Last week one of the thought leaders in the contact center solution space, Genesys, held their eighth annual industry analyst meeting*. I take my title on transformation from two themes of the conference, one organizational and one portfolio-based.In December 2008 Genesys parent Alcatel-Lucent announced a reorganization that placed Genesys within a newly-created ALU business unit called Application Software Group, headed by then CEO of Genesys Paul Segre. A year later, the company has taken yet another step that brings Genesys and Alcatel-Lucent more tightly together, this time specifically to ALU's Enterprise Products Group.
One part of this change involves bringing together the ALU Enterprise and Genesys sales forces worldwide--2,000 strong--and creating one go-to-market organization. This team is headed by Tom Burns, former head of ALU Enterprise Products Group. It focuses on sales, pre-and post-sales support, and development of channels and partners. One proof point of the "best of breed" approach taken by Burns in building his team is that two of his three regional sales leads are from the Genesys side of the house.
On the enterprise product side, the former ALU Enterprise Voice and Applications portfolio team (e.g., OmniPCX Enterprise and My Teamwork) will join the Applications Software Group under Paul Segre. Again, one sees a mix of Genesys and ALU leaders in key roles, with the product lead for the combined Genesys and ALU Enterprise Voice portfolio coming from Alcatel-Lucent while the CMO and CTO are legacy Genesys.
One obvious question concerns what will happen to the Genesys brand in this transformation. Since the acquisition of the company by Alcatel in 2000, pundits (or should I say competitor sales people) have predicted the absorption of Genesys by Alcatel-Lucent. In a reversal of fortunes, a little of the opposite may occur. Newly-minted Enterprise Applications CMO Nicolas de Kouchkovsky was not ready to make final announcements at the analyst meeting, saying that research is underway to help guide those decisions. There were hints, however, that the Genesys brand, far from being lost, may be extended to ALU vendor-independent UC applications. Stay tuned.
Look for a second blog, covering the product-level transformation I allude to here, coming soon.
* In the spirit of full disclosure, I missed traveling to San Francisco for this year's event due to a broken leg. My thanks to the recently-aligned Genesys and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise analyst relations teams who kindly arranged for me to dial into the event via an ALU conferencing bridge directly connected to the audio system at the venue.
