Frost & Sullivan Lauds Interactive Intelligence for Product Leadership in the South African Hosted Contact Centre Market

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, July 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent research on the hosted contact centre market, Frost & Sullivan presents Interactive Intelligence with the 2013 South African Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Leadership. The company has leveraged its global pedigree, unmatched range of product functionality, and highly innovative solutions set to become a trusted partner for enterprises in the hosted contact centre space.

Interactive Intelligence's world-class contact centre platform offers customers access to a full suite of multi-channel contact centre, unified communications, and business process automation features. The company's product functionality is the most comprehensive in the market, with its competitors typically having to rely on third-party solutions for extra functionality.

"To address customer challenges stemming from South Africa's bandwidth constraints and the resulting hesitation in adopting hosted contact centres, Interactive Intelligence has developed different deployment models for South African customers," noted Frost & Sullivan Information & Communication Technologies Industry Analyst Ishe Zingoni. "Under its unique, configurable 'Local Control' model, customers can opt to deploy the hardware device on their premises as opposed to a fully hosted service. This allows voice traffic, recordings and other sensitive data to remain on the premises while call control and other intelligence software reside in a hosted environment. Since voice traffic is bandwidth-intensive, this model enables bandwidth optimisation, and hence cost control."

Another key source of customer value addition for Interactive Intelligence lies in the ability of its solutions to easily integrate with existing systems. This is because the company's products are based on open standards SIP and soft-based solutions. Since the company strives to be ahead of its peers, 90 per cent of its products are cloud-ready, and all newer modules are ready for both cloud and premise setting.

"Interactive Intelligence offers a clear migration path for contact centres, where they could start off in the cloud and move to the premise environment when ready, without suffering disruptions or data losses," observed Zingoni. "Interactive Intelligence is one of the few companies in the market offering both cloud and premise systems, and a seamless migration between the two. It also offers integration with social media and extension onto mobile platforms as both channels are gaining prominence in South Africa as contact channels."

According to Frost & Sullivan research, there is currently a strong market perception that Interactive Intelligence's solutions were truly meant for the hosted environment, as opposed to its rivals' rigid, un-adaptable product sets. This has aided the company in quickly supplanting established players. Interactive Intelligence also has a reputation for quality, reliability and security of its solutions through its multi-instance hosting architecture.

"The company provisions virtual machines where each client runs on a separate virtual instance of the application; this differs from the more prevalent multi-tenant architecture where tenants reside on a shared software instance," explained Zingoni. "This architecture allows for improved integration capabilities and the minimisation of the risk that other customers will impact on performance."

Interactive Intelligence's route to market in South Africa currently involves partnerships with leading ICT service providers MTN Business and 1Stream. While MTN Business offers a viable avenue to large, high-end customers, 1Stream already has a formidable presence in the small to mid-markets. These partners offer Interactive Intelligence strong platforms for growth across the key segments.

In recognition of its achievements, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present Interactive Intelligence with the 2013 Product Leadership Award in the South African hosted contact centre market. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated innovation in product features and functionality that provides enhanced quality and higher value to customers. The award recognises the rapid acceptance such innovation finds in the marketplace.

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Interactive Intelligence

Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ) is a global provider of contact centre automation, unified communications, and business process automation software and services. The company's unified IP business communications solutions, which can be deployed on-premises or via the cloud, are ideal for industries such as financial services, insurance, outsourcers, collections, and utilities. Interactive Intelligence was founded in 1994 and has more than 5,000 customers worldwide. The company is among Forbes Magazine's 2011 Best Small Companies in America and Software Magazine's 2012 Top 500 Global Software and Service Providers. It employs approximately 1,400 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. The company has offices throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. In Africa Interactive Intelligence can be reached at +27 87 825 0900 or [email protected]; on the Net: www.inin.com/za

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Contact:

Deon Scheepers 
Strategic Consultant – EMEA
Interactive Intelligence Inc.
P: +27 (0)87 825 0977
E: [email protected]

Samantha James
Corporate Communications – Africa
Frost & Sullivan
P: +27 (0)21 680 3574
E: [email protected]

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan