With all of the headlines call center software provider, Five9 Inc., announced over the past year, it was no surprise with Five9’s CEO Mike Burkland told me in a recent interview that the company had a record year.

In fact, the company’s success proves that even in the worst economic times, with the right products and customer relationships, a company can deem respectable results, no matter what the circumstances. 

“The slower economy actually stimulated demand for Five9 products, as companies looked to cut costs by switching from premise-based call center equipment to on-demand virtual call centers,” Burkland said.

Of course, Five9 did have an industry first product release this year. By continuing its on-demand call center software market leadership, the company introduced the first ever Cloud Computing Platform for call centers which, according to Burkland, allows users to enable third-party developers, software vendors and system integrators to provide advanced integrations with their applications.

Our full exchange is below. 

TMCnet: How did your company perform this year? How close did you come to meeting your guidelines as you entered 2009?

Mike Burkland: Five9 had a record year in 2009 in terms of new customers, revenue and profitability. Revenue increased by 65 percent during 2009 and we have been profitable since Q1-2009. During 2009, our revenues and profits consistently exceeded our forecasts. Looking back on our 2009 performance, it was clearly a year of significant milestones for the company, as Five9 launched major new product releases and platform offerings that continued to build on the company’s track record of leadership and innovation in the On-Demand Call Center Software industry.

TMCnet: What major product, services and partnership announcements did your company report? 

MB: Five9 continued its on-demand call center software market leadership by introducing the industry’s first Cloud Computing Platform for Call Centers. Powered by the largest engineering team in the industry, the Five9 platform now enables third-party developers, software vendors and system integrators to provide advanced integrations with their applications. The Five9 platform provides an easy way to embed virtual call center capabilities into any application, opening up many opportunities for software vendors and services organizations to provide complete solutions with tightly integrated on-demand call center software. 

The Five9 Developer Program enables call center developers and IT professionals to use Five9 Cloud APIs to integrate with home-grown CRM applications, create custom agent desktops, use integration frameworks to create unified agent desktops, retrieve data from external systems for call routing, and more. Since the Five9 call center APIs are web services, they are available to be used by the widest possible range of cloud computing and premise-based applications, and developers using the Five9 APIs can create code in their preferred development environment.

As one of the first members of the Five9 Developer Program, Agile (News - Alert) Consulting leader Bluewolf joined forces with Five9 to accelerate our joint customers’ marketing, sales and customer care processes by delivering advanced, integrated call center solutions in the cloud, based on the industry-first Five9 Cloud Computing Platform for Call Centers.

TMCnet: At the start of 2009, the economy slowed to a deep recession. How did that affect your company’s performance? More specifically, what affect did it have on demand for your goods and services, if any?

MB: The slower economy actually stimulated demand for Five9 products, as companies looked to cut costs by switching from premise-based call center equipment to on-demand virtual call centers. When compared to premise-based solutions, the advantages of Five9’s on-demand call center solutions are clear: no upfront capital expenditures, no on-premise equipment, more rapid and less costly deployment as well as easier integration.

TMCnet: Talk to us about the major news item – whether it was a new product, an acquisition or something else – in your market segment this year?

MB: Five9’s Cloud Computing Platform for Call Centers which are discussed above.

TMCnet: With signs that the economy is pulling out of the recession, what are you expecting in 2010?

MB: Continued demand for on-demand call centers – more and more larger customers have stopped presuming that call center solutions will be premise-based, and are expecting to deploy on-demand call centers. This trend bodes well for Five9.