Okay. It’s fair to say that in this new era of AI-driven wizadry, the dissolution of traditional rivalries and the rules of competition have come into effect in a big way. Yet, the surprises keep on coming.
Showing strategic foresight, the Cloud Wars Top 10 companies are not just developing joint initiatives for mutual customers, but also — it seems — making collaborative investments. This unprecedented approach is characterized by the recent investments from Salesforce and ServiceNow.
Over the next six months, both companies are investing $750 million apiece into Genesys, one of the go-to enterprise-grade providers of contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) solutions.
Why This Makes Sense
The relationship between Genesys, which is described by company execs as a global leader in “AI-Powered Experience Orchestration”, and these two Cloud Wars Top 10 companies is not a new one. Both have been involved at a partnership level in the past.
From the Salesforce side, the two organizations have launched CX Cloud, a customer experience and relationship management product that integrates Genesys Cloud with Salesforce Service Cloud.
Meanwhile, ServiceNow has worked with Genesys to deliver Unified Experience, a seamless and integrated customer service experience, by combining Genesys Cloud with the ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) workflow. The investments from both companies will build on these existing integrations.
“Genesys is delivering long-term value to enterprises through end-to-end customer experience orchestration that can drive loyalty, grow revenue and reduce operating costs,” said Tony Bates, chairman and CEO of Genesys.
“We’re proud to have the support of industry leaders like Salesforce and ServiceNow, and we believe this reflects growing momentum around agentic AI and the importance of connected, autonomous customer experiences.”
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Closing Thoughts
In a Genesys press release regarding the new investment, David Schmaier, President and Chief Strategy Officer, Salesforce, explained that it “deepens our partnership with Genesys to deliver AI-assisted and agentic AI-powered customer experiences.” Amit Zavery, President, Chief Product Officer, and Chief Operating Officer at ServiceNow, said it “accelerates our vision for the agentic enterprise, where the ServiceNow AI Platform intelligently orchestrates end-to-end customer experiences.”
What we’re seeing with this significant investment from two rival companies is the importance and criticality of agentic AI. Both ServiceNow and Salesforce have fiercely competitive agentic AI strategies and stand-out products.
However, Genesys has something they both need: market-leading experience orchestration capabilities. Under the Genesys Cloud CX umbrella are many strands, such as contact center software, customer journey management, and various digital channels. While both Salesforce and ServiceNow provide top-notch AI and CRM functionalities; neither has a built-in orchestration engine for managing multi-channel interactions between customers and agents making a joint investment in this area a very clever decision.
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