The acquisition, investment and consolidation motion shaking up the world of Service (especially the Contact Center) continues with news that portfolio giant Thoma Bravo will be acquiring Workforce Engagement and Contact Center as a Service player Verint Systems. According to early reports, the intention is to merge Verint and another player in the Thoma Bravo portfolio, Calabrio.
What We Know About the Deal: Verint announced entering into a definitive agreement with Thoma Bravo for an all-cash transaction estimated to be about $2 billion. Upon completion of the transaction, Verint common stock will no longer be listed on any public stock exchange. The merger plan will see a Thoma Bravo controlled serving as the parent company in a reverse-triangular merger.
Thoma Bravo has owned the work management platform Calabrio since 2021, acquiring it from KKR. In the wake of the global pandemic boom of cloud-based workforce solutions, Calabrio had seen rapid growth companies sought out cloud-forward and data rich service and workforce management solutions that leaned in to the idea of intelligence being the ultimate unlock for experience. Enabling rapid shifts to work from home and the boomerang back to the office also didn't hurt!
What Makes Verint + Calabrio So Interesting: Verint, for the past several years, has focused in on the usable, doable and approachable side to automation, keenly aware that biting a massive chunk of the AI pie was simply not feasible for contact center customers still struggling to tackle massive digital transformation projects that took longer than expected without the fireworks and parade level results that many across the market had been promising. Instead, a legion of Verint bots, complete with “gym” memberships to boost and hone skills, spread out across CCaaS and much like their go to market motions with workforce management, leaned into the data, structure and connectivity of partners to drive success and AI booking expansion.
Recent updates and replatforming with an open, composable architecture were both significant unlocks allowing the Verint platform to integrate with enterprise stacks, but perhaps most importantly, share, connect and document APIs for more seamless data integrations where they matter the most to experiences. While others in the market focused on how MUCH AI could take on, Verint chose to adopt a mindset that starting with a more focused block of business outcomes would win the day. According to their April 2025 filings, the bet has been paying off with the firm seeing their AI Annual Recurring Revenue increase 24% year over year and Verint noting that 80% of new bundled SaaS contracts included AI powered bots (Q1 Fiscal 2025).
For its part Calabrio has long been a leader in conversational intelligence along with their strength in workforce management, leveraging intelligence, visibility and analytics to tie the two thoughts together for customers. What makes this “better together” story so interesting is where and how analytics and the forward-lean into intelligence as the center point for experience can help differentiate this CCaaS solution, encouraging customers to focus on the tangible and achievable shifts in work and experience to benefit both customer and employee. For too many solutions in the market, CX and EX have been held together by dashboards and good intentions. This blend of deep intelligence into conversations blended with a deep understanding that the goal across enterprises is NOT to have MORE random acts of automation and AI, but rather a far more connected cadre of flows (yes, still carrying “gym” cards for continuous skills enhancement).
What Makes This Interesting For Thoma Bravo: The question for Thoma Bravo is why stop there…why stop at the walls of the contact center or even service? The portfolio reads like a recipe card to shaking up the CX landscape in a way some have tried, but few can achieve. Most CX dreamers fail to see across a holistic stack that spans all four horsewomen of the apocalypse, sales, service, marketing and commerce, often stopping short at the tools and functions most comfortable to the contact center. This comfort zone has been profitable as we have seen CCaaS and UCaaS vendors create partnerships and alliances even the TV Survivor franchise would envy. But we've also seen those alliances crumble.
Let’s daydream for a minute looking at the TB active portfolio: What disruption happens if we look beyond Verint and Calabrio? The obvious first look is a company like Medallia, but I’m not sure if that’s the disruptive spot to lean into. The fits and starts around customer voice, journey orchestration and finding a true understanding of a customer's experience can often get in the way. When you look beyond the obvious synergy, there is also the interesting notion of the disruptor in customer feedback and experience visibility, UserTesting…also the subject of an interesting merger, this time BEFORE Thoma Bravo signed on the dotted line. What happens if Verint + Calabrio partners with UserTesting? UserTesting already has a use case application for real time customer feedback on contact center operations, scripting and service. What happens when that level of rapid deployment of user feedback is integrated into a Verint workflow? Does it open the door to customers in product thanks to UserTesting's strength with Figma users?
What happens if we toss Hyland into that mix? Suddenly, CX work starts to include some significant power in content, but service also takes on a distinct superpower of case management that shakes the whole notion that calls and tickets should be deflected and instead adopts a posture that complex case collaboration is a path to profitable resolution. Even more importantly, this type of connection binds the complexity of cases with the complexity of documents and assets…and doesn’t that oddly sound like an unlock for a new breed of knowledge?
It is NOT a coincidence that these words like knowledge, cases, collaboration, CX, EX and content flow in and across the world of experience with everyone wanting to use and own them, but few achieving that holistic nirvana. Without question, Thoma Bravo has amassed a broad collective of experience-centric solutions and tools. What makes this interesting for CX junkies like myself is day-dreaming about a time when Thoma Bravo is bold enough to decide it will take the reigns of the CX rearticulation and help reshape the very definition of experience into something far more intentional, durable and profitable for tomorrow’s enterprise.
What Comes Next: Perhaps what comes next is an even more wild time riding the Expedition Odyssey ride at Sea World during the celebration night at the upcoming 2025 Verint Engage event, scheduled for September 9 – 11 in Orlando, Florida. There will be the expected buzz around what comes next for this proposed merged entity, but in fairness, it could be far too early for Thoma Bravo, Verint or Calabrio to share those details. As of the acquisition announcement, nothing had been noted around who was expected to lead this new entity. The event could give Thoma Bravo leadership some perspective into the merged customer base and where they could be ready to recast experience as a differentiator. For now, the kudos go to Dan Bodner who founded Verint in 1994 and has been the tenacious vision driver ever since. He clearly gets the first ride in the front row seats when everyone hits Orlando in September!
