One acquisition and one divestiture to report in this edition: Avaya has acquired Aurix to add speech analytics features to its portfolio while Alcatel-Lucent has announced the selling of its Genesys contact center business to a private equity firm.
Avaya’s purchase of Aurix is intended to provide speech analytics and audio data mining technology to Avaya’s Contact Center and Unified Communications (UC) portfolio. Aurix technology uses a phonetic audio search engine to construct real-time and historical analysis of one-to-one or group spoken interactions with a patented technology that enables real-time identification, search and data mining of large volumes of audio and audio-visual material. The technology will be integrated with Avaya Aura and can also be applied to applications from other vendors. Ultimately, the integrated solution is designed to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of customer service and collaboration events, along with delivering support for compliance requirements and business intelligence.
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Commenting in a statement, Brett Shockley, SVP for corporate development, strategy and innovation at Avaya, said, “The value of document search engines is widely understood. There’s another dimension of data that is largely untapped, however, and that is the information exchanged through spoken interactions. Aurix’s technology will help enable Avaya’s customers to quickly find the interactions that can impact their ability to attain high customer satisfaction and increase revenue generation. The analysis of these interactions can drive enhancements in processes that advance their business objectives.”
In other news, Alcatel-Lucent announced that it has received a binding offer of $1.5 billion from a company owned by the Permira funds for the acquisition of its Genesys business. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012, and is subject to regulatory approval. Genesys reported about $500 million in 2010 sales for customer service software and contact center solutions used by enterprises.
Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, said in a statement: “We have now positively concluded our evaluation of strategic options for both our Enterprise and Genesys businesses. Permira’s intended acquisition of Genesys would enable this profitable business to flourish further; 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.”
