Avaya has been making headlines for the past nine months. Avaya reported approximately three-quarters of a billion dollars in sales in Q1 of last year after entering bankruptcy protection in 2017 and becoming a publicly traded business. “What is Avaya?” many began to question. “Avaya is a worldwide technology corporation specializing in unified communications. High Country, an established supplier of Avaya solutions, has been closely monitoring the company’s progress and the associated rumors. Let’s take a look at what Avaya is, Avaya Holding Corp., and whether they’re still in business.
What Is Avaya?
Avaya is a technology company based in the United States that specializes in business communication solutions, including unified communications (UC) and contact centers (CC). Avaya also offers unified communications as a service (UCaaS), contact center as a service (CCaaS), and communications platform as a service (CPaaS) in addition to on-premises services.
What Kinds of Products Does Avaya Provide?
Avaya provides a range of business communications-related services and equipment. Avaya’s website lists the following products and services:
- Communications that are unified. A single, unified platform provides enterprise communications capabilities like telephony, conferencing via video, emails, instant messaging, and presence technology.
- Contact the call center. Contact centers manage client interactions across several communication channels, including call centers, emails, social media, and webchats. Contact centers are concerned with customer interactions, engagement tracking, and interaction data. Voice-to-text conversion is one example of artificial intelligence (AI) functionality.
- Phones and other devices. Desktop phones, touchscreen SIP phone systems that can utilize cloud-based apps (Vantage series), mobile devices, meeting phones, web meeting cameras (Avaya Collaboration Unit, Huddle Camera series), webcam-and-screen video conferencing space systems (Avaya Executive, Avaya Room System), and headsets are examples.
- Cloud communications services from Avaya can be deployed in a public cloud, a private cloud, or a hybrid cloud. The Avaya OneCloud brand provides UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS services.
- Avaya’s unified communications, contact center, and communication platform products are available on-premises as well as in the public, private, or hybrid cloud.
What Types of Companies Does Avaya Serve?
Any organization may use Avaya’s services and products because there is a universal demand for communication regardless of business size or industry. Customers of Avaya include healthcare organizations, banks, enterprises, and small to medium-sized businesses. Physical devices, on-premises services, and cloud service purchasing plans can be scaled to meet the needs of various enterprises. However, Avaya’s website includes a page for small to medium-company solutions, which include UCaaS, CCaaS, and desktop/conference phones.
Top 5 Avaya Competitors and Alternatives in 2023
Avaya is a well-known cloud telephony company that provides unified communications and VoIP services, including contact center solutions, to businesses of all kinds. Although Avaya enables remote employees, you may want a more adaptable corporate phone system. So, in this section, we’ll look at the top five Avaya alternatives.
#1. Nextiva
Nextiva is a full-service cloud-based communication system for businesses of all sizes. It combines business phone service, video conferencing, tools for collaboration, and customer service functions into a single solution. Its best features are as follows:
- HD video calls: Host an unlimited number of audio and video meetings, as well as conferencing with messaging and screen sharing. In just a few clicks, you can host or join an online conference call.
- Advanced call routing: Use an easy-to-use telephone menu system to route calls to the appropriate department or person. The auto-attendant is a digital receptionist who saves time while providing continuous client service.
- Call recording entails recording calls and saving them to the cloud. Call recordings aid in quality assurance, recording important details during calls, and ensuring legal compliance.
- Mobile apps: Nextiva provides consumers with a simple VoIP app that has all of the functionality you’d expect from a company’s phone (and more). Available for free on iOS and Android.
- VoIP integrations: Integrate the cloud phone system with existing technologies used by your team, like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce CRM.
What is the Price of Nextiva?
Nextiva has three monthly pricing levels to suit teams and businesses of all sizes and demands. Pricing varies depending on the size of your team and whether you select monthly or yearly billing. Here are your choices:
- The Essential plan begins at $17.95 per person. It features free calling, free peer-to-peer video calling, a free number, voicemail-to-email notifications, Outlook and Google connectors, and internet faxing. This strategy is perfect for getting started on a modest basis.
- Professional: This package, which starts at $21.95 per user, includes video and audio conference calls, collaboration among teams, Call Pop, more voicemail options, and extended integrations. This strategy is ideal for small groups.
- Enterprise: For $31.95 per person, you receive unlimited audio and video conference participants, call recording, voicemail transcription, and many more integrations. This pricing plan is appropriate for both smaller and larger teams.
#2. Mitel
Mitel is another Avaya competitor that provides both cloud-based and on-premises PBX solutions. They are working to make collaboration easier for larger organizations. Among Mitel’s best features are:
- Team conferencing enables you to hold meetings online, share your screen, keep track of your agenda, and effortlessly participate via the communication platform.
- Call management entails putting calls on hold, joining a call, parking or unparking a call, and answering a call according to the phone number or group.
- Dialer apps: You may communicate from anywhere with a web connection with softphone apps for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android phones.
What is the Price of Mitel?
Mitel provides three plans. You are not required to make a commitment to a particular plan. Rather, you can add customers to many subscriptions at once, ensuring that you only have to pay for the services and features you require.
- Essentials: The most basic subscription, which includes basic PBX functionality, collaboration, and conferencing, starts at $20.99 per user per month.
- Premier: Starting at $26.59 per user per month, this plan includes all Essentials capabilities in addition to call recording, voicemail transcription, and CRM connection.
- Elite: Beginning at $38.49 per user per month, this plan covers all cloud telephony options.
#3. OnSIP
OnSIP is an online PBX phone solution designed for distributed teams. It is intended for small and medium-sized businesses. Their VoIP solutions guarantee a comprehensive telephone system replacement in just an hour, replete with softphone apps, handy call management capabilities, and video conferencing. The following are the best OnSIP features:
- Website chat: Website visitors can communicate with your sales team via voice or video chat. Screen sharing and statistics are also included in the Pro edition.
- Voicemail-to-email – Receive voice messages in your e-mail inbox, where you may read and reread them—and answer more quickly.
- Auto-attendant: Provide callers with intuitive menu selections so that inbound calls can be intelligently routed to the appropriate person or team.
What is the Price of OnSIP?
OnSIP has three pricing choices, but you may customize any plan by including certain services for a fee.
- Basic Plan: $49.95 each month per account, and 3.2 cents per minute. Many of the features in this package have restricted capacity and incur additional expenses if you want to expand them.
- For new accounts, the Unlimited Plan is $18.95 per month per user and comes with new office phones or headsets. This package, however, requires a minimum of five users.
- Sayso Voice & Video Chat: A monthly fee of up to $49.95 allows you to receive voice and video conversations directly through your website.
#4. Zoom
Zoom is well-known for its video meeting software, but it also provides a virtual phone service called Zoom Phone. It is a VoIP service provider that offers enterprise-class capabilities to help you optimize voice conversations. The following are the best Zoom phone features:
- Upgrade to a meeting: You can convert a phone call to a full-featured meeting using Zoom without requiring participants to manually join. Excellent for calls that unexpectedly evolve into deeper meetings.
- Voicemail alert and transcription: Receive notifications and manage your voicemail messages from any device.
- Integrations: You can link your phone service to a CCaaS solution, your customer relationship management (CRM), Google, Slack, and other services.
What is the Price of the Zoom Phone?
Zoom Phone has three pricing levels, but you can additionally request paid add-ons such as toll-free numbers, extra phone numbers, hardware renting, premier developer assistance, and other features. Their usual plans include the following:
- Metered in the United States and Canada: This pay-as-you-go package begins at $10 per user per month. It includes a phone number in the United States and Canada, domestic SMS plus MMS, domestic calling, business connections, and outbound tiered calling.
- U.S. and Canada Unlimited: For $15 per user a month, this plan provides unlimited calling inside the United States and Canada as well as the same features as the basic metering plan. You can now add calls to 19 additional countries.
- Pro Global Select: For $20 per person per month, you get a direct call number, limitless domestic calling across 40+ countries, plus everything else from the remaining plans.
#5. Phone.com
This is a VoIP phone service for users in the United States. They cater to entrepreneurs and small enterprises by providing simple deployment and business features at a fraction of the cost. The following are some of the best Phone.com features:
- Audio conferencing: Connect up to 300 individuals in high-definition speech quality from any part of the world. To ensure optimum security, password-protect your meetings.
- Incoming calls are routed to a certain group of telephone numbers and connected to the first accessible agent via call queues.
- Custom (vanity) numbers: Simple phone numbers, such as 800-FLOWERS.
What is the Price of Phone.com?
Phone.com has three pricing options, two of which are metered and one of which is unlimited. Every package has 50 features.
- The basic plan is $14.99 per person per month. Each month, it provides 500 shared minutes, 1,000 text messages, and one local or free number.
- Plus Account: $19.99 per month per user. It includes limitless minutes plus text messages, in addition to premium hold music and the voicemail-to-text capability, in comparison to the Base Account.
- Unlimited Extension: For $29.99 a month per user, you get 100-person conference calls, call recording, integration with your CRM, and call analytics (in addition to everything included with the metered options).
Avaya Holdings Corp
Avaya Holdings is a company that provides digital communication devices, solutions, and services. The Avaya Holdings Corp offers platforms for unified communications and contact centers, as well as applications and gadgets for all-channel telephony, messaging, meetings, and team collaboration. It also offers services such as consultation, design and integration, implementation, telephony, cloud adoption and migration, administration, security, support, and learning. It supports a wide range of businesses, including finance, hotels, media and communications, healthcare, education, and government.
Is Avaya Still in Business
Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and acquired $780 million in funding to restructure its operations. Earlier in September, Avaya Holding Corp announced a cost-cutting restructuring, including job cuts. Avaya’s stock dropped nearly 99% last year. Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 19, 2017. On December 15, 2017, it re-emerged as a public company, operating under the NYSE symbol AVYA. They embarked again on financial restructuring under the protection of Chapter 11 bankruptcy on February 14, 2023. After completing its financial restructuring on May 1, 2023, Avaya Holding Corp emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a private corporation.
What Exactly is Chapter 11?
Chapter 11 is a part of the United States Bankruptcy Code that allows firms to reorganize their financial structures while keeping up their businesses normally.
Employees Will Not Be Affected by Actions
According to Avaya Holding Corp, “these actions will have no impact on the company’s customers, channel and partner organizations, suppliers, vendors, or employees. Avaya Holding Corp emphasizes that it is not going to leave business. “Our business will remain intact, and we are not selling or dividing off any of its parts,” the company stated.
Listed Assets and Liabilities
Avaya Holding Corp cites total assets ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion and total debts of around $1 billion to $10 billion on its bankruptcy court application. The company claims to have between 25,001 and 50,000 creditors. When the Financial Restructuring is completed, our total debt will be reduced by more than 75%, from roughly $3.4 billion today to roughly $800 million.
What Is Avaya Software Used For?
Avaya also offers unified communications as a service (UCaaS), contact center as a service (CCaaS), and communications platform as a service (CPaaS) in addition to on-premises services. Avaya produces and markets its own products, including desktop phones, headphones, conference phones, and all-in-one conferencing systems.
What Is an Avaya Phone System?
An Avaya IP Office phone system integrates your communications, allowing your employees to manage all of their business conversations on a gadget of their choice: their laptop, cell phone, office phone, or home phone—via wired, wireless, or internet connections.
What Kind of Company Is Avaya?
Avaya is a technology company based in the United States that specializes in business communication solutions like unified communications (UC) and contact centers (CC).
How Does Avaya Cloud Work?
Avaya Cloud Office employs encryption to protect your day-to-day corporate communication, ensuring secure speech between network endpoints such as desk phones, conference phones, and other Avaya Cloud Office mobile and desktop apps.
Is Avaya a CRM Tool?
By merging business data from their CRM solution and their contact center operation, Avaya’s CRM Connector enables businesses to maximize the customer’s lifetime value.
Is Avaya Part of AT&T?
Avaya was founded in 2000 as a subsidiary of Lucent Technologies. It was once a component of AT&T before joining Lucent. TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners bought Avaya in 2007. Avaya traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 2017.
What Is the Difference Between Avaya and Cisco?
While Avaya’s and Mitel’s foundations are in telecommunications, Cisco has products across a wide range of technical disciplines. In addition to Cisco software for IP communications, you’ll most likely integrate Cisco hardware into your computer system for communications, as well as other IT requirements if desired.
Is Avaya a VoIP System?
The Avaya Phone System IP office solution serves as a VoIP hybrid system that provides a unified engagement experience for your clients and workers regardless of where they are, what devices they are using, or what applications they are using. It combines telephony, messaging, conferencing, and a contact center into a single, adaptable platform.
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