Avaya has snapped up Edify, a CCaaS, CPaaS, and UCaaS platform provider.
In addition, Edify offers AI-driven self-service solutions.
However, it’s best known for its Edify CX platform, which gels its CCaaS and CPaaS platforms.
That offering allows service leaders to define the contact center journeys they would like to create. Then, it provides a no-code engine to orchestrate those journeys.
The approach is divergent. After all, most CCaaS vendors give customers a boxed platform of settings, which they configure to try and piece together their ideal journeys.
With Edify, service leaders can compose those journeys themselves.
That’s evident in Edify’s mantra:
We don’t tell you what to do, we simply give you all the tools to do it.
That proved an extremely attractive prospect for Avaya. After all, many of its large enterprise customers will have significant journey and process customization needs.
Indeed, that’s likely why many delayed a move to CCaaS – as, over the years, they’ve built a complex patchwork of on-premise systems to meet specific requirements. The thought of ripping that all out or replicating it in the cloud is daunting.
Yet, Edify’s orchestration capabilities may help businesses leverage elements of the cloud to deliver that all-important high level of customization.
As a result, Avaya can go further to support each enterprise in creating the right cloud contact center for their business.
The Acquisition Continues Avaya’s “Innovation Without Disruption” Story
Avaya’s cloud-native platforms offer the ideal base for high customization. As Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, previously told CX Today:
Customers I’ve talked to say it’s very easy to work on top of Avaya’s contact center, use APIs to customize the product and do lots of innovative things – like contextual routing. You can’t do with an off-the-shelf product in a way that’s tailored to your organization.
Edify will help Avaya flaunt this differentiator and aid Avaya’s ambition to deliver more comprehensive, feature-rich CCaaS offerings.
That’s crucial as Avaya strives to keep up with competitors that focus their entire research and development (R&D) budgets on one contact center platform instead of three.
With this ambition, Avaya may maintain its impressive enterprise retention rate – which currently sits at 97 percent.
Avaya has achieved this by stressing that customers shouldn’t feel pressured to jump the on-premise ship. Instead, they should move to the cloud at their own pace.
That message has struck a chord. Yet, few deny that CCaaS is ultimately the future of contact center technology – especially given the rapid rate of cloud-based AI innovation.
As such, while enterprises cling to their on-premise environments, Avaya must bolster its CCaaS proposition to convince them that sticking with the company is the best option in the long run.
Embedding Edify within the Experience Platforms will help here.
Moreover, the move may encourage enterprises to start defining what their future contact center journeys look like.
From there, they may slowly work towards that vision by leveraging elements of Avaya and Edify’s cloud offerings in a hybrid environment.
That exemplifies how the acquisition feeds into Avaya’s “innovation without disruption” storyline.
Other Key Takeaways from the Edify Roll-Up
As Avaya pulls across Edify’s tech, it poaches a broad enterprise communications talent pool, as Alan Masarek, CEO of Avaya, stressed when making the announcement.
“This tuck-in acquisition is additional evidence that Avaya is making investments in technology, people, and experience to continue to power the company’s momentum in the market,” he said.
Equally important is the injection of additional world-class customer experience talent that this transaction brings to our engineering, product, and go-to-customer organizations.
Meanwhile, the move demonstrates Avaya’s newfound financial – and strategic – stability after its bankruptcy less than 18 months ago.
Yet, beyond Avaya, the acquisition is also the latest example of increased consolidation within the contact center market.
NICE acquiring LiveVox, Nextiva snapping up Thrio, and Enghouse rolling up Lifesize – following the latter’s bankruptcy – offer further examples, all from the past 12 months.
That trend highlights how the CCaaS market is beginning to emulate its on-premise predecessor: the contact center infrastructure (CCI) market.
There, a handful of providers rose to the top, with a cluster of smaller vendors becoming more specialists in specific regions or verticals.
If this trend continues, Avaya will aim to replicate its previous success in the CCI market and rise to the fore once again.
