Industry researchers often rank CCaaS providers as part of annual market evaluations. This is not one of those assessments.
Alternatively, this article aims to pinpoint ten innovative, global vendors differentiating within the contact center space.
Respected market analysts Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, and Liz Miller, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, helped choose the providers.
Below, they discuss their choices and consider what to expect from each vendor in 2025.
That comes before a write-up of the key talking points, alongside some honorable mentions.
1. NICE
NICE embraced the cloud early and has aggressively adopted AI, consistently showcasing customers who have successfully used their products with strong stories and demonstrable ROI.
Through these customer testimonials, NICE highlights how customers also leverage its gold-standard workforce engagement management (WEM), journey orchestration, digital engagement, and other complementary solutions as part of a fully integrated platform.
Having pieced this all together, NICE often replaces multiple tools when it wins contact center deals.
Meanwhile, NICE has maintained a focus on empowering agents with the right tools and information to deliver excellent customer service while also enabling customers to interact on their terms.
Achieving this is not just about integrating channels and data; it’s also about rethinking what data means in an experience-driven model.
Indeed, NICE has expanded its definition of “data” to include transactional, event stream, and interaction data alongside content and institutional knowledge.
In doing so, the vendor has created an ecosystem where all this comes together to support agents, customers, and the enterprise.
In 2025, expect it to expand that ecosystem, as signaled by the appointment of Scott Russell as the new CEO, who has deep CIO experience after many years at SAP. That experience may help NICE broaden its appeal beyond conventional contact center buyers.
2. Microsoft
Microsoft has recognized that to develop Dynamics into a platform that integrates customer experience into the broader cloud infrastructure, it couldn’t continue to ignore CCaaS.
As a result, the tech giant finally released a CCaaS platform in July 2024: the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center.
Companies already exploring or testing Microsoft’s solution are drawn to its ease of use. Agents feel comfortable with the UI: it’s familiar, intuitive, and seamlessly integrates data across platforms.
Moreover, the solution isn’t limited to traditional contact centers; it extends value to other roles, like sellers in Viva or marketers in Dynamics Marketing. Such ease of integration and adaptability make it a compelling option for existing Microsoft customers.
That said, Microsoft will face challenges in convincing organizations to replace their current CCaaS solutions. So far, adoption seems focused on those already using Dynamics or Teams who find it easy to transition.
Moreover, the solution isn’t limited to traditional contact centers; it extends value to other roles, like sellers in Viva or marketers in Dynamics Marketing. Such ease of integration and adaptability make it a compelling option for existing Microsoft customers.
Nonetheless, early customer stories are positive, and Microsoft has also catered to SMBs with its new Teams Queues App.
Through Queues, Microsoft is bringing CCaaS functionality directly into Teams instead of forcing users to adopt a traditional CCaaS platform.
The app sits on the same Dynamics 365 platform and targets non-traditional CCaaS users – like sales and product personnel – who already live in Teams.
3. Zoom
Zoom is one of the most fascinating vendors in this space. A lot of its adoption stems from the fact that many users genuinely love Zoom. That’s not just IT professionals but end-users, too.
Now, it has a substantial user base and is fully committed to CCaaS, with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan taking on the role of General Manager for its contact center group. That level of personal involvement is unusual and shows how seriously Zoom is taking this.
Additionally, Zoom has impressed with how fast it has caught up feature-wise. When launched less than three years ago, its contact center was a basic, video-only offering. Since then, Zoom has upgraded at an impressive pace and can now compete with almost anyone in terms of functionality.
That said, most view Zoom’s value proposition as tied to its UCaaS + CCaaS integration. While that has resonated in the midmarket, it doesn’t hold as much appeal for large enterprises.
As such, expect Zoom to build out its messaging in 2025, more clearly define the vendor it wants to be, and integrate its deep communications assets into something unique and more compelling.
4. 8×8
8×8 is an interesting company. From a vision perspective, it has been ahead in many areas. For instance, it was the first company to integrate UCaaS and CCaaS. Meanwhile, like NICE, it became an early adopter of the cloud.
Historically, however, it has been strong on vision and weak on execution. It churned through CEOs before landing on Sam Wilson, a solid execution-focused leader.
Since his appointment, 8×8 has successfully pivoted to being CX-first, integrating Fuse effectively.
Also, 8×8 has done a nice job of riding on the shoulders of Microsoft with its Teams integrations and a strong Marketplace presence.
Now, the challenge is broader market awareness. When competing against the likes of NICE, Genesys, and AWS – all huge vendors – it’s challenging to stand out as a smaller company with a market cap of just a few hundred million dollars.
With its November 2024 rebrand, 8×8 has signaled that 2025 will be a year of doubling down on making people understand who they are and what they do.
Now, it must stay the course and maintain focus, which has proven a problem in the past.
5. Cisco Webex
2025 seems set to be a make-or-break year for Cisco Webex in the contact center space.
The enterprise tech giant has invested heavily in Webex, its go-to-market strategy is CX-first, and it has now pinpointed the contact center as a critical avenue to land new logos.
To support this, Cisco has packed its product with AI features and pulled Webex into the same business unit as its security and networking solutions.
That suggests a lot of more “Cisco-on-Cisco” solutions. So, for instance, if a business runs the Webex Contact Center on a Cisco network and encounters performance issues, tools like ThousandEyes or Splunk can pinpoint the problem.
In pulling this together, Cisco can craft more of a unique CCaaS story that leverages its networking and infrastructure heritage.
Yet, its security muscle offers the best chance of attracting contact center buyers. After all, while other industry vendors have fraud and identity solutions, there’s a big difference between those and a fully-baked security and observability solution.
As such, Cisco can offer a big differentiator for global, multinational contact center deployments. It must do more to emphasize this in 2025.
6. Google (& UJET)
In 2024, more industry professionals talked about Google, wondering if it’s really a player in this space. Like Cisco, this feels like a critical period for the cloud giant.
Google might have a longer runway. But does it have enough willpower to make a serious play in CCaaS beyond just contact center intelligence and connectors?
Its momentum with AI, particularly Gemini, is impressive. It’s arguably the leader in foundational models. If it can funnel CCaaS data into Gemini and create custom contact center AI models, it could create something compelling, especially considering Google Cloud’s cost efficiency.
Yet, while it has great components and appeal, anything enterprise-focused has historically proven challenging for Google.
Indeed, the most compelling aspects of its current CCaaS offering – like its smartphone-first design, CRM-centric architecture, and cloud failover – are features stemming from its partnership with UJET.
As such, unless Google makes more of a statement of intent in CCaaS, it may be worth paying closer attention to UJET, which is having success as a midmarket provider.
7. AWS
Traditionally, disruptors like Rocket Mortgage and Capital One are the companies that leverage Amazon Connect, aiming to shake up their respective industries.
In 2024, however, more traditional enterprises, such as large airlines and banks, embraced Connect. That’s a significant shift, showing AWS has evolved into a mainstream CCaaS provider.
Yet, there’s still some lingering misunderstanding about Connect. Many perceive it as a developer-heavy product. While that may have been true initially and customizability remains a differentiator, it’s no longer the case. Connect now offers a feature set that rivals CCaaS leaders.
In addition, its unique utilization-based pricing model and access to tools like the Bedrock AI suite and Amazon Connect have become a robust and flexible solution.
Moreover, AWS operates a 70,000-agent contact center within Amazon itself, serving as a test bed for innovations. That allows it to refine features and capabilities in a live environment before releasing them to customers.
Another hallmark of AWS is its commitment to optimizing customer spend. For example, it regularly renegotiates telecom contracts and passes the savings directly to customers. This builds trust and loyalty over time.
Additionally, its marketplace allows customers to add new tools, such as workforce management (WFM) or analytics solutions, under existing contracts without interruptions.
Lastly, AWS’s success mirrors Amazon’s broader business philosophy: make things easy for customers, and they’ll keep coming back. This “easy button” approach is why so many enterprises – and consumers – rely on Amazon and why it’s always fascinating to see what it’ll come up with next.
8. Avaya
Despite moving on financially, Avaya carries the stigma of its past bankruptcy filings. It’s like a bad sweater it can’t take off, as customers and partners keep bringing it up and refusing to let it go.
Avaya now has a new CEO, Patrick Dennis, and this transition feels pivotal. Under his leadership, the company is now implementing a Broadcom-style Playbook on a smaller scale, focusing heavily on its top 1,500 customers.
Unfortunately, this has led to significant layoffs, including some highly-regarded employees, which has drawn criticism. However, Avaya’s strategy is clear: align resources with their core customer base and let go of anything outside that scope.
Historically, Avaya has served customers of all sizes, and this new strategy will likely lead to lots of churn and opportunities for other vendors to swoop for its many midmarket customers.
While this is something to watch out for, don’t expect Avaya to generate much noise in the public eye next year. Its strategy will focus less on marketing and more on engaging with its top customers.
9. Five9
Five9 is the longtime poster child for CCaaS. Yet, 2024 proved a financially challenging year. It’s down almost 50 percent in stock value, and the company has had significant activist investor activity.
Meanwhile, Five9 has been navigating growing pains as it transitions from serving midmarket businesses to targeting large enterprises. That requires different financial disciplines, forecasting, and sales strategies, areas where it has had to mature quickly.
So, while 2024 was very much a year of growing up for Five9, 2025 needs to be an execution year. It has experienced the challenges all CCaaS vendors will likely face in the next couple of years, especially those without an on-premise heritage – and will benefit from it over the long run.
In terms of its vision, Five9 hints at a future beyond the traditional contact center space. Yet, as it does so, it must double down on its strengths: practical, user-friendly applications.
Doing so may help Five9 regain its steadiness, as the company is conventionally one that has always avoided the dramatic ups and downs of its market rivals.
10. Nextiva
Nextiva is making a lot of noise in the space. While it’s unclear whether that marketing presence will translate into field presence, digital-first brands are mentioning the vendor more often.
Typically, these are brands looking to explore something new in two areas: AI self-service and automation. Moreover, they’re often heavily invested in social media, not just for social service but also for marketing and commerce.
Such companies are rethinking how to engage with customers, leaning into asynchronous comms and headless commerce. They’re looking beyond the typical contact center approach.
Traditional contact center solutions don’t often combine these elements effectively, and – recognizing this – Nextiva is broadening its appeal to this market segment.
2025 will be about evaluating if there’s substance behind the noise. Is Nextiva just loud, or is there something real there, particularly for high-touch, high-experience, digital-native brands?
Honorable Mentions: Genesys & Talkdesk
If this were a list of the biggest CCaaS vendors, Genesys and Talkdesk would certainly feature. Yet, Miller and Kerravala expect nothing radically different from either in 2025.
For Genesys, the focus will remain on converting its existing install base. After all, that’s the strategy: to be a steady and reliable partner. Although, if the provider executes on plans to spin out into an IPO, it could create more buzz.
Meanwhile, Talkdesk clearly articulated its plans for 2025 in December. These fixate on targeting six key industries via innovation, embedding its contact center into third-party systems, and – of course – AI. Expect Talkdesk to walk this path.
Other international contact center providers to watch out for include Bright Pattern, Content Guru, Enghouse Interactive, Odigo, Puzzel, RingCentral, Sprinklr, Twilio, Verint, Vonage, and XCALLY.
