Welcome to our round-up of the biggest news in the UC space over the past week.
The main themes from the latest batch of industry news were predominately in the contact centre space.
Zoom Invests in Genesys
Zoom was revealed as an investor in the latest funding round for Genesys, which raised $580m at a valuation of $21bn.
The round was led by Salesforce and also sure ServiceNow invest cash in the customer experience vendor.
Tony Bates, CEO and Chairman of Genesys, said:
“Two years ago, we saw the challenge businesses faced in meeting the expectations of consumers and employees around digital experiences”
“We realised we had an opportunity to transform not only our company but the overall industry.”
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Launches CCaaS Offering
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise expanded its as-a-service offering, as well as its move into the customer experience space, with the launch of its CCaaS solution.
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Connect has been created in partnership with AKIO and is optimised omnichannel interactions through voice and digital channels, including social media accounts.
The firm said the new service will complement the Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch Contact Center Standard Edition.
Nicolas Brunel, Executive Vice President of the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Communication Business Division, said:
“Our installed base of over 350,000 agents demonstrates our continued interest in customer service.
“This innovative CCaaS solution, developed with our partner AKIO, brings a real and tangible competitive advantage to our enterprise customers”
8×8 CEO Talks Through Fuze Acquisition
8×8 announced its huge acquisition of Fuze earlier this month.
On the day the deal was revealed, UC Today sat down with 8×8 CEO, Dave Sipes, to talk through the rationale behind the move.
You can view the full interview here:
RingCentral COO Departs
RingCentral announced last week that COO Anand Eswaran will depart to join an unnamed company with $1bn in annual recurring revenue.
Eswaran joined RingCentral in January 2020 from Microsoft.
Vlad Shmunis, RingCentral Founder and CEO, said: “I would like to thank Anand for his contributions to RingCentral over the last two years.
“We are happy for the next chapter in his career and wish him good luck on all fronts”
Mio Gets Investment from Zoom and Cisco
Interoperability software vendor Mio has raised $8.7m in Series A funding, interestingly, with Cisco and Zoom among the investors.
Mio’s interoperability solution uses publicly available APIs to connect chat functions between leading providers such as Zoom, Webex by Cisco, Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Tom Hadfield, CEO and co-founder of Mio, said: “Today’s announcement is a major milestone in the industry’s journey towards a fully open collaboration ecosystem.
“This commitment moves us one step closer to collaboration Nirvana – where end users can seamlessly communicate with anyone regardless of what platform they’re using”
“Cisco and Zoom investing in Mio is recognition that large enterprise customers are insisting on close integration between their collaboration tools.”
