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With its latest acquisition, Oracle is bringing together its on-demand and on-premises customer relationship management software with a stable of integrated telephony components.
Oracle announced June 13 the acquisition of Telephony@Work, a company that provides IP-based software infrastructure for call center services. This is Oracles 21st buy in the past two years.
The terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Telephony@Work, based in La Jolla, Calif., provides carrier-grade multichannel call center software. Dubbed CallCenterAnywhere, the suite is essentially a bundled version of the technology necessary to run a major call center. CallCenterAnywhere integrates an array of components—IP gateways; automatic call distributors; chat and e-mail distributors; Web call-back servers; VOIP (voice over IP) and voice-over-Web Servers; Web collaboration servers; e-mail analysis; and auto response systems, in addition to other functionality—into a single communications server.
With the acquisition, Oracle plans to integrate its already disparate stack of CRM software—a vast stable at this point with its E-Business Suite combined with the acquisitions of Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards—with Telephony@Works IP telephony software.
“Traditionally, CRM applications and telephony components have been delivered as separate, stand-alone applications requiring extensive computer-telephony integrates between voice and data platforms,” said Mike Betzer, vice president of Oracle product management, in a statement. “With the unified software Oracle intends to deliver running over IP telephony, service providers should see increased productivity.”
Telephony@Works software is sold to enterprises—MCI is a huge customer—as either an on-demand or on-premises package. In addition to offering CallCenterAnywhere through its Siebel Contact On Demand, Oracle plans to continue the practice of making the technology available to commercial service providers who host the software on behalf of their customers.