Despite the respectable amount of coverage of The Gores Group acquiring majority ownership of Siemens Enterprise Communications, one aspect of the newly formed joint venture that no one seems to be examining in much detail is SER Solutions. SER is the contact center solution developer that has been in the Gores portfolio of companies since early 2006. In setting up the joint venture, Gores plans to combine SER with Siemens Enterprise and Enterasys to build a powerhouse of communications, networking and contact center solutions.
Despite the respectable amount of coverage of The Gores Group acquiring majority ownership of Siemens Enterprise Communications, one aspect of the newly formed joint venture that no one seems to be examining in much detail is SER Solutions. SER is the contact center solution developer that has been in the Gores portfolio of companies since early 2006. In setting up the joint venture, Gores plans to combine SER with Siemens Enterprise and Enterasys to build a powerhouse of communications, networking and contact center solutions.On the product side, SER brings a predictive dialer and speech analytics software to the JV. Though Siemens Enterprise has a contact center offering in ProCenter, the system lacks outward dialing capabilities as robust as some of its competitors. Siemens has historically relied on partners, most recently Genesys, for the predictive dialer piece of the larger contact center puzzle. Siemens will now be able to offer predictive dialer and speech analytics software of its own - software that in the fullness of time will perhaps be tightly integrated into Siemens' OpenScape Contact Center solution.
On the partnership side, SER Solutions has recently allied with Nortel. The two companies have an OEM agreement in place that lets Nortel resell the SER predictive dialer as part of its own contact center suite. Only time will tell if this - or many of the other partnerships that Siemens and Enterasys have with various voice and data networking developers in the market - will remain in place over the long term.
On the personnel side, SER's president and CEO is none other than Joe Licata. If the name sounds familiar it's because until a couple years ago Joe had been president of Siemens Enterprise Communications. Gores Group, which is casting about for a permanent CEO to take over its new joint venture, may not have to look very far for an executive very familiar with Siemens' business model.
