A little less than a month after Avaya filed for bankruptcy protection, Mitel has started to target its local neighbour’s clients. Today, if you were considering working with Avaya, or you were already an Avaya customer, then Mitel are making sure that you know they’re here to help. The company’s sales pitch suggests that Mitel will be the reliable vendor that you may no longer be able to access from Avaya, “no matter what the future holds”, and draws attention to the fact that its cloud-based communications platform reached the two-million milestone for subscribers only a year ago.
Mitel’s partners are joining the campaign too, with new companies such as Corgent from New Zealand running a range of special promotions designed to help its customers move from Avaya to Mitel.
Benefiting from the Avaya Downturn
This decision to start poaching new clients has come after Avaya was forced to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the 19th of January. The company announced in a press release that it would be undergoing a restructuring process designed to reduce some of its current debt. While Avaya does have a local presence only a little down the road from Mitel, the release also stated that foreign operations are not included in the filing and will continue to act as normal.
The CEO for the company, Kevin Kennedy announced that Avaya had already begun an extensive review into alternative solutions that might be available to address the issues with Avaya’s capital structure. That analysis led the business to believe that a restructuring through chapter 11 bankruptcy protection was the best way to move forward and potentially defend the company at this time.
The Story of Avaya
Avaya arrived in Ottawa during 2009 as part of its $515 million purchase of the Nortel Enterprise Solutions business. The organisation received plenty in provincial funding during 2010, and moved into a facility that was 100,000 square feet in size. However, by 2013, Avaya had already fired a sizeable portion of its local staff.
UC Today Opinion
It’s getting a little messy in Unified Communications right now, the new UCaaS vendors are beating up on the traditional PBX vendors as much as they can and in light of Avaya’s bankruptcy, it’s another reason to send the ‘move to the cloud’ message to PBX customers.
New UCaaS vendors are popping up across the UK and globally, it’s getting crowded and therefore the Telecoms market is one to keep watching in 2017.
