Avaya sells out to private-equity firms
Published: 05 Jun 2007 13:01 BST
Avaya has been sold to two private-equity firms.
The struggling VoIP equipment manufacturer announced the $8.2bn (£4.1bn) acquisition of its business by TPG Capital and Silver Lake on Tuesday.
The private-equity firms snatched Avaya away at the last minute from a likely purchase by its rival Nortel.
Both Avaya and Nortel are struggling with sales of VoIP equipment against market leader Cisco. Many observers believe that both vendors are currently too small to compete effectively with the top suppliers.
As part of its efforts to increase revenues, Avaya has partnered with Extreme Networks to sell combined telephony and data infrastructures to UK businesses.
Both TPG and Silver Lake have a history of acquiring technology firms, although such activity was dampened during the dot-com crash.
Silver Lake partly owns SunGard, the disaster recovery specialist.
Avaya told ZDNet.co.uk that the acquisition would have no affect on its UK customers. "It is business as usual. Nothing has changed," said a spokesperson. "TPG and Silver Lake are completely aligned with our strategy and mission and will help us to accelerate our strategy."
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