Avaya brings AI on board with acquisition of Spoken Communications

Avaya Holdings has announced that it has closed its acquisition of Spoken Communications (Spoken), a provider of Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions and customer experience management applications built on conversational artificial intelligence.

The Spoken platform accelerates Avaya's growth in cloud-based solutions and provides a reliable and highly scalable cloud platform for customers of all sizes.

"Spoken brings not just an extension of the platform but also experience with machine learning and AI," says Avaya ANZ managing director Peter Chidiac.

"This move bolsters our capabilities as we transition more and more of our solutions to the cloud. AI will form the foundation of the way we interact with customers and with each other. When a customer calls into a call centre, AI will be able to use the data collected to anticipate their concerns and help the representative serve them better.

"Partners are now able to work with the next-gen of Avaya solutions that brings together AI, IoT and even blockchain.

Customers can move to the benefits of cloud at their pace and in the way that best meets their needs, building upon the functionality of their existing solutions.

Continuing to invest in innovation for the future, Spoken brings a transformative platform with many built-in features that today require third-party tools.

This greatly simplified model will make it easier for customers and partners to do business with Avaya.

With over 170 patents and patent applications, Spoken's intellectual property will aid Avaya's move into big data, machine learning and AI, as well.

Spoken's cloud-native, multitenant architecture is already fully integrated with Avaya customer experience technologies.

Because Avaya and Spoken have been working in a co-development partnership for more than a year, several flexible cloud solutions are market-ready today.

Customers will also benefit from Spoken's specialised agent quality software applications and services, and Spoken's IntelligentWire contact centre automation solutions.

IntelligentWire uses AI and deep learning technologies on live voice conversations to reduce after-call work, drive more intelligent responses and gain deeper insight into customer sentiment and experience.

"This acquisition is the latest example of how Avaya is now moving at cloud speed and investing for the future to provide our customers and partners with the innovative cloud solutions they need.  We welcome the members of the Spoken team to the Avaya family, and look forward to building great success together," adds Avaya president and CEO Jim Chirico.