The Contact Center Market Continues to Recede from On-Premises Systems

In May, Genesys announced an end-of-life schedule for PureConnect premises and hosted offerings acquired from Interactive Intelligence in 2016. Today, Genesys announced a similar shutdown of their two-year-old Multicloud CX platform, originally known as Genesys Engage Cloud when launched in 2013. Many users of highly complex installations will feel the pinch of time. I cannot speculate as to the ownership and financial pressures, seemingly in the wake of a delayed IPO, which led to these Genesys’ decisions.

Lace this into the August financial revelations from Avaya where they stated, “…there is substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern.” And a subsequent interview between leading industry-analyst Sheila McGee-Smith and Avaya’s new CEO Alan Masarak deepens the trouble. In it, he told McGee-Smith he didn’t dispute her claim that “…Avaya doesn’t have a recognized CCaaS solution.”

The market is seeing the inevitable retreat from premises-based systems in both number and the investments made in them – all while the cost to keep them working increases. Genesys’ announcement concerning Multicloud CX implementations, and the application’s ties to their premises-based legacy offer, add to this theme.

The good news for these contact center users is that the people who invented, built, and maintained those systems are, in many cases, long gone. Those highly-talented leaders and skilled engineers have been betting their careers in moving to cloud contact center vendors – ready to ease the customers' journey.

Many of the best leaders from Cisco’s Enterprise Communications group now lead Five9. Our head of Professional and Implementation Services spent a decade leading that practice at Genesys – and has assembled the premises and cloud expertise required to smooth the transition from any contact center to the Five9 application platform. It’s a transition we’ve helped customers through literally thousands of times – from a handful of agents to tens of thousands. It’s just one of the reasons our Professional Services enjoy an insane NPS score of +90.

Five9’s experience extends to any installation type – on-premises, hosted, managed service or even cloud-to-cloud – Five9 has the expertise to support companies as they make this move. Similarly, if you’re a reseller supporting any of these installation types, Five9 can enable you to help your customers too. 

Beyond this deep experience, Five9 helps prospects become Five9 users through our Liftoff program, a combination of transition services and pricing assistance specifically tailored to the needs of Avaya, Cisco and Genesys users. These services include a holistic needs assessment; the automated movement of system data; report creation and customization; and the assessment, upgrading, and migrating of self-service applications.

Finally, if a contact center move is triggering a corresponding unified communications shift, Five9 has connectors into the leading cloud UCaaS solutions from Microsoft, RingCentral, Zoom and others. But if the need is to simply connect to an existing premises system, we can do that too.

We get it, end-of-life announcements are never welcomed. But there are two things you need to ask from your future vendor: Can you meet today’s and tomorrow’s technological requirements? And do you have the proven ability to clear any obstacles for a smoother ride? Five9, as one of the creators in this space, has the proven platform for today and tomorrow – and we have the customers and awards to prove it.