KANA Software and IBM (News - Alert) announced a significant expansion of their global strategic alliance agreement. The companies are now jointly marketing, selling, and supporting Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based customer service solutions, which are built on open technologies from KANA and IBM.

 

“Customer service organizations are transitioning from cost centers to loyalty centers, charged with the strategic mission of enhancing the value of each customer relationship,” said Michael Fields, CEO at KANA, in a statement. “By combining the open technologies from IBM and KANA into a single enhanced solution for end-to-end service experience management, we will deliver the technology that Vice Presidents of Customer Service need to succeed. Embedding IBM’s open technology is helping us deliver higher value solutions for our customers at a better cost.”

 

KANA also announced that it has signed a new original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement. With this agreement, the company is seeking to capture a larger piece of the growing customer service and support segment of the customer relationship management (CRM) market. The company will also look to embed IBM middleware including WebSphere* and DB2* in its next generation enterprise customer service solutions.

 

As part of the new OEM agreement, KANA and IBM will manage the customer experience that breaks down traditional barriers to integration by creating an SOA-based solution. The solution can also be easily deployed by customers across all vertical markets including retail, finance, banking, and others. The companies are building a new generation of customer service solutions embedding IBM open technologies to provide highly scalable and secure SOA capabilities for customers.

 

With this new service experience management, companies can now drive customer loyalty and retention by creating seamless service experiences across all channels within the business. Customer service executives will get better control over the end-to-end service experience and make customer service a strategic differentiator for their business.

 

Customers of both KANA and IBM can transform their service operations and resolve customer inquiries taking advantage of IBM’s SOA and Information on Demand (IOD) capabilities. The data can be shared quickly and seamlessly across all channels including, call center, Web, e-mail, chat, kiosk, agent, and branch.