
For nearly 40 years the Markham software company has built its ice Contact Center entirely in-house, turned down every acquisition offer, and outlasted rivals like Cisco, Five9 and Genesys. Its founder, Mandle Cheung, runs it while personally funding a 100-piece orchestra so he can conduct Mahler.

Eight software companies - from enterprise giant Genesys to a startup called CloudTalk - are betting the phone call survives. They just disagree on whether a human will still answer it.