From a tech giant reaffirming its support for on-premise tech to a hotly debated rebrand, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Cisco Reaffirms Its Support for On-Premise Customers, in the Contact Center & Beyond
Cisco has moved to reassure its legacy customers that it will continue to support and develop its on-premise technologies.
Its on-premise portfolio allows businesses to build, run, and manage their own networks, data centers, and services, including contact centers.
Some may have suspected Cisco would follow the lead of market competitors and stop innovating on-premise, nudging brands into the cloud.
However, in a blog post celebrating “30 years of partnership in Europe”, Oliver Tuszik, EVP of Global Sales and Chief Sales Officer at Cisco, reaffirmed Cisco’s support in ensuring customer choice, control, and data sovereignty. He wrote:
Our longstanding experience in secure, reliable on-premises and isolated systems underpin(s) our approach to system control and continuity today.
SAP is perhaps the most notable tech vendor to have pushed businesses towards the cloud. It did so when announcing it would end its standard maintenance for its on-premise SAP ECC (ERP Central Component) and Business Suite 7 in December 2027, before ending support in 2033.
Yet, it’s far from the only enterprise tech stalwart. (Read on…).
Microsoft’s Contact Center Celebrates Its First Birthday: 3 Takes on Its Journey So Far
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center has turned one year old.
Microsoft commemorated the occasion by releasing a blog post, claiming it’s ushering in a “new era of engagement” with its CCaaS platform.
But, how different is the platform from what is already out there, and what more can Microsoft do to gain market share?
The following three takes on Microsoft’s first 12 months in CCaaS answer these questions, and perhaps raise one or two more.
1. Microsoft’s Differentiators Are In Its Ecosystem
Slowly but surely, cloud contact center solutions are becoming commoditized.
As this trend kicks into gear, hyperscalers, like Microsoft, have the opportunity to differentiate by drawing on their broader portfolios to deliver unique innovation. (Read on…).
Elon Musk Questions the Name ‘Salesforce’; Benioff Responds with an Impromptu ‘Agentforce’ Rebrand Idea
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, sat down with Bloomberg in the latest in a spate of video interviews and podcast appearances.
These appearances have been transparent in their aim: to promote Agentforce, even if that means trashing industry rivals (*cough Microsoft).
This time around, during the episode of Bloomberg Originals, the host quizzed him on a running joke about the general public not knowing what Salesforce actually does.
Again, he masterfully brought attention back onto Agentforce by recalling a text exchange with Elon Musk, the Owner of Tesla and X.
Musk questioned why the company was called Salesforce when it has such a wide range of products that expand beyond the sales sector.
In response, Benioff quipped: “What should we call it? Agentforce?” (Read on…).
Verint Is In Talks to Be Acquired by Thoma Bravo, Reports
Private equity giant Thoma Bravo is negotiating a takeover of Verint.
That’s according to Bloomberg, with the publication citing “people familiar with the matter”.
Thoma Bravo’s portfolio includes many of Verint’s biggest competitors across different subsets of contact center technology.
Indeed, that portfolio includes Aisera, Calabrio, and Medallia, which rival Verint in the conversational AI, workforce engagement management (WEM), and voice of the customer (VoC) spaces, respectively.
Yet, Verint is a bigger fish to catch, with a market cap of $1.27BN (as of July 2025).
The contact center vendor’s investors appear enthused by the news, with its stock spiking by ten percent.
Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, agreed that this could be a positive move for everyone involved.
“Verint is a good private equity candidate as they need to figure out what their next act is,” he told CX Today.
While they are the partner of choice for many CCaaS providers, there is a lot more competition, particularly in AI.
To that point, CCaaS providers are expanding their offerings to cover more of what Verint does, stepping deeper into arenas like WEM, conventional intelligence, and virtual agents. (Read on…).
