Verint Acquires Next IT

'Verint Systems has acquired Next IT, a developer of conversational artificial intelligence–powered intelligent virtual assistants. The acquisition includes all of the outstanding equity interests in Next IT and its affiliate, Next IT Innovation Labs. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Next IT has been focused on developing AI technologies that "propel businesses into the intelligence revolution" and that are "enterprise-ready on day one," according to its website. Its conversational AI solutions are designed to "emulate [organizations’] best employees," and organizations that have implemented the vendor's solutions include Alaska Airlines, the U.S. Army, and SWBC.

"We've been collaborating with Next IT for quite some time. We've had a marketing agreement in place with them, and if you look at large enterprises that are modernizing their self-service capabilities, the opportunity for us is to have a single technology stack that allows customers to transfer from a voice to a digital channel, and to have a consistent journey through that process," says Michael Southworth, general manager for intelligent self-service offerings at Verint. He added that Next IT's technology will be integrated into Verint’s broader self-service offerings and that he expects that “the back-end technology integration will be made shortly.”

John Hibel, senior director of marketing for intelligent self-service at Verint, says that Verint customers will benefit from the integration’s bolstered intelligence. “If you look at our offering today, we have an intelligent self-service offering focused on the voice channel; Next IT has an intelligent offering focused on digital channels, and this gives customers an opportunity to invest in a shared intelligence that can drive interactions across a spectrum of voice and digital channels,” Hibel says.

And as part of Verint's broader portfolio, the integrated solution will be able to leverage those other pieces to give a more complete picture of customers, he says. “It starts to bring in a broader view of the customer…to draw from knowledge management or speech analytics or other pieces of our portfolio to provide a broader context of that customer interaction and allows [customer interactions] to be orchestrated in a way that’s more personal, more natural, and more effective at delivering a customer experience."

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