This week has seen a big ruling in the Pega-Appian lawsuit, insights from the Microsoft earnings call, and new AI offerings from Kore.ai, and Bird.
Here are the extracts from some of our most popular news stories over the last seven days.
“Never Rational!” Pegasystems Reacts as $2BN Appian Case Is Overturned
The Court of Appeals of Virginia has reversed the $2BN verdict in favor of Appian in its ongoing legal dispute with Pegasystems.
The dispute dates back to 2020, when Appian filed a lawsuit against Pegasystems, accusing the company of corporate espionage and misappropriating Appian trade secrets.
To do so, Pega allegedly used multiple infiltration tactics, such as recruiting a spy with inside secrets, as part of an operation reportedly called “Project Crush”.
Two years later, the courts sided with Appian, slamming Pega’s conduct as “willful and malicious” and handing down a $2BN jury verdict. That represented the largest damages verdict in the history of Virginia courts.
Yet, the Virginia Court of Appeals has overturned the verdict and granted Pegasystems a new trial.
In doing so, Judge Frank K. Friedman agreed with Pega’s motion that the trial courts made a “series of errors” relating to jury instructions and the evidence presented.
As per the latter, the judge seemed to question why the court prevented Pega from presenting demos of earlier versions of its software to prove it hadn’t copied anything across from Appian (Read on…).
Microsoft CEO: “We Will Save Hundreds of Millions with Contact Center GenAI”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed his plans to transform the business’s Dynamics 365 portfolio with generative AI (GenAI).
In doing so, the CEO honed in on the massive potential for GenAI within contact center environments.
During the tech giant’s latest earnings call, Nadella stated: “Dynamics with the GenAI built-in: this is the category that gets completely transformed with GenAI, [with] contact centers being a great example.
We ourselves are on course to save hundreds of millions of dollars in our own customer support and contact center operations.
Meanwhile, the CEO saluted the recent release of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center platform, the potential of its embedded GenAI, and the customers already deploying the offering.
“Our new Dynamics 365 Contact Center is a Copilot-first solution that infuses generative AI throughout the contact center workflow,” he said.
Companies like 1-800-Flowers, Mediterranean Shipping, Synoptek will rely on it to deliver better customer support.
Those companies will wrap the CCaaS solution around their CRM, which doesn’t have to be the Dynamics 365 for the Customer Service offering. It also connects with third-party CRMs, like Salesforce (Read on…).
Kore.ai Announces a Conversational AI Platform for the Midmarket
Kore.ai has announced a new conversational AI offering for smaller businesses.
The XO Express platform packages elements of Kore.ai’s Magic-Quadrant-leading XO solution.
Yet, the focus is on delivering a “simplified and approachable” way to support smaller businesses in building their own bots.
In other words, Kore.ai is putting its technology in the hands of more non-technical users by removing the need for in-house AI or developer expertise.
As such, smaller businesses can spin up virtual agents faster, which they can deploy across commerce, marketing, sales, service, and beyond.
Additionally, Kore.ai promises that the offering is “highly affordable” to further lower the barriers of entry for SMBs.
Thrilled to bring this to market, Raj Koneru, Founder and CEO of Kore.ai, said: “XO Express turns the experience of building an AI Chatbot into an intuitive and fun-filled one, free of jargon.”
Kore.ai also suggests that the system can scale multiple systems of record, which is particularly useful in the SMB space, where businesses often rely on integrated point solutions (Read on…).
Bird Unveils an AI-First CRM, Announces a 90 Percent Discount on Sinch, Twilio, & Zendesk
Bird has announced an “AI-first” CRM for “marketing, sales, service, and payments”.
The move signals an overhaul of its core platform, which dropped off the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for CPaaS due to this strategy shift.
That news foreshadowed this launch, which Robert Vis, CEO of Bird (formerly MessageBird), revealed is the culmination of 3.5 years of strategizing.
“This is more than a redesign; it’s a complete re-architecture,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
“[The CRM is] built from the ground up with separate components, ensuring seamless compatibility with third-party applications.
Whether you use us as your standalone CRM or integrate us with your existing software, we’re here to supercharge your capabilities!
A customer data platform (CDP) is the spider’s head within that standalone platform.
Meanwhile, its voice and various digital communication APIs are the legs, sending conversational insights up to the brain, which organizes cross-functional, first- and third-party data (Read on…).
