According to a Tern Systems industry report in June 2009, Cisco demonstrated sales momentum in global IVR ports shipped with a 21% gain 2007-2008. Genesys GVP continues its dominance as #1 with 13% of the market share and growth of 14%. Cisco clearly gained customers at the expense of #3 Intervoice and #5 Nortel, which is under bankruptcy proceedings. Avaya, at #4, showed numbers that indicated stagnant sales, and I’m surprised that it actually trails behind Intervoice.
The two IVR titans are without a doubt Genesys and Cisco. It’s impressive that Cisco has become a major contact center vendor in recent years as the company was founded and grew as a data equipment manufacturer. Competitors like Genesys, Avaya, Intervoice, and Nortel have been in the business for years: Genesys has always focused on CTI; Intervoice’s forte was IVRs; and Avaya and Nortel were traditional PBX firms which saw contact center as a natural additional to their portfolios. Cisco’s duel with Genesys only underscores the trend of IP-centric communications and unified communications.
This begs the question: When communication is unified and standardized across all (most?) platform and vendors, then what differentiates their offerings?
How about user and development tools? I think tools will become the differentiating factor in deciding who maintains sustainability and growth. Good tools will be the value added element alongside an IVR sale. For example, Genesys in its latest version 8 release is clearly re-tooling to make administration and development easier and more efficient. Then there are platform and vendor independent companies like OpenMethods which makes development tools like OpenVXML for the masses, whether you’re a novice or experienced VXML developer.
We are at the dawn of the contact center tools era.
Eugene
