I can share with you my points of view on Genesys and Bright Pattern and others as an SIer. Perhaps, it will help. It may not.
I was reading up on Bright Paterrn myself. It seems to be making quite a headway these days. Is it good enough to completely phaseout Genesys? Hard to tell. One thing for sure, I concur that PureCloud and PureConnect are making it very difficult for companies like ours to continue to invest into Genesys consulting. This is the reason why I am starting to find companies like Bright Pattern as a way to augment on the existing Genesys footprint. My strategy for a moment is to continue to focus on pushing Genesys in a legacy environment and instead of investing into Genesys anything above voice, fulfill the need with other solutions if I can.
Here is my reasoning for it:
Genesys is no longer selling through their Genesys reseller network and I see a lot of deals deals done directly between Genesys and end-user. Even existing Genesys user until now services by Genesys SIers like ours. As a result, our role is downsized to providing some consulting and perhaps some integration with third parties. It pays for the job, but it does not give us room to continue to invest into Genesys education and/or development. On average it takes a year to get an employee up to speed on the product and without ability to source license and support, I find it critical to start supplementing the existing Genesys practice with third-party products.
Several people have pointed out that Genesys provides ways to develop on top of its platform. I agree that Genesys has some of the most wonderful and flexible ways for integration. I used to love to develop on top of Genesys! I started with their OCX toolset, developed on their GIS, ActiveX Desktop, forayed into Platform SDK and a myriad of other devtools. While I found it super engaging as a programmer, I also found that in majority of cases, the effort does not pay off. It may work for your when you are an independent consultant and bill per month; however, as an SIer it is less attractive.
The reasons are (at least for us):
[list]
[li]It would require additional licenses, which would be more expensive than the contraption we were developing on top of it. [/li]
[li]After convincing the customer to place a PO, the licenses and maintenance would not be sourced through us[/li]
[li]Usually, anything that scales is usually detected by Genesys, and is release as a native feature in two years or so, making our addition obsolete[/li]
[/list]
So the answer to all of that was to think bigger, on a grander scale, and that usually involved building along Genesys and not on top.
Genesys is moving ahead with lightning speed, and there are companies that are capable of always being on top of everything. Genesys roadmap so far, is fraught with unannounced failures and poor judgment calls. Their detours into IPMX, Genesys 6.5, GVP, Genesys Express, OmniPCX, InfoMart/Hyperion are just the tip of the iceberg. And while for a $1B company it is expected, the lack of consistency is not for the faint of heart. Nor for SI firm that do not have deep pockets.
In my case, I like to learn new technologies; however, I like to do it at my pace. Genesys has a tendency to make people like us redundant if we do not continue to invest into their product no matter what.
Perhaps, Genesys marketplace will take off, and finally, Genesys development by the likes of the firms other than TCS, Accenture and TCS will pay off in a long run; however, this is not the first time that Genesys promised it. I shudder at where we would be if we did not branch out into Verint, Salesforce, SfB, Cisco and others. So I am uneasy to gamble on a hope alone when there is a huge world out there with companies clearly starting to make an impact in the market, and missing some of the most critical components that we have already learned to develop over and over again. Developing on top of Genesys maybe fun; however, I am seeing Bright Pattern and the likes as the platforms where we can leverage our existing knowhow and product offering.
