to fix them with parts off eBay.

    This is part of Avaya's problem - there is precious little new business in the remaining niches where they are dominant. It is all legacy with a very slow replacement cycle.

    1. rob-carmichael

      Not quite

      Avaya is a market leader in Contact Centre and Unified Communications. It is also a technology pioneer in many areas including Networking. We moved past 'PBXs' a long time ago. However its certainly true to say that the products are reliable and many customers have trusted their systems for yeards

  2. paulf
    Pirate

    Private Equity?

    FTA: "The debt arose from an $8.2bn (£6.5bn) buyout in 2007 by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners."

    So this is another of those "Economic miracles(TM)" performed by Private Equity in the noughties - buy company with cheap debt, load up company with masses of cheap debt to fund sizeable payout to the PE owners (and pay off original debt), flip the now financially wounded company within 12-24 months to a bunch of suckers before the wheels start falling off.

    It's one thing to acquire a struggling business, invest in it, sort out the problems that left it struggling, return it to good health and sell it for a profit as that is beneficial; but these kind of PE shenanigans don't do anyone any good (other than the PE partners, natch).

  3. alain williams Silver badge

    Translation

    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.

  4. J. R. Hartley

    It's the Nortel factor...

    They're fucked.

  5. a_a

    Complete failure...

    ...to innovate.

    CM administration is incredibly outdated. Everything has to be an extension number even if it's not an extension because that's the only construct for any object in the system.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like