Contact Center Market Top 10 Events of 2008Contact Center Market Top 10 Events of 2008
Once the counting is done, 2008 is sure to be the year that IP agent shipments surpassed TDM for the first time.
December 23, 2008
Once the counting is done, 2008 is sure to be the year that IP agent shipments surpassed TDM for the first time.
I hope that Allan Sulkin will agree that imitation is the greatest form of flattery when he reads this blog, clearly a blatant rip-off of his posting yesterday. The fact that I dutifully searched his ten for any mention of contact center applications, and found none, may also have contributed to me putting aside Christmas Wrapping (my favorite holiday song this season by The Waitresses, not the activity) to dash off this list of contact center happenings for the year.1. As Allan points out, the economy is the biggest story, with headlines like this one from CRM Buyer today typical, "Contact Center Double Whammy: More Calls, Fewer Reps." 2. Once the counting is done, 2008 is sure to be the year that IP agent shipments surpassed TDM for the first time. With the 2007 percent of IP worldwide at 48.8% according to Gartner, I'm pretty comfortable with this prediction.
3. Microsoft partnered with and invested in Aspect Software. While the partnership is still in its early days, the move signaled that Microsoft is serious about making a broad play in enterprise communications, and will not be content merely being the IM engine on some desktops.
4. An extension of the last bullet, Aspect repositioned its solutions as UC for the Contact Center. While it may seem a little obvious, no other vendor had aggressively taken the stand (or put their marketing budgets on the line.)
5. The acquisition of Intervoice by Convergys. This is a potentially game-changing acquisition, with an outsourcer acquiring a significant technology player.
6. Expert solutions, dependent on UC-based presence capabilities, abound. Recently released or soon to appear are Avaya's Resident Expert, Alcatel-Lucent's CC Teamer, Cisco's Expert Advisor, and Nortel s Expert Anywhere, to name a few. Implementations to date are few and far between.
7. Alcatel-Lucent announces that Genesys CEO will also assume the role of President of ALU's newly formed Applications Software Group. The goal is to extend the successful Genesys model to other units of Alcatel-Lucent, but it must be done carefully, to avoid diluting the powerful Genesys brand.
8. As part of the turnover of executives that took place in 2008, Avaya hired outsourcing veteran Bob Lyons to run its newly established Contact Center Solutions business unit. Fresh from life as an Avaya customer, Lyons is bringing a welcome new perspective to Avaya's contact center business. 9. Siemens Enterprise joins with The Gores Group. The contact center piece of this story is the folding-in of another Gores company into Siemens. SER Solutions, while a small company, has solid predictive dialer and speech analytics technology and bolsters the already under-valued OpenScape ProCenter solution.
10. The bloom is off the Nortel rose. Long a contact center market share leader, a combination of Nortel's general financial woes, partner Microsoft's public backing of Aspect's contact center application, and a way-too-late to market IP-based portal offering have lead to articles like the one highlighted here on No Jitter last week, A Long and Winding Road for Nortel Contact Center Customers.Once the counting is done, 2008 is sure to be the year that IP agent shipments surpassed TDM for the first time.
