Sign in / up

back to article IPO-leery Avaya was hot to flog self to Oracle, but talks 'fizzled' – report

Avaya's owners tried to sell the networking and telecoms provider to Oracle rather than take it public, according to reports. Reuters says that Larry Ellison's biz behemoth held talks with Avaya's private investors in the first half of 2013, but talks "fizzled" in the last few months. Oracle and Avaya both refused to comment …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Losses might be because...

    ...some of their resellers are atrocious pitchers and the kit is bloody expensive. I sat on a panel that helped choose a new phone system for a 4-figure-staff organisation, and the bidders proposing Avaya kit were much more expensive than the other system. But one of them was worse than some of the bad pitches on Dragons Den and it was a very quick decision to rule them out.

    Anon for obvious reasons.

    0 0
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That would have been amusing. Avaya would have put a nice dent in Oracle

    0 0
  3. Pirate Dave Silver badge

    Great

    I just put in a new Avaya VOIP system, and ~30 of their (Nortel) Enterprise Ethernet switches since last Christmas. Good to know we've dodged the bullet of being owned by Evil Empire #2.

    Avaya gear is OK, but as others have said, it is a bit pricey, and seems to be a bit "trailing edge" as far as features. You can definitely feel the ghosts of a Great Ancient Telecom provider when you are dealing with them. Everything is very regimented and flexibility is, ehh, what's flexibility?

    Their customer service completely sucks donkey balls, though. If a switch goes out, you can't call and talk directly to a rep, you have to fill out a web form (after you remember/reset your login info) and wait for them to call you back. That happened last week when a POE module went poof in one of their switches. I was not happy about that, and told them that for what I paid for these switches, I shouldn't have to deal with no stinking web form. That got me a "click" from the other end. Great. I shoulda bought HP Procurves.

    1 0
  4. Tom Samplonius

    Also, note that Oracle bought Acme Packet, one of the larger VoIP SBC vendors. Probably in anticipation of landing Avaya, so they could sell packaged solutions.

    And Metaswitch immediately dropped Acme Packet and rushed out their Perimeta SBCs, to avoid selling kit from a competitor.

    Oracle's going to get into this market somehow. It is just a matter of who they buy. Or who else they buy. Maybe the'll buy Aastra next.

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like