Oracle Buys Telephony@Work

WebKnowHow
Wednesday, June 14, 2006; 04:01 AM

Oracle announced it is expanding its CRM On Demand offerings with the acquisition of Telephony@Work, a provider of IP-based software infrastructure for hosted contact center services.

Telephony@Work's CallCenterAnywhere is a carrier-grade, multi-channel contact center solution that provides an "out of the box" alternative to custom programming and systems integration for on demand and on-premise contact centers. Telephony@Work's multi-tenant capabilities enable compelling economies of scale that have been utilized by Fortune 100 companies and tier-1 carriers. In addition to offering CallCenterAnywhere through Oracle's Siebel Contact On Demand, the technology is also sold to end-user companies and to commercial service providers who host the technology on behalf of their corporate customers.

"One of the things we realized when we entered the CRM On Demand space is that the hosted CRM vendors were offering partial solutions and not satisfying the needs of call centers. They also required companies to purchase hardware and software to run a world-class contact center," said Rob Reid, group vice president, CRM On Demand, Oracle. "Oracle's Siebel Contact On Demand is the only software as a service solution in the marketplace that offers comprehensive contact center service functionality."

With the addition of Telephony@Work, Oracle becomes the first CRM applications provider, whether hosted as a service or licensed on-premise, to unify contact center technology and CRM software - delivering a complete "customer to agent" experience. By aligning contact center technologies more closely with CRM and business intelligence, Oracle plans to reduce the high cost and increasing complexity of integrating disparate contact center and CRM data, and also offer a range of flexible deployment options.

"Traditionally, CRM applications and telephony components have been delivered as separate, stand-alone applications requiring extensive computer-telephony integrations between the voice and data platforms," said Mike Betzer, vice president, product management, Oracle. "With the unified software Oracle intends to deliver running over IP telephony, service providers should see increased productivity and an enhanced customer experience."

Financial details were not disclosed.