Kyndryl, the IBM spin-off that provides IT infrastructure services, is enhancing the integration between its Digital Workplace Services and Five9 cloud-based contact centers to help customers deliver better experiences to their end customers and employees.
Separately, Kyndryl earlier this month reported first-quarter fiscal 2023 results and provided updates on strategic alliances aimed at growing its business.
Kyndryl and Five9 will leverage Kyndryl’s Digital Workplace Services, as well as AI, automation, and cognitive analytics expertise, along with Five9’s contact center technology to deliver a platform the two partners call Kyndryl Intelligent Cloud Contact Center to new and existing customers.
Kyndryl’s Digital Workplace Services include:
- Device management
- IT support
- Desktop virtualization
- Workplace collaboration
- Digital workplace advisory and implementation
Kyndryl has partnerships for optimal support of third-party apps that the client already has in place for functions such as collaboration and virtualization. “We have a point of view on what is most valuable,” says Ivan Dopple, general manager of Kyndryl’s Digital Workplace Services Global Practice. “When the client says ‘this is our strategy,’ they need a partner to support” their choices.
Better Integration = Better Experience
The integrated Kyndryl-Five9 platform will support cloud-enabled service desk applications and personalized IT support applications for “elevated end-user experiences” in customer-facing contact centers and employee IT support systems, Dopple says.
For example, an integrated cloud platform should enable recognition of a customer/caller and the products they have in use when they are routed to an agent or support professional, eliminating the need to perform additional identification steps. As consumers, we know those repetitive steps can be all too common – and frustrating — when reaching a call center or support desk.
“That’s smoother and more integrated in a cloud environment,” Dopple said.
Integration should also translate into better experiences for call center employees as they do their jobs, which will result in a better quality of service to end customers.
Dopple also noted the importance of the cloud’s role in contact centers, noting that Kyndryl has replaced another partner whose contact center technology was premises-based. About 180 clients have moved to the integrated Kyndryl-Five9 platform, many of those from on-premises systems. Kyndryl is also a customer using the Five9 technology.
Dopple noted that the company has invested significantly in training employees to achieve certification on the three top cloud “hyperscalers:” Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud. Specifically, Kyndryl says it currently has the following numbers of employees certified for each cloud platform:
- Microsoft Azure: 18,300
- AWS: 4,100
- Google Cloud: 2,800
The company has more than 90,000 employees.
“We will be absolutely open to the cloud providers,” Dopple says. “We’ve significantly invested in skills and our number of people certified.”
He noted that there’s a significant base of call center customers still operating on premises, so the opportunity in front of Kyndryl and Five9 should be sizable.
Jake Butterbaugh, Five9 senior vice president, global partner sales, said the agreement between the two companies and the move to cloud-based contact centers will produce the types of experiences that customers expect. “Helping enterprises move away from on-premises solution to a cloud-based approach provides a more consumer-led experience that empowers agents and engages employees in new and meaningful ways,” he says.
Kyndryl Financial Results
For the quarter ended June 30 – its FY2023 first-quarter – Kyndryl revenue was $4.3 billion, with a net loss of $250 million and a pretax loss of $205 million. The revenue figure represents a year-over-year decline of 10%.
In the previous quarter ended March 30, revenue was $4.4 billion, down 7% from one year earlier; the net loss was $229 million and its pretax loss was $189 million.
As noted, Kyndryl has partnerships with the three cloud firms widely regarded as the top three hyperscalers, and it assigned an aggregate value of $235 million to those agreements, referring to them as solid progress toward the $1 billion hyperscaler signings target for fiscal 2023.
The company also struck new partnerships with:
- Cisco for new private cloud, and multinetwork WAN offerings with advanced security;
- NetApp for helping customers unlock insights from data;
- Oracle to offer joint products and services to modernize and move applications and databases to the cloud;
- Red Hat for integrated services based on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate critical workloads – from enterprise data centers to the edge and across public clouds;
- Veritas Technologies to help enterprises protect and recover critical data across multi-cloud environments.
Kyndryl has more than 4,000 clients, including 75 of the Fortune 100, as well as operations in 63 countries.
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