Tim, Jerric, Nitin, and I have concluded our adventures at Genesys G-Force in Orlando. It was my first attendance and I must say that Genesys (or Alcatel-Lucent) knows how to throw a good party for its customers. Aside from all the food, candies, and drinks, I dare say that most attendees were interested in the product roadmap from Genesys. This year it was especially exciting because of all the hype surrounding Genesys 8, a major release milestone.
But before we delve into Genesys, let me share about OpenMethods. After all, G-Force is about more than customers, but also Genesys partners.
OpenMethods had a booth at the Partner Pavilion (you can see some photos by following @OpenMethods Twitter stream). We looped some OpenVXML presentations and tutorials as well as a screen of our famous RightNow-Genesys Adapter. Both received considerable interest from Genesys customers, especially those who’re overseas (this G-Force had many in attendees from Japan and Latin America). The RightNow Technologies booth was nearby, so sometimes we were able to jointly promote our products.
People were impressed with the Adapter’s support of not only the Genesys SIP Server, but also a roadmap of supporting other SIP endpoints and a framework of easily hooking into other CRM systems. As the economy continues on a downturn trend, many companies are realizing the importance of an efficient contact center, and that includes using CTI to the fullest by integrating the CRM desktop with the telephony platform. The OpenMethods adapter provides this “glue” in a consistent way, unlike some other solutions which are more like “duct tape” (we had someone come by the booth describing their CRM/CTI integration using antiquated DDE calls).
Now about Genesys 8. The star of the show was SIP. Genesys is investing heavily into its SIP capabilities, starting with the SIP Server. SIP is also a technology which has gained much popularity due to the downward economy. Deploying SIP saves money, saves time, and easier to scale.
Other noteworthy products include Genesys Composer, an OpenVXML-like IDE used to develop VoiceXML apps for the GVP and evolved to be the IRD replacement too. In other words, developers eventually will use Composer to create GVP and Routing apps. Genesys is also adopting SCXML as the Routing strategy format. It seems Genesys is finally opening up its technologies and embracing more open standards probably because of customer demands.
Proprietary technology can only go so far. Just look at Microsoft’s battles with Firefox, MySQL, OpenOffice, Linux, Android, etc.
Genesys will also release Mobile Advisor for the iPhone. It’s a very slick business application for contact center managers and supervisors to get a graphical view of the business. It will be one of the first iPhone apps for the contact center professional and further cements Apple’s significance in area of mobile enterprise applications.
Overall it was a good conference. I’m excited to see how the Genesys products evolve in the near future, but moreover I’m interested to see what exciting products and apps come from customers and partners!
Eugene
April 12th, 2010
10:22 am
[…] of best practices, new products, quality services, and a very good time. I was at G-Force Orlando last year and had a blast. If there’s one thing Genesys knows how to do well outside of CTI it’s […]