Avaya takes swipe at rivals following Chapter 11 exit

President slams competitors for "negative selling" while Avaya went through its restructuring

Avaya has exited Chapter 11, with its president criticising the vendor's competitors for capitalising on its woes with "negative selling".

The emergence from bankruptcy protection draws to a close a difficult year for the vendor, which has seen it reduce its debt by $3bn and sell its networking business to Extreme Networks.

Jim Chirico, CEO at Avaya, said: "This is the beginning of an important new chapter for Avaya.

"In less than a year since the commencement of our Chapter 11 restructuring, Avaya has emerged as a publicly traded company with a significantly strengthened balance sheet."

Avaya said it is now putting plans in place to float on the New York Stock Exchange.

In a blog post, Avaya president Nidal Abou-Ltaif slammed Avaya's competitors for the approach they took to taking advantage of Avaya's struggles.

"Don't get me wrong, we've always been ready to leverage the weakness of our competition," he wrote.

"Throughout my time here we've and will continue to have a fierce passion for winning and that will never change. The difference between us and some of our competitors is that we've always fought fair and we've always looked at who should be the true winner in any outcome - our customers.

"Some of our competitors went down the negative-selling route, trying to put Avaya down in the hearts and minds of our customers and partners.

"Not only does this not work, it's left our competitors less confident in their own abilities. End result: we've beaten them to the punch on key strategic accounts, with customers preferring to do business with people they trust."