Aspect Acquires BlueNote NetworksAspect Acquires BlueNote Networks
Kudos to Aspect Software for bringing some excitement to an otherwise slow post-holiday news week. (As I recall, they served a similar purpose when Concerto acquired Rockwell just after Labor Day in 2005.) Kudos also because this is not your typical 'down-cycle in the market' acquisition of an aging customer base. Instead it brings sexy new technology that SVP Mike Sheridan says will allow Aspect to accelerate the company's stated strategy to bring UC and the contact center together.
July 9, 2008
Kudos to Aspect Software for bringing some excitement to an otherwise slow post-holiday news week. (As I recall, they served a similar purpose when Concerto acquired Rockwell just after Labor Day in 2005.) Kudos also because this is not your typical 'down-cycle in the market' acquisition of an aging customer base. Instead it brings sexy new technology that SVP Mike Sheridan says will allow Aspect to accelerate the company's stated strategy to bring UC and the contact center together.
Kudos to Aspect Software for bringing some excitement to an otherwise slow post-holiday news week. (As I recall, they served a similar purpose when Concerto acquired Rockwell just after Labor Day in 2005.) Kudos also because this is not your typical 'down-cycle in the market' acquisition of an aging customer base. Instead it brings sexy new technology that SVP Mike Sheridan says will allow Aspect to accelerate the company's stated strategy to bring UC and the contact center together.BlueNote has a familiar company history. Founded in January 2005, the idea that led to the company's inception came from Fidelity Investments' experience in searching for an extensible IP telephony solution to improve enterprise-wide collaboration and communications. With that as its charter, BlueNote Networks designed what they called a SOA- and SIP-based business communications platform to deliver voice and video services that can be accessed over any traditional or next-generation network infrastructure by any remote software application.
Sheridan boils the complex jargon in the last sentence down to one simple word: toolkit. "Largely they were providing a toolkit, a powerful toolkit, but a toolkit." Powerful indeed. When Aspect announced its strategic relationship with Microsoft at VoiceCon Orlando 2008, the company offered a proof of concept demo in their booth, showing Aspect's Unified IP working with Microsoft OCS. According to Sheridan that demo was built using BlueNote tools. In three weeks.
In addition to Fidelity, customers of BlueNote include Seaport Hotel in Boston and Concordia College in Montreal. At the Seaport Hotel, BlueNote tools were used to create Seaportal, an in-room amenity designed to provide information about the Seaport Hotel events and facilities, along with direct voice calling services through a touch-screen Web portal. Concordia uses the BlueNote solution to add click-to-talk capabilities to its Web-based student portal and help desk website, as well as to create Internet-based voice services for its user community.
Aspect Software will continue to support existing BlueNote customers but is still working on a roadmap for how BlueNote's technology will be incorporated into the portfolio. At a minimum, the tools the acquisition brings will allow Aspect's customer service, collections and telemarketing applications to work more tightly with enterprise applications.
Aspect's 2008 marketing campaign is Unified Communications for the Contact Center. Will 2009's be CEBP for the Contact Center?
