NICE CEO Is Leaving CCaaS Provider at Year’s End

As of Dec. 31, 2024, NICE CEO Barak Eilam will leave the contact center-as-as-service (CCaaS) provider after directing it for 10 years. The company said it has now "initiated a search" for Eilam's successor.

NICE's Barak Eilam

"Eilam will remain CEO until the end of the year, ensuring a smooth transition," the company said Thursday in a statement. 

The search will be open to both internal and external candidates, according to the CCaaS provider's board of directors. David Kostman, chairman of the board at NICE, added, "The company is well positioned for the future as a leader in cloud, digital and AI (artificial intelligence)."

Kostman also shared that "we deeply appreciate Barak’s unwavering commitment to NICE and look forward to continuing our work with him toward executing our 2024 plan, setting the company up for future success and collaborating with him throughout the CEO search to ensure a smooth leadership handover.”

Eilam's led the company to a total addressable market expansion of fivefold while tripling the firm's total revenue and earnings from "share" and growing the CCaaS provider's cloud revenue from near zero to $1.6 billion, according to NICE. 

Channel Accomplishments of CCaaS Provider 

Last year, Channel Futures named Ray Hicken, vice president of channel sales CX Americas at NICE, to our list of top 20 UC/Contact Center Leaders for 2023. NICE also made a major CCaaS play last year, acquiring LiveVox in October. 

Months later, LiveVox had widespread layoffs that hit the channel and sales teams. In August, NICE topped Gartner's 2023 Magic Quadrant Report for contact center-a-a-service (CCaaS) for CXone, a technical CCaaS platform. 

“In the last year, NICE has added functionality to its offering such as advanced routing capabilities, integrating generative AI with Enlighten for consumer and agent guidance, and enhancements to its dedicated real-time supervisor application, among others,” Gartner wrote.

NICE Channel Partners Will Want a Say 

With an emphasis on customer experience (CX), enhanced CX capabilities are central to the value NICE extends and a significant partner selling point among other noteworthy attributes such as the user-friendliness of its portfolio items. 

This might imply that partners could want a say in the CCaaS firm's next leader as the company has a sizable Microsoft partner base and has alliances with TSDs like Avant. It partners with AT&T, AWS and others, which means there are many stakeholders to please.

Channel Futures reached out to NICE for comment on the company's CEO stepping down, but they had not responded by the time of publication.