Channel Futures' Top 10 Unified Communications/Contact Center Stories of 2023
Our countdown features layoffs, big acquisitions, new products and more. See how our editor ranked them.
![Top UC/CC stories of 2023 Top UC/CC stories of 2023](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt83015a0ae5016d35/6523fcebc39fc86019dd622a/Top-Stories-Sign.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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UC giant Broadvoice gave North American users something to get excited about. It launched GoContact, an omnichannel cloud-based contact center on the continent.
The company, best known for its selection of hosted voice, unified communications (UCaaS), CCaaS and SIP trunking services for small and midmarket businesses, presented the offering thanks to the GoContact acquisition it completed in 2021.
Go here to read the full story.
8x8 appointed a new head of channel after Lisa Del Real (pictured) left the unified communications firm in an abrupt move to head up channel efforts at a legal tech firm.
Michael Quince then took over, provisionally, and many assumed the firm would hire him to remedy the situation in the long run. That was not the case, as the company announced it hired former Salesforce/Twilio executive Michelle Paitich to fill Del Real's role.
Following its restructuring, managed network services provider GTT Communications cut $2.8 billion in debt, extending it to a fresh set of investors. The communications and network services operator filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022, emerging the first week of 2023, and now says it is ready to start a new chapter in the company's history.
GTT made a series of strategic moves, otherwise known as mergers and actions, selling its infrastructure division to I Squared Capital for $2.1 billion, lending the firm a hand in paying off some of its debt. By then, it had reduced its debt by nearly 80% but said it felt the supply chain disruptions, inflation, and even global conflicts.
GTT said it was excited to work with channel partners in 2023 and has since hired former Lumen executive Ed Morche as its new CEO after Ernest Ortega stepped down following a four-year tenure.
Get the full scoop on GTT's bankruptcy.
Remember when Zoom launched its contact center offering? Although many saw it coming, most would not have guessed it would launch with so many features. The firm bounced back following a failed attempt at acquiring Five9, showcasing it had some weight in more than UCaaS.
From this year on, it would shoot for CCaaS dominance in a space it was late to enter. But the company found itself catching up quickly, adding AI-fueled features galore and likely making its competition sweat a bit more.
Here's what else we learned about Zoom's offering.
For a young collaboration company, BlueJeans had a loyal following. It also had a sizable user base and brand recognition, as part of Verizon. That was still not enough to save the company, as 2023 saw the closing of BlueJeans by Verizon in a move almost no one saw coming.
Even more, because Verizon had put in a lot of time and investment, acquiring BlueJeans a mere three years' prior. Even the analyst we spoke to seemed surprised by the news that the business would shut down and the software would be no more.
Dive into more details about the shuttering.
Vlad Shmunis built RingCentral from the ground up, which is why, when the firm announced it would undergo new leadership, the UCC community was surprised. It turned out not to last long, as RingCentral's leader at the time, Tarek Robbiati, lasted a mere four months as the UC giant's CEO.
As the news broke that Shmunis (pictured) would no longer be RingCentral's CEO, there was even more confusion because he led the firm through its initial public offering and rebranding from residential phone service to the CPaaS leader it is today.
In a surprise move that it seems no one saw coming in December, the board reinstalled Shmunis as the company's leader.
Learn more about the switcheroo.
NICE acquired LiveVox for $350 million, further consolidating the CCaaS market and proving there is a lot of big money in the space.
The move was seen as a "major CCaaS play" by those in the industry, with LiveVox bringing more advanced AI functionalities to NICE as a result and giving NICE further clout in the contact center space.
There’s also the fact that the firm gains access to a broader customer base as a result of the acquisition.
Read about one of the biggest acquisitions of the year.
Avaya and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise got together for our next story, which comes in at No. 3. They decided to partner to assist with something we're seeing more of these days: cloud migration.
Under the terms of the partnership, the duo extended Avaya's OneCloud CCaaS offering to ALE's customer base. The deal gave Avaya access to a broader customer base and vice versa. It also implied that the full spectrum of wired and wireless technologies would get covered under the deal.
Also in 2023, Avaya emerged from its second bankruptcy in six years, with former Vonage CEO Alan Masarek at the helm.
Take a long hard look at the Avaya-ALE partnership.
Layoffs were abundant in 2023, from Avaya to others in the space such as Zoom and T-Mobile, which dropped 7% of its U.S workforce, and Zendesk, which nixed 8% of the company’s workforce, or about 320 of its more than 4,000 global employees.
Cisco also laid off employees, showcasing how volatile the market became in 2023 when so many companies in the industry started to lay off employees in batches. Cisco laid off some 670 employees in January and 350 more in September.
Topping our list at No. 1 is Mitel's acquisition of Atos' Unify, which experts said would catalyze "greater modernization of communications solutions."
The deal's implications were more than massive, as it would mean that the customer reach of the two combined would be 75 million users spanning more than 100 countries.
Learn more about this game-changing acquisition.
Topping our list at No. 1 is Mitel's acquisition of Atos' Unify, which experts said would catalyze "greater modernization of communications solutions."
The deal's implications were more than massive, as it would mean that the customer reach of the two combined would be 75 million users spanning more than 100 countries.
Learn more about this game-changing acquisition.
2023 saw no shortage of unified communications news, with collaboration seeing its fair share, too. And 2024 should be packed with even more headlines from the industry, with Zoom, RingCentral, Five9 and plenty of partners, too, expected to make their mark.
2023 was the year that artificial intelligence (AI) dominated, as it likely will in 2024 as well. 2023 was also the year of AI adoption in the contact center space and a lot of market consolidation in the UCaaS/CCaaS space.
That meant plenty of UCC acquisitions throughout the year, adding to the big unified communications news in 2023. In a significant CCaaS play, contact center provider NICE said it would acquire LiveVox to strengthen its AI, automation and data analytics capabilities for a whopping $350 million.
And more recently, rumors began to run amok that Zoom and Five9 were in acquisition talks once again, following a failed attempt two years ago.
We have assembled our list of this year's top unified communications new stories, those that impacted Channel Futures readers most. We present our picks in the slideshow above, starting with No. 10 and counting down to No. 1.
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