#FlashbackFriday Without Boundaries

So, a thing happened when I was researching the company featured in yesterday’s commercial.  It’s not the most interesting tidbit I’ve ever found, but it actually made the common theme…much more common.

So I found out, while researching yesterday’s article, that Lucent Technologies had begun struggling in 2000, a few years after being spun off from AT&T.  In order to stem the tide of their struggles, Lucent spun off several arms of their company, including their business communications arm.  And that’s where today’s commercial comes in.

Today’s commercial, which aired within the same block of commercials I pulled yesterday’s commercial from (in fact, today’s aired earlier in the block), is the result of that spin off.

In April 2000, the struggling Lucent Technologies spun off several arms of their company amid struggle, and their business communications arm became Avaya.  When this commercial was taped in September 2000, Avaya was just establishing their worth in the world of business communications.

 

What gets these people speaking the same language, while looking like the joke wall on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In?

Snapshot

How many people have no clue what I’m talking about?

Oh, just watch the commercial.

Avaya, unlike its predecessor from which they were spun off from, still exists today.  They were a public company from inception until 2007, when they were purchased by private equity firms.  As of December 2017, they are a publicly-traded company again.  They specialize in unified communications, contact center, and business communication services.  Avaya was the converged-network (telephone, video and data communication services within a single network) equipment supplier for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralymics.  Despite a bankruptcy filing in 2016, they are still around, but sold its networking business and associated products to Extreme Networks for US$100 million.

They’ve last much longer than the company they came from, which means they obviously can be understood.

Snapshot(6)

What the screenshot says.

Snapshot(7)

I wound up investigating this company a bit when I saw the Lucent Technologies logo at the end of the commercial, and what I believed was just a common thread involving information systems and business communication wound up being a Six Degrees of Separation exercise.  Without Kevin Bacon.

I wonder if it connects back to him at all….

It doesn’t.

Well, there you have it.  Went in on one common thread, came out with something else.  That’s how we do it on Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday, my friends.  Find the connections!

Have a fantastic Flashback Friday, and a great weekend!

 

 

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