Stand-alone Genesys wants to save the world from bad customer service

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 02 February 2012 10:43

IT Industry - Deals

Alcatel-Lucent's former contact centre software business Genesys has announced its rebirth as an independent company saying its sole focus is "to save the world from bad customer service."

Alcatel-Lucent yesterday completed the sale of the Genesys centre software business to a company owned by the Permira Funds and Technology Crossover Ventures, for $US1.5b in cash. Approximately 1,800 former Alcatel-Lucent employees worldwide have moved over to the new company.

Genesys claims to provide "a single software platform to seamlessly manage customer service across the enterprise and drive today's new customer conversation - spanning the contact centre, web, social media, and mobile."

The company claims to have over 2000 customers in 80 countries including 60 percent of the Global 100. It says that in 2012 it intends "to further extend its leadership position by increasing R&D by 14 percent." It will continue to be led by its long-standing president and CEO, Paul Segre.

Alcatel acquired the former Genesys Laboratories in 2000. It was billed as the company that "pioneered the field of computer telephony integration (CTI)."

Permira announced its offer for Genesys in October 2011, saying that Technology Crossover Ventures and certain co-investors of the Permira funds would also participate in the transaction. The divestiture, however was initiated by Alcatel-Lucent, which has retained its enterprise communications arm.

At the time the offer was announced Alcatel-Lucent CEO, Ben Verwaayen said "With Enterprise, we have reached the conclusion that retaining it and strengthening it further serves Alcatel-Lucent and our customers best.

"Our chosen direction is to leverage the natural connections that exist between enterprise and carrier customers, and proactively apply Enterprise's strengths and momentum in unified communications and data networking with them."