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Five9 CEO Burkland Named Semifinalist in Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 Program

By Ashok Bindra
TMCnet Contributor

Ernst & Young LLP has announced that Mike Burkland, CEO at Five9 (News - Alert), a source of cloud-based contact center software, has been named as a semifinalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2012 program in the Northern California region.

The award recognizes the entrepreneur’s excellence and extraordinary success in innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.

Since joining the company four years ago, Burkland has successfully built Five9 into a renowned cloud-based contact center software provider. It allows enterprises to replace legacy premise-based contact center systems with cloud-based contact center software that offers a better ROI, improved productivity and streamlined operations.

The company’s key competitors are leading premises-based contact center providers like Cisco (News - Alert), Avaya and Genesys.

According to Ernst & Young, Burkland led Five9 to invest heavily in new technologies and go-to-market strategies targeting both SMB and large enterprises. The company subsequently focused on developing enterprise-grade technology, combining inbound and outbound call center functionality in the cloud, which is an industry first.

Media reports show that under Burkland’s leadership, Five9 has grown to approximately 350 employees and more than 1,500 customers, achieving a record 70 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2011. As companies realize the significant benefits of Five9's cloud-based solutions, it may be well positioned to continue increasing the market share.

Now in its 26th year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com (News - Alert), Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Fred Smith of FedEx, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of Best Buy (News - Alert), Andrew Mason of Groupon, Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn and many more.