The Top 10 Vendor Partnerships of 2019 (so far…)

It's not easy going it alone

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top-10-Vendor Partnerships
Unified Communications

Published: November 8, 2019

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

We’ve noticed a lot of trends in the UC industry over 2019. Companies have started to embrace collaboration and “Teams” tools as the central point of their communication strategy. Businesses of all sizes are starting to discover the benefits of things like artificial intelligence and automation when it comes to boosting worker productivity.

Perhaps one of the biggest trends of all has been the arrival of increased consolidation in the marketplace. Brands are quickly realising that if they want to deliver the widest selection of products and features to their customers, then they need to work hand-in-hand with other companies that supplement their approach to UC.

Now that we’re heading rapidly into 2020, it’s the perfect time to look back and celebrate some of the biggest partnerships from 2019. Here are the collaborations that we think are going to have the most significant impact on the years ahead.

1.    Avaya and RingCentral Join Forces

One of the most talked-about collaborations in recent UC history, RingCentral and Avaya’s decision to partner on a new age of UCaaS, is indicative of the future state of the marketplace. Avaya knew that it couldn’t continue to stand out in the rapidly changing environment with a legacy-focused portfolio. Although Avaya has a strong heritage in the marketplace, and impressive selection of tools to offer, it was severely limited in the number of cloud offerings it could deliver.

By partnering with RingCentral, Avaya was able to maintain it’s dedicated customer base and bring some of its incredible industry background into a new strategy for future growth. The combined solutions offered by RingCentral and Avaya will allow tomorrow’s companies to tap into a wider range of future-ready services and cloud tools. Going forward, we’re sure to see more legacy companies preparing for years ahead with a similar strategy.

2.    Zoom Teams Up with Five9 and Twilio

More than just one of the world’s leading video conferencing tools, Zoom has proven itself this year to be a state-of-the-art solution for collaboration. With one of the most impressive IPOs that we’ve ever seen, Zoom has shocked the market with an incredible selection of products designed for better productivity and efficiency. This April, Zoom even announced the arrival of Zoom Phone, for easier call management within the simple Zoom interface.

To bring more functionality to its users, Zoom knew that it needed to branch out and make connections with the right leading brands. Fortunately, today’s Zoom users can now access all the benefits of phone connectivity with a SIP solution that automatically connects to external Five9 and Twilio platforms. The collaboration with Twilio and Five9 means that Zoom users can manage call routing options through a host of amazing providers.

3.    Mitel and Talkdesk Come Together

Talkdesk, one of the world’s leaders in cloud contact centre solutions, announced a new partnership with Mitel this year too. Mitel is one of the best-known business communications providers in the marketplace. Together, the two companies will create a solution specifically designed to meet the demands of the evolving contact centre. After all, in today’s age of customer experience, the business that can offer the most immersive service experience is the one that comes out on top.

The newly-created MiCloud Connect CX offering from Talkdesk and Mitel provides companies with an award-winning CCaaS solution for future growth. The MiCloud Connect CX combines the extensive UC footprint from Mitel with the ever-evolving selection of products for customer experience from Talkdesk to deliver something genuinely transformative.

4.    Slack and Salesforce Deepen Partnership

Today’s employees need simple and streamlined solutions to help them stay as productive and efficient as possible. While tools like Slack help employees to collaborate on problems, and solutions like Salesforce support a better customer experience through quick and effective service, both offerings are a lot more convenient when they work well together. When team members can access the information that they need about a customer issue within Slack, they can reduce the amount of time spent switching between applications when they need to solve common problems.

At this year’s Slack Frontiers conference, Slack announced that it would be taking it’s partnership with Salesforce to the next level, with the arrival of new integrations for the Salesforce Service Cloud. The expanded connection between Salesforce and Slack will allow both companies to better serve their customers with an immersive and combined interface.

5.    Polycom and Plantronics Celebrate Their Union

It was technically back in 2018 when Plantronics originally announced its decision to purchase Polycom for about $2 billion. However, we only began to see the impact of that new acquisition this year. About a year after the initial announcement took place, Polycom and Plantronics introduced a new brand that brings the two companies together in unison. The “Poly” name celebrates the combined legacy and reliability that Polycom and Plantronics have to bring to today’s customers.

While many businesses can struggle to rebrand successfully after an acquisition or merger, Polycom and Plantronics made the union look easy. Since March, we’ve seen Poly introducing a host of fantastic tools and solutions for the communication industry, showcasing the skills of the combined businesses.

6.    NICE inContact and Atos Collaborate

Atos, one of the world’s leaders in digital transformation solutions on the hybrid cloud, announced its new partnership with NICE inContact this year. NICE inContact provides one of the world’s leading contact centre software solutions, offering a state-of-the-art customer experience platform on the cloud. The two companies partnered to make the NICE inContact CXone solution the preferred Contact Centre as a Service offering from Atos.

Atos now offers CXone as their de facto solution to thousands of dedicated contact centre agents across the globe. CXone will be integrated with the Circuit solution from Atos and gives Atos a market-leading offering in CCaaS to help them stand out in the modern marketplace. It’s clear that Atos made a good choice with their partnership when you consider NICE inContact’s leading position in the industry.

7.    Vonage Branches Out with SendinBlue

Market leader in the business communication and collaboration landscape, Vonage, announced a particularly interesting partnership this year with SendinBlue. As a provider of cloud-based email marketing and automation technology, SendinBlue gives businesses a great way to stay connected to their customers via email. While it’s easy to overlook email in an age of video and instant messaging, Vonage believes that the partnership with SendinBlue will be a powerful tool for their clients.

SendinBlue’s GDPR-compliant technology makes it easier for customers to nurture their leads and prospects into customers. The partnership between Vonage and SendinBlue is supported by Nexmo, Vonage’s leading solution for CPaaS and APIs. According to Vonage, the partnership simply fills a gap in the Nexmo portfolio for email tools that today’s business leaders can rely on.

8.    Red Box and Tether, Tied Together

Tethr, a provider of leading solutions for cloud-based conversational analytics, recently announced the arrival of a new partnership with RedBox – a leading specialist in voice communications. Tethr is best-known for offering an intelligent platform that combines customer experience research and machine learning to offer contextual insights into the customer journey. Alternatively, Red Box helps organisations to securely and safely capture voice conversations.

Now that Red Box and Tethr are working together, they’ll be able to help their clients easily gain business insights from the relevant information that they collect. Red Box can capture audio from over 55 telephony systems (including legacy offerings). Additionally, Tether’s machine learning platform is trained with more than a decade of customer and service research insights.

9.    Pexip and Videxio Launch New Partner Program

Pexip, a world-leading communications brand, and Videxio, a video conferencing expert, merged together into a single company in January 2019. The merger was an exciting opportunity for Pexip to take its communication portfolio to the next level. Throughout the first few months of 2019, Pexip concentrated heavily on bringing the core products of the two brands together so that they could more easily offering a complete selection of products and features for their customers. According to Pexip, they wanted to create a brand that built on the history of both companies, while also positioning them for the future.

In June this year, Pexip and Videxio launched their new profile, demonstrating the fact that they were prepared to take on the next chapter in their story with a single and aligned set of goals. The updated portfolio also featured the arrival of a new logo from Pexip, intended to signify the things that make the brand unique.

10.   Yamaha UC and Huddly Join Together

Finally, as part of the InfoComm event for 2019, video and audio conferencing experts, Yamaha UC announced their partnership with Huddly. Huddly is a leading intelligent video conferencing company, dedicated to supporting the rise of new video-based conversations. Yamaha UC was excited to unveil a brand-new selection of AI-powered video and audio collaboration tools this year, including the Yamaha ESB-1080 soundbar, complete with built-in Huddly camera as part of the Yamaha UC Collaboration kit.

The amazing Yamaha UC Collaboration kit supported by Huddly technology allows today’s companies to access everything they need for great video and audio in one package. The two companies have successfully joined forces to provide immersive and dynamic audio matched to a fantastic high-definition video experience.

Which Partnerships Inspired You This Year?

Those are our top 10 partnerships and collaborations for 2019 (so far).

Which partnerships inspired you this year and which do you think will have the biggest impact on the industry as we move into 2020. Are there are any significant collaborations that we’ve missed?

Let us know in the comments or join the conversation on social media.

 

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