One customer like Kaplan is all it takes to showcase Genesys’ broad line of software. Deployments span the “core” call routing resource, SIP server, voice processing (Genesys Voice Platform), task distribution (called intelligent Work Distribution, based on the Conseros acquisition) and multiple flavors of knowledge management and analytics. The entire fabric of software “resides behind”, “augments” or simply “extends the life of an installed base of Avaya or Nortel ACDs or PBXs.

That said, from my point of view, the main issue that both Genesys and Alcatel-Lucent addressed at the Analyst Relations meeting (which had the Twitter hashtag #genesysAR) was how the combined company plans to support efforts by third-parties that expect to benefit from development, marketing, sales and channel development by both Genesys and Alcatel-Lucent’s Enterprise Software Group (ESG). Merging the two organizations has been a complex process, under the auspices of ALU Executive VP of Enterprise Products Tom Burns in conjunction en Paul Segre (serving simultaneously as CEO of Genesys and president of Alcatel-Lucent’s Applications Software Group (ASG).

But the other B-I-G deal for ALU revolves around efforts to build a community of partners and application developers to leverage its considerable repertoire of platforms, tools and other resources that promote enhanced network services. As this link demonstrates ALU has invested a considerable amount of money and energy into promoting the emerging architectural and business models that leverage ALU’s intellectual property into “open” environments and APIs. And it tried to drive its point home with this video, which describes how Alcatel intends to support service providers’ (that means telco’s) efforts to support open business models and multivendor environments. The effort has already enlisted participation by tens of thousands of developers and integration partners.

Meanwhile, on the enterprise side, the combined Genesys/Alcatel-Lucent entity need a name for its enterprise-oriented developer network. In the coming months, we expect Alcatel-Lucent, and Genesys, to extend their efforts to support third-party developers and integrators. At the highest levels, it involves HP, Accenture, IBM and the like, but Genesys (with ALU) has an opportunity to expand into the middle markets in order to grow.

Genesys and ALU execs noted that their near term rivals are Avaya and Cisco, with Oracle looming in the future along with global rivals like Huawei. If they are going to compete, they must highlight their efforts to support Recombinant Communications and an active and involved developer community.

On the back-end, we’ve already noted how Salesforce.com’s electronic commerce cloud (EC2) has been integrated with Twitter, Cisco and even Google Wave to support better tracking of activity over multiple channels.

Yesterday, the list of “social CRM” offerings got longer with newly assembled alliances bringing Kana together with Baynote and Lithium Technologies stepping up promotion of the term “social CRM” with a Virtual Seminar that includes sponsors like Genesys Labs, LivePerson and Cognizant, as well as Lithium.

But “Social CRM” is but a link in an evolutionary step away from one-sided vendor- or brand-driven management of customer activities. “Sessions” often start with a call to an interactive voice response (IVR) system which gives a limited set of options for routing a call or retrieving information. It’s like a voting machine where the candidates or propositions are all pre-defined and all one can do is choose among little-known candidates or indicate “yes” or “no” on an unclear proposition.

Adding Baynote, Lithium, HiveLive or other peer-to-peer resources adds multiple dimensions to a traditionally one-sided, one-to-one interaction. It may start with monitoring multiple social networks, but quickly supports cultivation of networks of customers who ideally serve as sources of collective intelligence and feedback. In the best cases they can emerge as product or brand advocates, but at a minimum they can respond to customer queries or complaints in real time.

Success is predicated on customers building confidence in their own power over Web based resources. The next evolutionary step will be awareness raising – no so much among vendors – but among customers themselves. For social CRM to work customers must build a sense of trust in the feedback and query results they get regarding the retailers, companies and service providers with whom they carry out business.

This particular integration, which uses OpenMethod’s adapter to connect RightNow and Genesys enables companies to support intelligent routing and deliver those calls to an agent desktop that includes a softphone for the voice channel along with relevant metadata, including purpose of call, open issues, transaction history, location and other contextual information. What’s more, the agent desktops display interactions across a multitude of communications channels, including Web-based, email and chat.

From risk-reduction point of view, this particular solution carriers the “GValidated” imprimatur, which indicates that Genesys Labs has put the solution through an extensive testing and certification process. In Genesys’ words, “Only applications that carry the Gvalidated logo can claim that the integration has been developed according to Genesys-approved methods and standards, designed using Genesys tools, documented through Genesys standards and methodology, and successfully tested in a lab environment.” The era of Recombinant Telephony is one in which solutions are increasingly constructed from code that is derived from a number of sources. This sort of certification gives air cover to IT department and a comfort level that it will work under the anticipated conditions, which is especially important for customer-facing tasks.

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The Business Together program brought Cisco more tightly into the mix of products and services positioning Communicator as a single point of entry for real-time, multi-modal communications including IM, email, and mobile telephony. The Cisco connection starts with Cisco branded IP-phones that facilitate both presence indicators and “click-to-call” call initiation among other employees or business partners with contact lists associated with Microsoft’s OCS, Outlook, Office suite or SharePoint software. I believe Microsoft’s Active Directory server must be involved as well.

Meanwhile, Aspect Software continues to chronicle advancements in OCS deployment both internally and externally. As part of the inside game Aspect continues to illustrate the adoption and use of OCS throughout its company on this site. [As a brief aside, it looks like "federated" IMing has a long way to go.] For outside consumption, Aspect announced general availability of a suite of software called UC for the Contact Center. This instance extends OCS-based IM into the contact center to facilitate functions like “Ask and Expert”. It also marks the marketing debut of Tellme (Microsoft’s IVR subsidiary) as the integrated speech application service provider (ASP) for “hybrid” voice self-service deployments.

Both approaches are designed to accelerate deployment of applications built on a decidedly Microsoft-flavored approach to Unified Communications. For Aspect, UC is a Microsoft-only proposition, with tight integration to Aspect’s suite of inbound and outbound customer care software suites and workforce management software. Orange Business has a number of other approaches, including an instance of Genesys Customer Interaction Management to support multivendor environments.

In addition, IBM immediately became first-among-equals by leveraging their long-standing partnership into a marketing channel for the combination of UC-Connect and the SameTime-based “UC-squared” (unified communications and collaboration) marketing initiative by Big Blue. For IBM, it marks the fruition of long-standing plans to extend contact center utilities to knowledge workers through-out a business enterprise through the SameTime interface. Thus their desktops can display “screen pops” that enable them to preview key information about a call and the caller and, in effect, “bid” on whether to accept or reject it. They will also be able to read or write notes or update customer records without exiting their SameTime-based “portal”.

I’ll be writing more about the capabilities and tools integrated into UC Connect in a forthcoming advisory. It is a suite of software that has evolved to accommodate both the productivity concerns of contact center managers, and the privacy concerns of resident knowledge workers. Agents in more formal contact center workstations are able to view the status and skill set of anonymous experts or branch office workers. They can then click a button to contact the most appropriate person via a pre-selected mode of communications (chat, IM or phone). Rather than displaying available by name, the Genesys CIM platform abstracts these resources’ identities into skill sets and and current status. This prevents agents from becoming overly dependent upon any particular expert.

UC-Connect will be featured at the Genesys G-Force gathering in Barcelona, June 9-11.

The program is designed to give partners an opportunity to increase their employees skill sets for installing, configuring, testing, and troubleshooting Nuance enterprise products. The course curriculumcovers installation and configuration of solutions that include Nuance Recognizer v9, Nuance Speech Server, RealSpeak TTS and the accompanying license manager and assurance of technical support for these foundational products.

Nearly all voice self-service implementations are the product of partnerships and involve integration with technologies from multiple vendors. In this environment, a certification of proficiency on Nuance’s latest technologies is an important differentiating factor. Just as important, it signals that Nuance is encouraging more activity from go-to-market partners while insuring that they conform to an acceptable level of quality.

Lisa Abbott, senior manager-product marketing at Genesys explained that “Genesys is taking what they have done for iCFD [intelligent Customer Front Door] on the phone and parlaying it to our eServices solutions for the web.” The goal, in her words is to deliver “a consistent customer experience through one conversation over time across phone, web and mobile channels.”

To take this approach, Genesys is announcing a partnership with Knowledge Management specialist InQuira, whose technology makes it possible to isolate and identify what is deemed to be each customer’s “true intent” for contacting the company, regardless of the medium he or she employs. To accomplish this, InQuira leverages profile data, customer searches and other information maintained in Genesys-based resources to deliver even more targeted and personalized answers.

The InQuira relationship makes it possible for the CCC solution to fulfill on the ultimate objective of the iCFD: tightly linking a good customer experience to overall business objectives. Quoting Abbott again, “Through this singular conversation, enterprises will more effectively engage their customers to meet growth and customer satisfaction objectives.”

The third stage of the trifecta is an announcement of several deployments that comprise proof points for both the iCFD and CCC. These include a 3G wireless service provider which combines video, voice and SMS with its IVR-based customer care fabric; a Latin American telecommunications provider that integrated SMS text as a complement to live customer service; a Western European Bank using Genesys infrastructure to route calls, emails or text messages to its 6,000 employees; and a South African premium TV entertainment service that uses the solution to gauge the “intent” of each contact to support quick and effective service.