It’s been known for months that industry behemoth Avaya was interested in finding a buyer. Private equity suitors include Apollo, Pemira, and Searchlight (according to this Bloomberg report). There is also interest from Mitel, first reported in April and then reported again – more definitively – this week. (We wrote about an Avaya-Mitel tie-up here: Ghost of Nortel Returns Comes Home.)
During last week’s earnings call, CEO Jim Chirico said that there would be a decision about the company’s fate in 30 days. That’s the strongest indication yet that we’re truly in the “endgame” for Avaya. It’s fair to say the whole industry is on the edge of its seat right now.
![Are You Prepared for Unpredicted Spikes in Call Volume [Webinar]](https://fonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Are-You-Prepared-for-Unpredicted-Spikes-in-Call-Volume-Webinar-450.jpg "Are You Prepared for Unpredicted Spikes in Call Volume [Webinar]")
After the grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, calls to 
News broke last week that Mitel is 
One of our goals with the Fonolo blog is to expose our readers to a broad range of voices on a broad range of topics. We share a lot of diverse content, including lists of 
It’s been a big year for Avaya, probably the most important 12-month period in the company’s long, storied existence. In January, Avaya emerged from bankruptcy with a newly listed stock (NYSE: AVYA); a balance sheet much lower in debt; a new management team; and a renewed focus.
As part of keeping up with the industry, we follow publicly-traded companies for which the call center is a significant component of their business. Earnings time has come around again, so let’s see what can be discerned about the near term future of the sector. Given that this is just a blog post, consider it a casual review, focusing just on companies with recent interesting news.
It’s earnings time. We’ve been following publically-traded companies for whom cloud call center is a significant component of their business. Many released financial results in the past couple weeks, so let’s see what can be discerned about the near term future of the sector. This isn’t an exhaustive review, of course. To keep the blog post digestible, we are just focussing on companies with interesting news. This quarter that’s Avaya, Five9, RingCentral and Twilio.
First, some perspective: No $20 billion industry changes quickly. Yes, a growing fraction of call center seats are switching to cloud-based offerings. But Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys are still going to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of on-premise call center equipment this quarter (and for many quarters after that). Heck, there are still 300,000 Nortel-era CS1000’s powering 40 million phones out there. So there’s a lot of momentum to overcome.
