The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Israeli-based Comverse Technology is looking to sell subsidiary Verint for approximately $2 billion. TheStreet.com also picked up the news:

The board of software maker Comverse hasn’t made a decision about Verint’s future. It can’t do so now because Verint, a maker of analytic and security software, is in the midst of selling 2 million common shares, the people said. But a sale of Verint, of which Comverse owns roughly 55%, is the likeliest course of action and could come after the parent company files the last of its outstanding financial reports with regulators, the Journal reports.

Two billion U.S. dollars is no pocket change. Verint is one of the top makers of workforce management, analytics, and security software, and such a sale means two things: 1) Comverse is (still) in a lot of trouble; and 2) the analytics market is growing strong. At a $2B price tag, however, there won’t be a lot of capable buyers.

Comverse has been marred by financial scandals, stemming from accounting issues and options backdating, and was delisted from NASDAQ in 2007. Ex-CEO Jacob “Kobi” Alexander even fled to Namibia to avoid arrest in the U.S.

Selling Verint would probably be a good thing for the company and its parent, Comverse. My guess is that private equity firms may end up owning Verint, should the sale really come to fruition.

Yesterday CRM Magazine announced its 2010 CRM Service Awards winners. Genesys dominated the contact center awards (Contact Center Infrastructure and Interactive Voice Response) whereas RightNow Technologies took home most of the web-related categories (Web Self-Service, Web Interaction Management, and Contact Center Search).

Genesys WFM failed to win the Workforce Optimization Suite award — Verint Systems won — which must prove to be somewhat frustrating as Genesys WFM has been around for a while, but continues to lag behind leaders like Verint and NICE. Recently, workforce optimization has been a focus among companies in hopes of getting the most out of their resources. This is also a lucrative offering: according to a report by DMG Consulting the WFO market grew about 14% from 2007 to 2008:

The firm’s “2009 Quality Management/Liability Recording Market Share Report” shows that the WFO market grew by 14 percent, from about $2.4 billion in 2007 to about $2.7 billion in 2008.

The contact center market contributed to about half of this growth, the report finds. Revenues from WFO solutions for the contact center grew about 4.3 percent during 2008. Although this is only modest growth, the WFO market outperformed many other IT software markets, the report finds.

Although growth slowed in 2009 due to the economic downturn, especially hitting the financial sector hard, which were the companies that had been the biggest WFO buyers. Genesys would be wise to kick it up a notch in terms of enhancing its WFM package to better compete with Verint’s. Some may argue that Genesys ought to concentrate on its forte, contact center infrastructure and IVR, but it’s clear that the company also wants a piece of the WFO and CRM pie.

…which brings up to social CRM darling RightNow Technologies. It may rule the web-based services now, but its relationship with Genesys may soon evolve from a partnership to being a “coopetition.” Genesys has hooked up with RNT competitors InQuira and Lithium to invade the desktop social CRM space, and it is not shy about it as evident from a recent analysts conference.

The contact center battle between titans like Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys would be epic, but I believe it’s the desktop CRM war that deserves attention this year. It’ll be tricky for Genesys as it tries to balance all of its products and partnerships in order to maintain the lead, but don’t be surprised if it just decides to do it “Microsoft style” and buyout a company or two in this space just to promptly acquire the technologies and market share.

Here is the CRM Magazine press release:

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CRM magazine, the leading publication in the customer relationship management industry, announced the winners of its 2010 CRM Service Awards here today, in conjunction with the magazine’s March 2010 issue.

Recognizing how the economic climate helped drive service as a significant differentiator, CRM magazine’s seventh annual CRM Service Awards honor the vendors, consultants, and end-user companies focused on high-quality customer experiences through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies.

Maintaining the eight-category breadth of last year’s awards, CRM nevertheless expanded the scope of the 2010 edition to include more companies. In each category, the magazine has again named a single Service Winner, denoting the year’s highest score relative to a peer group. Each category now also identifies three Service Leaders and at least one vendor deemed “One to Watch.”

Recipients were determined through an extensive three-month process and proprietary rating formula that involves industry analysts, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores reflecting customer satisfaction.

• Contact Center Infrastructure — Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
  Leaders: Avaya; Cisco Systems; Interactive Intelligence
  Ones to Watch: LiveOps; Siemens Enterprise Communications
• Interactive Voice Response — Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
  Leaders: Avaya; Intervoice (a unit of Convergys); Voxeo
  One to Watch: Cisco Systems
• Web Self-Service — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: Consona; InQuira; nGenera
  One to Watch: Parature
• Web Interaction Management — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: LivePerson; nGenera; Parature
  Ones to Watch: Helpstream; Kana Software
• Enterprise Feedback Management — Winner: Allegiance
  Leaders: Confirmit; RightNow Technologies; Verint Systems
  One to Watch: Vovici
• Contact Center Search — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: Autonomy etalk; Coveo Solutions; InQuira
  Ones to Watch: Consona; Google
• Workforce Optimization Suite — Winner: Verint Systems
  Leaders: Aspect Software; Envision Telephony; Nice Systems
  One to Watch: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
• Outsourcing — Winner: Convergys
  Leaders: HP Enterprise Services; Sykes; Teleperformance
  Ones to Watch: Sitel; West

The magazine also named six Service Rising Stars for the year — the most ever:

• CallCopy, an emerging midmarket player among contact center vendors providing workforce optimization suites;
• Clickability, a provider of Web content management via software-as-a-service;
• ClickFox, a specialist in customer experience analytics;
• Communispace, which provides private online communities and participant analysis;
• LiveOps, a provider of outsourcing and workforce management solutions for work-at-home contact center agents; and
• Nexidia, one of the few companies making speech analytics relevant to the contact center.

Last, but certainly not least, the magazine named five customer implementations as winners of its CRM Service Elite Award — again, a record number:

• online retailer Drugstore.com, which took a dose of RightNow Technologies to get better at making its customers look good;
• network-solutions provider Enterasys Networks, which turned to Salesforce.com to create relationships as well as efficiencies;
• Infusionsoft, a provider of email marketing software for small businesses, which used an online environment designed by Helpstream to enable customers to provide their own community-based support;
• insurance giant New York Life, which used a Verint Systems deployment to give its contact center agents something to stick around for; and
• Southwest Airlines, which, thanks to Virtual Hold Technology, now offers passengers the choice to hang on or hang up.

“CRM magazine is pleased to see the steadfast devotion to service excellence demonstrated by the companies and individuals in the 2010 CRM Service Awards,” said David Myron, the magazine’s editorial director. “These award recipients are proving that organizations can streamline business processes, maximize profitability, and improve customer service interactions.”

The 2010 CRM Service Awards will be presented at the CRM Evolution 2010 Conference (http://www.CRMevolution2010.com) at the Marriott Marquis in New York later this year. An expanded version of the results have been published in the March 2010 issue of CRM magazine—available in print and in digital NXTBook format (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0310/index.php). The awards package was unveiled online on March 1, 2010, at http://www.destinationCRM.com.

About CRM magazine

CRM magazine is the leading publication of the customer relationship management industry, covering sales, marketing, customer service, and strategy. The magazine also administers and hosts the annual CRM Evolution conference. Each of these properties is designed to serve customer-centric business initiatives, and leaders who recognize CRM as a key strategy for creating enhanced customer value in any industry. For more information about the magazine, its editorial calendar, or CRM in general, please visit us on the Web at http://www.destinationCRM.com; at our blog, http://www.destinationCRMblog.com; or on Twitter at @CRM (http://twitter.com/CRM) and @destinationCRM (http://twitter.com/destinationCRM). The destinationCRM Web site (which is updated daily) and the monthly magazine are properties of CRM Media, a division of Information Today, Inc.

Contact:

CRM magazine
David White, 609-654-6266
dwhite@infotoday.com