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Telstra's Venture Capital Group Invests in a Hosted Call Center Provider

By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

Telstra’s (News - Alert) venture capital group has unveiled its third investment in a month in a local hosted call center provider IPscape (News - Alert). On June 21, Telstra led a $35 million Series E round in Silicon Valley start-up Ooyala, a provider of online video management, publishing, analytics and monetization. Then on June 25, Telstra revealed it had invested in Sydney-based online restaurant reservations start-up Dimmi.

The deal, reported to be worth below the $5 million mark, will see Telstra incorporate IPscape’s technology into its own virtual contact center solution for its large corporate clients. Deena Shiff, head of Telstra’s venture capital arm, last year told ZDNet Australia Telstra has set aside $50 million to invest in technologies that align with its commercial and financial efforts.

According to Simon Burke, chief executive of IPscape, the partnership with Telstra will accelerate the adoption of cloud solutions in the Asia region. Burke said in a statement more businesses will be able to use Telstra Global VCC to create an agile, smart customer experience solution.

“When IPscape was established in 2007, our vision was to change the game and give all businesses…a better way of buying and managing contact centre technology,” Burke said. “Five years later, IPscape is enabling forward-thinking businesses to communicate with their customers in the same way their customers already communicate with each other.”

The partnership with Telstra Global, through the new virtual call center solution, takes this vision to the next step by providing a global solution that all businesses can use. “In five years, we expect cloud solutions such as the Telstra Global VCC to be the norm, and the traditional to simply be seen as out of date,” Burke said.

According to Nathan Bell, Telstra Global director of portfolio and marketing, global businesses are looking to innovative public cloud technology solutions to help them respond faster to changing customer demands, while demanding greater business flexibility.

“Today’s customer service environment is the most challenging and complex we have ever faced,” Bell said in a statement. “Customers are using a variety of different devices to connect with businesses so customer service needs to be smarter, more agile and responsive. At the same time, businesses need their contact centers to accommodate fluctuating customer demand. The new VCC solution is perfectly aligned with these needs.”

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.

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