AVAYA Chapter 11 :-/

[sja]

Hi

It's just say something about that brutal industry ...

I like Avaya networks because it's honest and brave vendor...

Avaya Inc. Files for Chapter 11 Protection

[shuckyshark]

yeah, our whole company is going avaya...hopefully they stay true to their word and not do anything with Avaya Canada.

[sja]

Okay now I get the Canada comment...

🙂

Hope the best for Avaya I like what Avaya networking is doing with SPBM.

/SJA

[rschroeder]

Imagining Avaya goes the way of Nortel, we'd be very inconvenienced. 

We did a vendor dog-&-pony show with Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya about ten years ago, inviting them to set up a pristine and perfect demonstration phone center in our facility.  We let them know we'd have our operators and call center staff come through and test/try/evaluate the performance and features of the systems, and the customers would rate how well their telephony needs were filled by each vendor.

Surprising to me, Nortel failed miserably.  I say "surprisingly" because we were a 100% Nortel shop at the time, and their VoIP handsets and video telephone should've had the advantage.

Cisco came in second, according to our customers, which was also a surprise since they had top folks and perfect presentation and fancy cosmetics & bells & whistles like crazy.  Of course they were also 200%+ more expensive than Avaya, and 300% higher than Nortel.

Most surprising to me was when our customers fell in love with Avaya's styles and feature sets and easy learning curve.  I'd never heard of Avaya prior to this (of course, I wasn't in the telephony support business at the time, so perhaps I might be excused for this lack).

Since adopting Avaya we've retired old Nortel and Siemens phone systems with satisfaction.  But we've also merged with smaller corporations that use ShoreTel and MiTel phones, and we've had a brutal time getting them to work with our Cisco security policies.  Worse, some of those brands handle extended loss of site power events very poorly, hanging their PC's that run through them to the network.  There've been a world of pain points with both of these vendors, and I can't recommend them from personal experience.

Cisco phones are probably the most expensive way to go, and despite them being the same vendor we use for most of our Network hardware and many Security solutions, I don't know that they are part of the solution for reducing the high cost of health care.  Especially with all the power upgrades required for the POE needs of VoIP in general.  I have a project on the burner from last summer where 4000 new VoIP phones were going into one of my facilities, and there was nowhere near enough POE to provide them all power, despite having 100% POE switches.  It will cost $1.5M for the Maintenance teams to upgrade the 208 power and generators and UPS's in that facility.  Or, the Communications team could spend $300K in 120V handset power injectors for the phones.  Neither is a happy solution.  Would it be better with some other VoIP product--unlikely.

[zero_cool]

I'm not surprised.  We use a ton of Avaya hardware and software.  Half the software won't work with Windows 10.  Fail.

[sparda963]

Our current phone system hardware and software is all Avaya as well. We have some of the same issues with the software being hit or miss with windows 10 on our test machines right now. Granted our phone system and its software are not the most up to date that it could be by any means. We haven't had a legitimate phone person in like 8 years here since the phone guy retired. It has just been filled in by various people over the years. It will be interesting to see how this plays out though.

[ecklerwr1]

This is NEVER a good sign though...

[sja]

"smell like nortel" 😕

That the problem...

[ecklerwr1]

My thoughts exactly!

[sja]

and "the lucky winner" ...

Avaya Offloads Its Networks Biz to Extreme for $100M | Light Reading

[ecklerwr1]

They may be better off if extreme gets them... we'll see.

[sja]

just look inside 😕 no focus parts from 2 other vendors ..carrier entreprise DC

does not look like a safe harbour to me....

That podcast confirme that ...they like to have the customers ...

Network Break 126: Extreme Buys Avaya Networking; Arista Containerizes EOS - Packet Pushers -

[designerfx]

I know nothing about extreme, have you worked with their gear?

[rschroeder]

A network admin friend of mine at a different business recently did a forklift upgrade:  Extreme to Cisco.  He sent me pictures of the back of his pick-up truck full of purple Extreme switches & routers on the way to the recycler.

That does NOT indicate Extreme is bad or substandard.  It just is a reflection of his company wanting a bigger pool of trained/experienced people to work on their network, as well as wanting the support & feature sets that come with Cisco.  We know Cisco isn't perfect by a long shot.  But it'll be there tomorrow, and they help drive the RFC's that make traffic flow reliably.  I can't fault his company for moving in that direction.

[sja]

Hi

"Not a joke" I   like to know why pickup truck are so so popular in the US/CA

Can see many in the background...

almost never in other part of the world..

[rschroeder]

Pickups are useful in many ways that cars can't manage:

• They can carry larger loads than traditional cars, including tall items.  If you own a pickup truck and have a friend who's moving to a new home, chances are you'll be called for help moving.  Worse, if your friend has a piano!
• They have higher clearance, enabling them to manage more rugged driving conditions, such as deeper snow or muddy back roads--where we love to explore & hunt & build cabins.
• They have much greater towing capacity--many people enjoy trailering boats or campers to weekend destinations to "get away from it all."  Pickups enable folks to tow loads that are VERY heavy, depending on the truck.  18,000 pounds, or more, in some cases--you wouldn't tow that kind of boat or vacation camper behind a car.
• They come with four-wheel-drive options--again, very useful in snow, mud, steep conditions, and when towing.  For example, I rely on four-wheel-drive to pull my boat out of lakes when the boat launches are soft or muddy.
• They come in many options, from very basic to extremely luxurious, from light-weight to very heavy-duty.  And they're often customized with beautiful lights, chrome, etc.

Yes, they're not for everyone.  They don't get great gas mileage compared to a Prius, and might not fit well in small streets or garages, and they're certainly more expensive than more "practical" cars that are much smaller.

But they can be your source of income if they haul your tools from site to site, can rescue you & family in rising waters, can be set up with snow plows to help you clear your driveway or blocked roads in winter, and can haul amazing loads (like a chainsaw to deal with fallen trees after a storm--and then haul the trees out of the road so you can get home or to work or to the hospital).

[ecklerwr1]

No we've always been a Cisco shop... along with most everywhere else I've worked over the years including the US Industrial Complex but I've read some good things about their switches... and they've been growing.

[sparda963]

The biggest thing I got from all of that is in this paragraph.

Among other things, the motions request authorization to continue certain customer and partner programs, and to honor certain employee compensation and benefit obligations.

Meaning they want to make sure the top brass gets to keep their bonuses I am sure.

As soon as word of this got out, several of our VAR's and vendors called us in a panic because they had all just priced us out Avaya phone systems for our new building that opens summer of 2018. It was a fun day on the phone about phones! (I couldn't help myself )

[ding]

as designerfx​ mentioned, Avaya isn't going out of business. They're just using Chapter 11 to improve their balance sheet. Nothing to worry about on the VNQM front. It's business as usual!!

[tinmann0715]

I have contacts over at Mitel who can help you with a transition.  😉

[designerfx]

whoa I can see this being something of a cause for concern ding​, does this impact focus in VNQM or wait and see?

Also, sja​ chapter 11 is reorg not "fire sale/we're out of business". So, still some potential here.