Avaya Closes Acquisition of AI-based CCaaS Outfit Spoken Communications

Avaya this week closed its Spoken Communications acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but at least one report says Avaya funded it with cash on hand.

Spoken Communications offers contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) and AI-based customer experience management solutions. That includes agent quality software applications and services. It also includes the IntelligentWire contact center automation solution, which helps reduce after-call work, drive more intelligent responses, and deliver insight into customer sentiment and experience.

Avaya says the deal will accelerate its growth in cloud-based solutions. This deal also provides Avaya with more than 170 patents and patent applications related to artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning.

In its Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service, North America,

published in October, Gartner gave Spoken Communications an honorable mention. “The following vendors did not fulfill the inclusion criteria for this Magic Quadrant, based on the size of their operations in terms of installed base and/or revenue,” Gartner said. “They are, however, appropriate for certain situations, and they sometimes complete against vendors included in this Magic Quadrant.”

This Magic Quadrant did not include Avaya. (The Leaders quadrant includes Five9, Nice inContact, and Genesys. Challengers were 8x8 and Serenova. Niche Players includes Aspect, West, TeleTech, and Evolve IP. And Gartner referred to BroadSoft and Talkdesk as Visionaries.) However, Avaya is listed as a Visionary in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications.

Avaya and Spoken Communications have been working together for more than a year. Their solutions are already integrated.

“For our customers, this simplifies complex software licensing and maintenance contracts by offering CCaaS where platform upgrades and feature enhancements are built into the offering,” shared Mo Afshar. “It enables customers to quickly stand up new or expand existing contact centers, via an Opex cloud model, gaining efficiency during times of low demand while being able to quickly scale up to address peak periods like holidays.”

Avaya seems to be on the road to recovery following its Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing early last year. Early this year, UC analyst Blair Pleasant commented that there was lots of optimism at Avaya Engage 2018 and that Avaya’s channel partners “were all breathing a sigh of relief, and they think the worst is behind.”

Edited by Mandi Nowitz