Aspect Software

Founding, Early Years

Aspect was founded under the name Aspect Communications in 1973, when its solution powered the first call center flight booking system with an intelligent Automatic Call Distributor.^[7] In 2005, Aspect Communications was acquired by Concerto Software for $1 bln,^[8] with the new entity called Aspect Software.^[9]

Expansion After the Merger

In 2006, Aspect borrowed $1.16 billion to finance its international expansion.^[10]

In 2007, Aspect opened its first office offshore in Bangalore, India.^[11]

In 2008, Aspect formed an alliance with Microsoft^[12] with the latter making an investment in Aspect.^[13] Later in 2008, Aspect acquired Massachusetts-based BlueNote Networks.^[14] In 2009, Aspect acquired UK-based AIM Technology.^[15] In 2010, Aspect acquired St. Louis-based Quilogy.^[16] In 2011, Aspect opened a facility in Ireland.^[17]

New Management

In 2012, most of the management was replaced with a new team^[18] led by Stewart Bloom.^[19] Over the next year, Aspect relocated its headquarters to Phoenix, Arizona.^[20]

In 2013, Aspect invested into Bright Pattern^[21] and acquired Voxeo for $150 million.^[22] In 2015, Aspect acquired LinguaSys^[23] to add natural language messaging capabilities.^[24] LinguaSys technology became the basis of Aspect's Natural Language Understanding component for the Aspect CXP platform.^[25] The technology was used to create a chatbot for the supermarket chain Lidl^[26], that won the 2018 Best Consumer Chatbot award at the CogX AI conference, beating X.ai and Microsoft's Xiaoice^[27].

In 2012, Aspect had its credit rating lowered by Standard & Poor's because of the large amount of debt.^[28] In 2015, Moody's lowered its credit rating as well.^[29] In March 2016, Aspect filed for bankruptcy to reduce its debt load,^[30] and emerged from Chapter 11 in May 2016.^[31]

Later in 2016, Aspect released Via Customer Engagement Center, including various products from Aspect's portfolio.^[32]