History
In July and August 2000 interviews reported that Avaya Communications would be created on October 1, 2000 and the business telephone division of Lucent Technologies Inc. would be spin off into a separate company. Avaya took with it 34,000 employees and also received $400 million in capital from Warburg Pincus.
Henry Schacht became the board chairman and the first CEO was Don Peterson who was promoted from the CFO position of Lucent. Avaya had a stock symbol of "AV" and debuted at $20 a share.
Since 2001, the company has sold, and acquired several companies to support its current product set – Vista, VPNet. Quintus, Routescience, Nimcat Networks, Spectel, Ubiquity Software, and Traverse Networks. Avaya shifted from a direct sales focused to a channel focused organization and while originally 98% of sales came from direct sales, now 50% of sales are from alternate channels. In 2003 Avaya sold its cabling unit to CommScope for $263 million to focus on its phone gear and communications services businesses.
In 2004 Avaya expanded in Europe through a $370 million acquisition of Tenovis and in Asia through a majority interest in Tata Telecom (now Avaya Global Connect). In 2006 Louis D'Ambrosio took over as the CEO and president of Avaya. and on Jan 12, 2007 they announced the acquisition of Ubiquity Software Corporation for $144 million. Ubiquity develops SIP end-user applications.
Read more about this topic: Avaya Definity
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)