ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Five9 Bets on Integrations and Partners as the Path From CCaaS to CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 11 March 2026

It’s clear that the buyer requirements for Contact-Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) products have moved well beyond traditional notions of “cloud” or “omnichannel” and now focus on how well software providers can make artificial intelligence (AI) workflows real. The differentiation among CCaaS platforms is not so much about how well interactions are handled, but how the platforms embed within complex... Read More

Topics: Operations, Five9, automation, Contact Center, agent management, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Generative AI, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Workflow, ServiceNow, Salesforce

Zoho Isn’t Really CCaaS, but That Distinction Doesn’t Matter

Posted by Keith Dawson on 28 January 2026

There are many reasons why the contact center market is in flux, but chief among them is the drive towards convergence: traditional telephony, digital channels, customer relationship management (CRM), workforce tools and analytics are expected to operate as a unified system, rather than as a set of disconnected point solutions. This creates a problem for enterprises: how to modernize their... Read More

Topics: Contact Center, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Zoho

Rethinking Fundamental Contact Center Software

Posted by Keith Dawson on 19 November 2025

There is a shift underway in how enterprises structure their software stacks in relation to contact centers. Multiple factors have coalesced to reduce the importance of the traditional call handling infrastructure (i.e., the ACD) as the foundational element of the tech stack. It no longer has to be the focus of buying or deployment decisions. It’s been superseded by a more extensible (but... Read More

Topics: Analytics, Contact Center, agent management, CCaaS, ACD, Generative AI, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies

NiCE Clarifies AI Strategy in Cognigy’s Wake

Posted by Keith Dawson on 12 November 2025

Analyst summits are not where software providers go to make news, it’s where they seek to clarify and validate what they’ve already done and lay out strategies for the future. October’s NiCE summit in Vienna was an opportunity to take stock of the enormous changes artificial intelligence (AI) has wrought in the service industry and put NiCE’s recent moves into context. It’s no exaggeration to say... Read More

Topics: automation, Contact Center, agent management, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Intelligent Self-Service, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Conversational Intelligence, NiCE, Cognigy

Verint Uniquely Advances AI for CX with New Ownership

Posted by Keith Dawson on 15 October 2025

Verint held its annual Engage conference in September, shortly after it announced the news that it had agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $2 billion. The new ownership plans on merging Verint with its competitor, Calabrio, after the deal closes in 2026. That sequence of events raises many important questions about the direction of both companies and the sector... Read More

Topics: automation, Contact Center, Verint, agent management, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Intelligent Self-Service, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Conversational Intelligence

Zendesk Illustrates How CCaaS Becomes CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 24 September 2025

When building or outfitting a contact center, the core question that must be answered is: what software provider or system is foundational? For decades, the fundamental element was the routing engine, but as technology moved to the cloud, the primacy of the voice ACD receded. As it did, it became possible to conceive of a tech stack that’s not organized around routing but instead is focused on... Read More

Topics: Contact Center, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Conversational Intelligence, Zendesk

CCaaS, CPaaS or UCaaS for CX? It Doesn’t Matter.

Posted by Keith Dawson on 18 September 2024

It is unfortunate that business-focused digital communications are sold under three different headings: Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) and Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS). (And that just counts the cloud options—let us acknowledge the huge, continuing, installed base on premises.) These are terrible ways to describe complex, varied and... Read More

Topics: Customer Engagement, Customer Experience, Contact Center, Digital Communications, CCaaS, CPaaS

Decoupling Interaction Routing with BYOT in Contact Center Software

Posted by Keith Dawson on 21 November 2023

For at least five years, it has been clear that innovation in technology for communication and business processes is accelerating. This year, that trend has been especially notable with the explosive emergence of artificial intelligence in the contact center software market. But what tends to get lost in the excitement around innovation is what sits downstream of the development process: the... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, agent management, CCaaS, ACD

Ujet Simplifies Omnichannel Interactions in the Contact Center

Posted by Keith Dawson on 19 April 2022

Although the bulk of contact center seats are still served by on-premises equipment, there appears to be a consensus that the cloud is better suited to delivering a successful, omnichannel customer experience, and that most new contact center deployments will be run on cloud-computing platforms. The trend toward cloud-based contact center infrastructure (CCaaS) has opened a space in the market... Read More

Topics: Contact Center, CCaaS