Video chat is one of the areas contact centers are looking to expand into in a lot of industries, so it makes a certain amount of sense. Lifesize and Serenova merging last year and 8x8 acquiring Jitsi in 2018 are in the same vein.
I was momentarily quite dismayed at this news until I realized I had confused Five9 with 8x8 (maintainers of the open-source Jitsi video conferencing software and operators of the free Jitsi Meet service).
I would love to have an insider's view of how (if) they'll integrate those tech stacks; the products seem close enough to make it hard to justify not combining them, but the devil will definitely be in the details.
I haven't used Five9 for about 5 years, but even then their tech seemed old. The new thing then was starting to add multi/omni-channel support ie adding chat and maybe email. My guess is that the integration will likely be adding a new video chat option for call centers (ie five9 would do the queuing and then the routing to Zoom). I'd highly doubt that Zoom would spend the time to fully combine the software.
Oh, if Five9 is far enough behind then perhaps Zoom can just tack on any needed features to their existing product; I had assumed there were enough features only on the Five9 side that actual porting/integration would be needed.
Even if office work returns to something close to pre-COVID levels, one thing that has been proven is that remote meetings can work online. Travel for meetings will be harder and harder to justify. Airfare, car/taxi/uber, hotel, expenses compared to zero cost for a Zoom meeting.
In New Zealand almost no-one used video conferencing before COVID. Now, even after lockdown, with many people back in the office, it’s ubiquitous. Although many workplaces have moved on to alternatives to Zoom,
I think this is a stark example of how technology adoption has as much or more to do with culture and familiarity as the actual merits of the technology.
That’s a reasonable point but remote conferencing subscriptions are at an all-time high, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see some churn in this area, even if everything you said is correct. Schools, teams that return fully to the office, etc will probably let their subscriptions lapse, which would lead to a fear among investors that the business was in trouble. It’s a smart play to introduce a new revenue stream (via M&A) to counteract that narrative.
From the article
"Five9 is a pioneer of cloud-based contact center software. Its highly-scalable and secure cloud contact center delivers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-use applications that allows management and optimization of customer interactions across many different channels". In less corporate speak , as someone mentioned it's a call centre management solution.
A company losing money (-12.33M last quarter, ~ -50Mil 2020) while providing remove work infrastructure during the biggest work from home boom in a century.
Could be a play to position themselves in the CX industry. Avaya and Genesys seem to be dominating. Zoom’s superior infrastructure makes it ripe for new applications.
