Genesys announced today that it will be acquiring Angel from Microstrategy, Inc. Genesys has been a leading player for over a decade in premise-based unified communications systems. Most people in the contact center industry know Genesys as a platform for building robust contact center applications including  IVR, Call Center Agent Management, Call Routing, CTI, Reporting and Metrics, and Workforce Management.

Angel has been a pioneer and leader in hosted IVR. The Angel platform allows business managers to define and configure IVR applications using a “cloud” based management console, and eliminates the need for installed hardware and telecom lines for voice applications.

Genesys has been making strides in their hosted call center platform  including solutions from their partners and their own solutions such as Genesys Connect for Service Cloud built on Salesforce. The inclusion of Angel in the Genesys portfolio bolsters their ability to offer applications as service, a step beyond offering a platform.

What does this mean for you?

As a call center manager, you should be excited at the prospects of shorter lead times for application development and deployment, enhanced integration between IVR and call center tools, and potential upgrades for report and data analysis.

Angel solutions have been great as standalone applications, but full-featured integration with call center management tools have been less straightforward. With Genesys soon to be in control of the Angel platform, I would expect to see a tighter coupling of Angel’s application builder and Genesys CTI components like TServer and URS. Angel is an alternative to GVP, and it will be interesting to see how the implementations evolve.

Regarding reporting, Angel was developed originally by Microstrategy, a leader in Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence – IVR being a common tool for data collection. I would expect that the experience of the Angel team will be absorbed and integrated into the roadmap for the Interactive Insights reporting line.
The acquisition is continued  evidence that the cloud is becoming the defacto IT strategy.

If you’re a contact center manager, comfortable with your current premise-based systems, you would be wise to begin analyzing the move to the cloud for your contact center. Your CFOs and CIOs are taking notice for sure, and continued movement by top industry players supports this trend.

Author

Jim Schweitzer

I am the Senior Vice President for Vision Point Systems, Inc., and lead strategic technology platform partnerships that are the key to Vision Point Systems’ solutions for our customers. Key partnerships include Appian, Twilio, and Salesforce. I am also focused on developing defined offerings in each channel and enhancing VPS’ identity in each market that we serve.

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