List of companies purchased by Genesys

[victor]

Hi,

conseros made me think about Genesys overall direction and I have looked at some of their earlier acquisitions.

SDE, VoiceGenie, Informiam, Telera.... am I the only one seeing the pattern here?

[Adam G.]

I'm seeing a lack of imagination from A-L\Genesys in [b]all[/b] areas of their business.

[tony]

Hmmm... A healthy debate!  ...My turn...

<thinking out loud>

Genesys are market leaders in their interfacing technologies of traditional and (perhaps) SIP/VoIP voice interaction engines for CTI - they are not market leaders in CRM, IVR, BI or anything else.  To buy in the technologies and apply them to their Market Leading product (singular) does not make them the market leader in anything else but CTI, as hard as they might try to push the other products...

Also, over the years, I have noted that it takes them longer and longer to integrate new ("bought out") Solutions into their Framework Layer.  I remember working with Outbound on what looked like OS-Warp screens splattered all over my Desktop (5.2?) and WfM which came with a completely different interface to CME (6.0?).  GVP/VG are more candidates that could do with an overhaul to allow them to be administered via the standard Genesys Framework but they work in a fundamentally different way.  In actual fact, with the diversity of the product portfolio from Genesys, I've always been a little perplexed as to why;

WfM is pretty much a "stand-alone" Solution - it has it's own Framework, Configuration Manager, Engines and Real-Time and Historical Reporting components.  Many of the configurable items exist outside of the standard Genesys Configuration Environment and whilst you can configure CCPulse+ and CCA to work with the available components, it is not recommended, since WfM has it's own "versions" of these items.
GVP has (to my knowledge) no reliance on the core Genesys Framework.
ICON/Infomart [i]and [/i] CCA/Hyperion are both "on sale" as seperate product suites - one Volume and the other Interaction Reporting...

With the general exception of the core product (ERS/NRS/TServer/URS) and perhaps Outbound Voice (OCS/CPD/OCM/Dialogic) and CCA, everything else seems to have been "tacked-on" to the Genesys Framework and a common interface appears a long way off... unless that is about to change in v8...?

</thinking out loud>

Tony

[Adam G.]

Arh Tony,

You mention ICON\INFOMART. Even you are too young to remember the Call Con and [b]DART[/b] combo that used to be the only historical reporting offering. They are similarish. Let's say that DART was probably the worst product Genesys ever produced and even Support's recommendation was not to use it!

Rather than hijack this thread, back to the main theme. From a business point of view buying up companies makes sense. Rather than have internal projects that could end up being a white elephant, Genesys let others take the risk on new ideas and once these have matured and are technically proven, the companies are snapped up.

Pavel

[tony]

DART...? 5.1... yep, been there....


I'm not so sure that buying up a company's [i]product[/i] and re-developing it is all that beneficial.  I mean, not the whole product - maybe the [i]technology[/i]...  Take GVP, for example - and although it does not compare to VTO, at least VTO features in Config (centralized) and it has a GUI which runs like a Genesys product (VTO Manager).  GVP is a whole other product with a whole raft of other skills and components required to get it up and running.

Then there is the Reporting Suite - is it Hyperion?  Or is it Business Objects...?  Or is it whatever you want it to be...?

With a little application, Genesys could leverage the [i]technologies[/i] they have bought, rather than the [i]products[/i] themselves and actually have some integrated technologies...

(No longer hijacking the thread! )

Tony

[Adam G.]

Leverage is a BS word. Didn't you read The Wire?

[Fra]

Ban Tony!! 

[victor]

Not trying to hijack thread here, but Agent Pulse was pretty interesting concept I thought. A lot of companies now making money of it.

Regarding Genesys direction, I am looking at all the acquisitions and I ask myself: what is Genesys trying to accomplish? And to be frank, it seems that Genesys is moving away from call center and into business flow. Informiam is a very good example of this. Also, SIP T-Server, while it is being marketed as a call center product, it seems to me that it can be used in conjunction with a myriad of other products to distribute tasks and files as well. Who said that SIP is voice only?

The whole thing reminds me more and more of Microsoft LCS, only while LCS focuses on middle-to-lower tier personnel, Genesys is trying to become filenet with executive overview. Just think about what can be done if you replace calls with transactions and callers with business name! You get an instant financial tracking package showing you where the money went,  how it is being distributed, and where it should be focused on!

An instant health check on your company, transaction oversight, forecasting...

The more I think about it, the more ingenious the whole plan looks to me... CCPulse can be renamed AccountPulse, Datamart...well, we can keep it as it is, and Softphone is going to become an interface to SFA, CRM and other three-letter words (no, no "Pavel" or "Fra" or "Ton"y )

[tony]

Vic - I agree and it's no surprise that Genesys are moving towards Business Flow.  Let's face it, the Routing engines do what they say on the tin and only the likes of us ("engineers"/"techies") appreciate that.  It's not normal that we hold the budgets to be able to buy anything else from Genesys and the only "window" into the world of Genesys from a business perspective is through Business Flow.  So, if Genesys can produce a plethora (is that a BS word...? lemme check.... no, it isn't!) of "windows" which benefit the business by giving them the means to understand what is happening within the core routing and are able to interpret that into Business Terminology, it makes sense for Genesys to (strategically) enhance those "windows", to generate more revenue from the guys and gals holding the purse strings...

Genesys have already sold the engineers and techies on the excellent capabilities within the routing, whether that is E1/T1 (IB/OB), SIP, VoIP, email, White Mail, SMS, IM or Webchat.  Now they are concentratring their efforts on Insight for the Businesses, so that the Business Managers become "empowered" and "informed" to make the right business decisions which can be attributed and amended to directly affect the technical engineering of the(ir) Solutions...

- Or am I wrong...?

Tony

[tony]

[quote author=Fra link=topic=3803.msg16415#msg16415 date=1233740513]
Ban Tony!! 
[/quote]

Yay!

[victor]

How about making a package that actually connects all of this together?

[Adam G.]

[quote author=victor link=topic=3803.msg16451#msg16451 date=1233826074]
How about making a package that actually connects all of this together?
[/quote]

Well they do connect, but use different architectures!!

[victor]

not for long. I think Genesys has been very successful in slowly moving the project and embedding it into its own ecosystem. While there are some very spectacular failures in a beginning (GVP, CCA, WFM, VHT) over time, we see products mature and become something very useful: GVP 8 (!!!!), CCA+Hyperion, WFM 7.6!!!!...

In the next five years, I think a lot of this products will be even more different than now.

[tony]

Then there is a danger that, in the interim, us engineers beta test their latest products...  C'mon, we've all raised SR's which have been met by a Hot Fix because something fairly basic was wrong with a product - they have some sort of reliance on that level of "test"/feedback to ensure their products are stable.  And, in support of this approach, they cannot concievably emulate every client's environment, so it's best endeavours with the more popular interfacing products (Avaya's, Hipath's, Windows, SQL...) before they release into GA.

imho, you have to wait for at least 3-4 dot releases (7.[b]x[/b].xxx) before you can be assured of stability in any "Genesys" product, after a major version upgrade ([b]x[/b].x.xxx).  And (getting back to the point) that is based on the fact that other products are bought in and re-branded - it doesn't follow that the product in itself automatically "becomes" a Genesys product because the labels have been replaced - it has to [i]evolve [/i] into one.

No, the point I think I am making (if there is one) is that Genesys are concentrating less and less on trying to integrate new products into their Suite and more and more on purchasing "useful" products, to sell alongside their Best Sellers.  Nothing wrong with that and it makes perfect business sense...

Tony