Avaya Bankruptcy Really Doesn’t Bother Buyers

At this month’s ITEXPO we hosted a panel on Cloud UC with RingCentral, 8×8 and Broadsoft and one of the first questions I asked was what is the end-result of the Avaya bankruptcy on the mind of people making purchasing decisions. While the panelists and I were quick to point out that cloud and debt helped do Avaya in, the audience wasn’t particularity concerned.

itexpo-keynote-room-2017.JPG

Out of about 500+ people in the room at the time one a few hands said the bankruptcy would affect their decision.

One would have expected it to be much higher – we would have guessed north of 15% but instead the number seemed to be similar to what the company’s typical annual churn rate is.

itexpo-2017-1.JPG

Perhaps people have seen enough in their careers to know that Avaya products will still be maintained and serviced and likely invested in, regardless of what the bankruptcy courts decide.

That’s what happened with the Nortel assets after all.

The funny thing is even though much is moving to the cloud, phones were everywhere at show… Peter Radizeski pointed out just how many phone vendors were exhibiting at the show. In addition, Sangoma drew much attention with their new phones. BTW, although I’m not officially allowed to tell you this, Sangoma phones are apparently solid enough to be getting resold by at least one Asian vendor I am aware of – one looking to enter the U.S. market in a more pronounced way.

Getting back to Avaya, we’re looking forward to more formal surveys of the market to see what purchasing decision-makers will do when time comes for them to make a decision on a new phone system. Purchase the latest from Avaya? Switch to Skype for Business? Vonage, Broadsoft, etc?

    Leave Your Comment


     

    Loading
    Share via
    Copy link
    Powered by Social Snap