US tech giant to create AI hub with Altobridge

Jobs boost as company hails ecommerce system as a ‘juicy proposition’, writes Fearghal O’Connor

US company Genesys has started work on plans to turn its newly-acquired Altobridge arm in Galway into what it described as “an AI hub”.

The plans for expansion at the artificial intelligence and machine-learning development operation are expected to mean significant expansion in high-end jobs.

Genesys, which specialises in providing technology and solutions for customer contact and call centres globally, last week bought Galway-based Altobridge for an undisclosed amount.

It now wants to “double down” on Altobridge’s Galway location said Peter Graf, chief product officer with Genesys.

“We plan to grow the team in Galway. We want it to be an AI [artificial intelligence] hub for the company because we feel it is a hot area. We have detailed plans of how we want to move forward.”

Genesys has 10,000 corporate customers in 100 countries, including major brands like Microsoft, Deutsche Telecom, Vodafone, as well as big insurance providers, banks and retailers.

“Basically our customers include pretty much anyone you can call for a service,” said Graf.

The acquisition of Altocloud will particularly enhance Genesys’s offering with regard to its customers in the sales and marketing sector, he said.

“When I saw the product for the first time I felt it was something that everyone who has a webpage and is trying to drive business to the webpage needs to have. This is a market opportunity that is waiting to be addressed so it is a very juicy business case for our customers.”

Graf said that Altocloud’s technology allowed retailers, for example, to track large number of customers’ actions on websites and predict how likely it is that individual customers reach a desired outcome such as clicking a purchase button.

“The programme can raise a flag if a person is close to a desired outcome but deviates and can trigger maybe a special offer or a chat with the person. That learning and prediction is ready to use with Altocloud, which is awesome. But it is also a capability that we can use in other areas of AI across Genesys and that is why it was such an attractive acquisition,” he said.

Altocloud founder Barry O’Sullivan, who is to continue to work with the Galway operation, said that the company is working through plans for expansion at the moment with assistance from the IDA. “We want to grow it significantly. We will need data scientists, software engineers and user experience people. It will be high-end R&D jobs to build a critical mass around our team,” he said.