Zoom makes $15bn cloud acquisition

The buy is expected to help bolster Zoom’s presence with enterprise customers and allow the acceleration of its long-term growth opportunity

Zoom has snapped up cloud call centre Five9 in a $14.7bn deal.

Five9 bills itself as an "industry-leading provider" of cloud contact centre solutions, bringing the power of cloud innovation to more than 2,000 customers worldwide and facilitating billions of customer engagements annually.

The Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Centre provides digital engagement, analytics, workflow automation, workforce optimisation, and practical AI to help customers "reimagine their customer experience."

Zoom claims that combining Five9's contact centre as-a-service ("CCaaS") solution with its communications platform will transform how businesses connect with their customers, building the customer engagement platform of the future.

"Zoom is built on a core belief that robust and reliable communications technology enables interactions that build greater empathy and trust, and we believe that holds particularly true for customer engagement," said its founder and CEO, Eric S. Yuan.

"Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact centre, and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers."

The video communications giant expects the acquisition to bolster its presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth opportunity by adding the $24bn (€20bn) contact centre market.

Rowan Trollope, Five9 CEO, adds: "Businesses spend significant resources annually on their contact centers, but still struggle to deliver a seamless experience for their customers.

"It has always been Five9's mission to make it easy for businesses to fix that problem and engage with their customers in a more meaningful and efficient way.

"Joining forces with Zoom will provide Five9's business customers access to best-of-breed solutions, particularly Zoom Phone, that will enable them to realize more value and deliver real results for their business."

Following the close of the transaction, Five9 will be an operating unit of Zoom and Trollope will become a president of Zoom and continue as CEO of Five9, reporting to Eric Yuan.