Genesys To Acquire Contact Center Rival Interactive Intelligence For $1.4 Billion
The unified communications landscape continues to get shaken up this year as call center software provider Genesys Telecommunications unveiled plans Wednesday to acquire rival Interactive Intelligence for approximately $1.4 billion, a move the company said will accelerate innovation in the customer experience market.
Daly City Calif.-based Genesys said the purchase will allow the company to execute on its mission of powering the ’world’s best customer experiences at scale, anytime, anywhere – over any channel, in the cloud and on-premise,’ according to Genesys CEO Paul Segre.
’Our combined product portfolio will provide the broadest set of transformative customer experience solutions optimized for customers of all sizes and sophistication levels, available both in the cloud and on-premise,’ said Segre, in a statement.
[Related: Interactive Intelligence Reframes Partner Program Around Cloud, Recurring Revenue Opportunities]
Indianapolis-based Interactive Intelligence, which was recently named in Gartner’s 2016 Magic Quadrant For Unified Communications, owns a Customer Interaction Center (CIC), an all-in-one software solution that offers both contact center and UC functionality.
Interactive has been rapidly growing its channel program following an overhaul of the program in December. That program is focused on its PureCloud contact center-as-a-service platform that launched in 2015, a product that has helped it attract 50 new channel partners this year. PureCloud is a multi-tenant, enterprise-grade cloud system based on a microservice architecture that leverages Amazon Web Services.
’We will significantly invest across the entire Interactive Intelligence product portfolio to support the continued momentum of Purecloud, cloud communications-as-a-service and Customer Interaction Centre,’ said Segre.
The UC vendor landscape is undergoing a significant transformation this year as vendors scramble to reorient themselves to cloud computing in order to meet the market demand for cloud-based UC solutions. Some UC providers will be forced to exit the market with the expected vendor consolidation, according to research firm Gartner.
Industry heavyweights like Avaya and ShoreTel are hiring financial advisors to explore new strategic options, which could include potential sales of the companies or selling off specific assets. Polycom is set to be bought by Siris Capital Group, while ShoreTel recently acquired cloud-based UC specialist Corvisa.
It was reported that Genesys was in talks to acquire Avaya’s contact center business for around $4 billion earlier this year.
Genesys said it's committed to accelerate innovation around the customer experience with more than $1.3 billion in annual revenue and nearly $200 million in R&D spending. Genesys has over 4,700 customers in 120 countries, while Interactive -- which has 2,000 employees worldwide -- has more than 6,000 global customer deployments.
Under the agreement, Interactive shareholders will receive $60.50 per share in cash, representing a premium of 36 percent to Interactive Intelligence’s unaffected closing share price on 28 July.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year. The acquisition has already been unanimously approved by Interactive Intelligence’s board of directors and Genesys’ operating committee