The deal will help Zoom boost its presence with enterprise customers

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Zoom to acquire Five9 in an all-stock deal. (Credit: Coolcaesar/Wikipedia.org)

Zoom Video Communications has agreed to acquire Five9, a contact centre as a service (CCaaS) provider, in an all-stock deal worth around $14.7bn.

As per the terms of the deal, Five9’s stockholders will receive 0.5533 of Zoom’s shares for each share of Five9.

Based in California, Five9 offers cloud contact centre solutions to over 2,000 customers around the world. Its cloud contact centre delivers digital engagement, workflow automation, analytics, optimisation of the workforce, and practical artificial intelligence (AI) to enable its customers in reimagining their customer experience.

The company’s cloud contact centre is said to be highly scalable and secure. It provides a suite of applications to enable the management and optimisation of customer interactions across various channels.

Zoom said that the combination of Five9’s CCaaS solution with its communications platform will transform how organisations connect with their customers.

Furthermore, the acquisition will help the video teleconferencing platform provider boost its presence with enterprise customers and enable it to fast track its long-term growth opportunity by adding the contact centre market.

Zoom CEO and founder Eric Yuan said: “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.

“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.”

Zoom further stated that its acquisition of Five9 is complementary to its Zoom Phone offering. Zoom Phone is a cloud phone system that provides a digital alternative to legacy phone solutions to help organisations connect and interact in new and convenient manners.

Post-acquisition, the CCaaS provider will become an operating division of Zoom. Its CEO Rowan Trollope will become a president of Zoom and continue in the existing role at Five9.

Trollope said: “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.

“This, combined with Zoom’s ‘ease-of use’ philosophy and broad communication portfolio, will truly enable customers to engage via their preferred channel of choice.”

The deal is subject to approval from Five9’s stockholders, regulatory approvals, and other customary closing conditions, after which, it is expected to close in the first half of next year.

Last month, Zoom announced the acquisition of Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions – kites (Kites), a German start-up engaged in developing real-time machine translation solutions.