Post by Zeus Kerravala

This past week Juanita Coley and I recorded our final version of What's New in CX for the first half of 2026. We focused on most of the major news from #CCW, which pairs nicely with the TechRepublic post I wrote highlighting the news from 8x8, Dialpad, Zoom, Salesforce, RingCentral and Talkdesk Ironically, we also discussed the conversation Juanita had with Five9's Jonathan Rosenberg and how the company needs to get him out as a speaker more. It appears Amit Mathradas disagrees. Overall there are three big shifts happening: 1. AI is the New Workforce: Because AI agents are now acting like digital employees, Workforce Management (WFM) has suddenly become the hottest battleground in tech. 2. The Shift in Data Gravity: For years, the industry debated CRM vs. CCaaS. The verdict is in. Data gravity has shifted to live interactions. The richest customer signals live inside the conversation itself, not a static CRM object. 3. The Tech Consolidation Squeeze: Point solutions are in trouble. With Thoma Bravo holding Verint, the clock is ticking. Unless these standalone WFM giants buy a CCaaS provider (or vice versa), the unified stacks are going to eat their lunch. We would like to see Bravo acquire Five9 and put those two companies together. You can watch the full video here: https://lnkd.in/egCg2hSy Carlos Cano, Christie Blake, Cheri Hulse, Jared O., Tim Dreyer, Jennifer C., John Sun, Samuel C Wilson, Katelyn Burrill, Annie Weinberger, Amy Haseltine, Laura Mackey