Oracle Expands Its Contact Center Solution With Telephony@Work Buy

From Gartner:

On 13 June 2006, Oracle announced that it had acquired privately owned Telephony@Work, a provider of premise- and host-based multichannel contact center infrastructure solutions. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For 18 months, Oracle has been offering Telephony@Work's contact center service through an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement, as part of its Oracle On Demand (formerly "Siebel On Demand") customer relationship management (CRM) solution. Oracle will now sell the Telephony@Work offering as a hosted service (as a stand-alone offering or bundled with Oracle On Demand), a managed service, a customer-premises-based solution, or a hybrid solution including more than one of these options.

Analysis

Gartner's studies of end-users have consistently shown that contact center decision makers place a low value on procuring their contact center infrastructure and CRM software from the same vendor. Oracle will need to aggressively market the advantages of a combined solution to overcome the lack of demand for a synergized solution. In enterprise accounts, Gartner expects that Oracle will focus its contact center infrastructure sales efforts on those accounts that also require Oracle CRM software. In service provider accounts, we expect Oracle to sell contact center infrastructure as a stand-alone solution for hosted services, but to use this footprint to later sell CRM software. Gartner also expects that Oracle will continue to partner with other contact center infrastructure vendors, as failure to do so would upset large and influential mutual accounts.

Gartner's recommendations:

Current Users:

• If you use Oracle CRM software solutions integrated with contact center solutions from other vendors (such as Avaya, Nortel or Cisco Systems), ask for a commitment from both vendors that integration will be maintained and will receive continued development investment.
• If you use Oracle On Demand with or without contact center services from Oracle or Telephony@Work, you should ask Oracle for its development road map for contact center services, in light of Oracle's new ownership of the entire product set.
• If you are using or considering Telephony@Work solutions you should ask for a commitment from Oracle that the Telephony@Work product will continue to be supported and developed as a stand-alone solution separate from Oracle CRM software.

Prospects:

• If you are seeking a multisite contact center solution and need CRM software integration, but wish to avoid smaller, independent vendors, consider adding Oracle/Telephony@Work to your contact center request-for-information or request-for-proposal distribution list. The offering is available through On Demand or in an on-premises solution. Either way, ask for references.

Analytical Sources: Drew Kraus, Gartner Dataquest and Bern Elliot, Gartner

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