Published on the 01/04/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
After an astonishing 66 percent growth in its A/NZ revenues in the last year contact centre technology supplier Interactive Intelligence has partnered with Gen-i to bring its managed cloud contact centres to New Zealand…
Interactive Intelligence and Gen-i this week announced the partnership in which they will “bring the first fully monitored, managed and integrated cloud contact centre solutions into the New Zealand market”. Gen-i currently delivers the fully managed hosted and on-premise options of Interactive Intelligence’s CIC solution and says it will be transitioning clients to the fully scalable cloud contact centre solution early in the new financial year.
The Australian and New Zealand arm of Interactive Intelligence has far outstripped the growth of its US parent over the last 12 months. While internationally the company achieved very robust 34 percent revenue growth, in A/NZ revenues surged 66 percent according to Brendan Maree, the company’s vice president for A/NZ and Japan.
As well as the enhanced partnership with Gen-i, Interactive Intelligence has also made a major push into the Brisbane market and opened an office in Perth. Maree said that in the last month the company had signed two deals in Western Australia worth $3.3 million.
Interactive Intelligence was founded in 1994 and provides solutions for contact centres, unified communications and business process automation services. In 2013 the company won the Frost & Sullivan award for the leading Australian contact centre application of the year.
A push into larger businesses and strong demand for cloud services is driving the growth according to Maree. Although 37 percent of A/NZ revenues came from cloud sales in 2012, that rose to 88 percent last year.
The A/NZ rate of cloud adoption is even faster than that in the US where last year 50 percent of Interactive’s sales were for cloud-based solutions.
Joe Staples, chief marketing officer for the company, who is in Australia this week said that although the economic downturn had been a spark for cloud uptake the average cloud-based contract being signed by the company was now larger than its on-premises software deals.
Interactive Intelligence currently hosts its cloud-based offerings out of a network of 11 data centres – one of which is Gen-i’s sister data centre, Revera, and two of which are in Australia. However Staples alluded to the future possibility of leveraging global cloud infrastructure from the likes of Amazon Web Services to deliver its solutions. “The costs for us would go way down…stay tuned,” he said this week.
Local users include Auckland Transport, Fisher & Paykel, VicRoads, Medibank and the Wine Quarter, which manages brands such as Cellarmaster Wines, Dan Murphy’s and NZ Wine Society.
