talkdesk

Industry Voices on Avaya’s Next Move

By Shai Berger on August 28, 2019

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It was hard to turn anywhere last week and not see news or commentary about Avaya. Their CEO announced that Avaya is in “advanced discussions with multiple parties” for a “strategic transaction” and that the process will be concluded in 30 days. As the behemoth of the call center industry, with $3B in revenue and 150,000 customers, whatever this move will be, it will have broad repercussions. We wrote about it last week.

While we wait for the shoe to drop, here’s a quick summary of comments from around the industry.

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Big Vendor Announcements Focus on AI at Enterprise Connect

By Shai Berger on March 21, 2019

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The Enterprise Connect conference is one of the largest events in communications technology. It’s often the venue for major announcements from the biggest vendors. It was here that Twilio announced Flex. It was here that Avaya announced Breeze, SnappIns, and Zang. It was here that Amazon launched Connect.

Big announcements this year include the launch of two new cloud contact centers called Edify and Thrio; a new contact center from Vonage called CX Cloud Express (based on their acquisition of NVM which we covered here); and the rebranding of Polycom/Plantronics as “Poly.”

But as for the big call center vendors, their announcements were less dramatic, and all revolved around AI.

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Amazon, Twilio, and Vonage Lead the Way to Pure Consumption Pricing

By Shai Berger on March 20, 2018

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It’s been an action-packed few weeks in the contact center industry. Recent announcements from Twilio, Vonage and Amazon are worth a closer look because I think they outline an important shift in the industry.

For the last decade, the dominant tension in the call center world has been between the “old way”: buying equipment via up-front payment plus maintenance contracts; and the “new way”: buying a cloud service via monthly subscription. Premise vs. Cloud. CapEx vs OpEx. It was an easy battle to understand, in part because the parallels with battles in other areas of enterprise software. But now there’s a “new new way”.

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Twilio Shakes Up the Cloud Call Center World with Flex

By Shai Berger on February 20, 2018

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Rumors broke on Friday that Twilio will be launching its own call center product called “Flex” next month. If true, this would be a major shake-up of the cloud call center world. There are already many cloud call centers available, but this one is different.

First, Twilio has strong financial resources to develop and market this new product. Second, Twilio has an advantage over most other competitors in that it runs a massively scaled, global telephony network. Third, and most importantly, Twilio has – until now – been solely providing call center building blocks that other call centers were built on. Now, Twilio will be competing with its customers, at least to some extent.

How big of an impact will this be? It really boils down to one question…

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With AppConnect, Talkdesk is Doing B2B Apps the Way They Should Be

By Shai Berger on August 15, 2017

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Talkdesk rose quickly from humble origins to make big waves in the call center space. Their fast growth has made industry veterans rethink their assumptions. For example, it was thought that the core capabilities of call centers (queuing and routing voice calls at high volume) were “tough” problems to solve. That toughness was supposed to be a barrier against new entrants, but Talkdesk used tools like AWS and Twilio, combined with a large team of off-shore developers, and proved that assumption wrong.

Talkdesk continues to punch through barrier after barrier in catching up with the old guard. All the major call center vendors have some form of partner program, and most have adapted those programs into some form of “marketplace” experience. A few months ago, Talkdesk joined that club too, but they’re doing something different.

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Avaya Chugging Through Chapter 11, But the World’s Not Waiting

By Shai Berger on July 18, 2017

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Avaya Chugging Through Chapter 11, But the World’s Not Waiting We’re now 6 months into the largest bankruptcy event in the history of the call center industry.

Avaya filed for Chapter 11 protection in January. The negotiations among the many stakeholders have happened behind closed doors so it’s hard to assess where we are along the timeline.

Only one significant event has been visible to the public so far: In March, Avaya agreed to sell its networking business to Extreme Networks for $100 million. That move was received positively by analysts and commentators.

But the big question remains: Are we a month away from a resolution? A year? No one knows. As the bankruptcy continues, the patience of partners, analysts and customers wears down. Each day is also another opportunity for competitors to pick away at Avaya’s customers.

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Speaking at OpenTalk Conference, Thinking About the Big Picture

By Shai Berger on April 26, 2017

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Speaking at OpenTalk Conference, Thinking About the Big Picture Fonolo is exhibiting this week at the OpenTalk conference, which is being organized by TalkDesk, the current rising star of the call center world. It’s an interesting time in the industry as upstarts like TalkDesk, RingCentral and Twilio steal the limelight from “legacy” players. This was nicely symbolized last month at Enterprise Connect, the industry’s dominant conference, where Avaya’s long-held status as prime sponsor was taken over by RingCentral and its keynote presentation taken over by Twilio.

We’re excited to be working with TalkDesk on some exciting projects, and in general to be part of the effort to modernize the whole call center experience. In fact, I will be speaking on a panel titled “Bringing Call Centers into the Modern Era”. It got me thinking about the historical arc that brought us to this moment. Continue reading →