An interesting data point from my research is that today, 90% of organizations compete on CX compared to only 27% five years ago. In many cases, a single, bad experience can mean losing a customer.

Customer experience often starts in the contact center, but how companies interact with their customers continues to broaden, and brands must enable customers to communicate with them using the channels of their choice.

DEWA and Avaya Showcase the Metaverse for Customer Happiness

At GITEX Global 2023, currently being held in Dubai, Avaya and the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) partnered to demonstrate an integrated digital interactive hub that enables a range of services and integrates customer services with the DEWAVerse platform, which allows communication in a metaverse environment.

For DEWA, Avaya helped the company complete a digital transformation project in its customer happiness center. At the event, I had a chance to meet with Abeer Eladaway, Deputy Senior Manager of DEWA, and she explained that it was the goal of His Highness Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, to have all government entities provide best-in-class customer service.

This prompted the name change of DEWA’s customer service centers to customer happiness centers. DEWA actively monitors all customer interactions and has made customer satisfaction a top initiative.

One of the interesting differences regarding the Middle East is that the public sector drives innovation and aims to set an example for private enterprise. This starkly contrasts with the US and Western Europe, where it seems government entities go out of their way to provide bad service.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

Eladaway expressed that while the older generation will likely prefer face-to-face interactions, many of the younger citizens will prefer to use a virtual one, so the organization designed DEWAVerse as that option.

Based on Avaya technology and delivered through call center firm Moro, the solution includes an integrated digital interactive hub for DEWA customers to access service through an interactive voice system enhanced by AI. This system allows agents to communicate with customers, answer inquiries, and complete transactions in the virtual world.

In the virtual environment, customers have their own private space to see their electricity and water consumption, and carbon footprint. Customers can also interact with live or virtual agents and pay bills through the interface. There is also a feature in which DEWA will recommend different appliances, and customers can measure the power and cost impact.

This implementation, which is hosted and managed by Moro in its data center, enables customers to contact the DEWA using a variety of communication channels, including phone, email, video, and text. Avaya says that multi-channel engagements are fully integrated so that engagements can transition from one medium to another.

Avaya added that an IVR system now offers options for self-service options so that customers can conduct several transactions without any agent involvement. Avaya utilized artificial intelligence in building a dynamic menu that can identify, assign, and prioritize registered callers so they receive the appropriate level of service.

There has been great debate regarding the viability of the metaverse. Once a skeptic, I’ve since changed my mind because it provides an alternate form of communication. People were skeptical of e-mail initially, the web, and social media, but those have proven to be preferred by those “born in” that era.

Motul’s Cloud-Based Solutions for Improved CX and EX

Another customer experience example Avaya had on display at GITEX was with oil and lubricants company Motul. The company has adopted cloud-based solutions from Avaya to improve customer and employee experiences across many different interaction points using a suite of Avaya’s cloud-based solutions.

Avaya said that Motul has deployed the Avaya Experience Platform, which integrates with Avaya Cloud Office (ACO) by RingCentral. The solution connects more than 400 of Motul’s employees around the globe, enabling them to engage more closely with customers and each other, regardless of location.

Avaya’s Experience Platform, a cloud-based contact center solution, helps Motul create and track KPIs to transform its customer service processes. The platform’s cloud-based attributes translate into an implementation without the massive disruption often accompanying customer service upgrades. In addition, Avaya says it requires little employee training.

GITEX Global 2023 has been an action-packed event. Avaya is showing that it is focused on the future and providing companies with real solutions that work today. These announcements show the importance of experiences and underscore how critical it is for vendors to share real case studies. Both DEWA and Motul are using Avaya for novel solutions that show the power of digital transformations that are aimed at improving experiences.

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guide

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The critical elements of digital transformation to keep in mind are customer experience, operational excellence, and innovation. Specifically:

• Delight your customers: You need to optimize customer experiences, ensuring a smooth, automated journey that is connected and personalized across all channels.
• Stay flexible, productive, and efficient: Hybrid workforces demand a lot. Build an ethic of operations excellence that can handle all the needs of your company while staying secure and accountable is critical.
• Look to the future: Innovation is about optimizing day-to-day operations so you can focus on new products and opportunities.

A “Do It Yourself” Approach is Hard to Execute

Executing digital transformation by yourself is a daunting prospect. And, even with some of the common platforms available, the heavy lifting can be overwhelming.

Getting the coders you need to get everything done is a thankless task—something that might be impossible in today’s labor market. But rather than putting this on next year’s to-do list, there are ways to do everything you need now using a different approach: No code.

We’ve all heard the soothing terms low code and no code. But how viable are they? ZK Research has evaluated several solutions in the past few years, and we see them as a shortcut around development cycles that used to take months or years.

One such platform—from Newgen, an India-based company whose platform can automate all aspects of a business for efficient operations and end-to-end customer journeys—can deliver the business outcomes we described above. The company’s NewgenONE platform enables the following:

• Automate manual processes and applications.
• Speed up transformations with low/no code.
• Create insights from documents, images, videos, and audio files.
• Extract more from existing systems without a complete rebuild.
• Build a culture of innovation across a company’s ecosystem, including internal groups, customers, and partners.
• Scale and secure the cloud.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

The Platform

The NewgenONE platform automates key parts of a business to make operations more efficient and ensure customer journeys are seamless.

One Newgen customer, Bank Midwest, a leading community bank in the Midwest region with assets totaling $1.3 billion, chose NewgenONE to transform its processes and customer experience with a tailored solution that eliminated the need for multiple-point solutions. The bank efficiently integrated these features into their projects, paving the way for enhanced efficiency and scalability to meet future business demands.

Another financial organization—Georgia’s Own Credit Union, one of the largest credit unions in Georgia—partnered with Newgen to transition 65% of its new applications online, reducing the application journey time to just five minutes. In addition, NewgenONE reduced back-office processing time by 35%.

Bottom Line: Low Code/No Code Delivers

Low code/no code platforms can often be all talk and no reality. But, after speaking to some of their customers, ZK Research believes NewgenONE platform can deliver on the promise.

Also, Newgen has been recognized by other research firms, most notably Forrester and Gartner, as having a complete and easy-to-use platform. The company says, on average, customers have achieved an ROI of 371% over three years, which is in-line with the case studies I cited above.

Executing on digital transformation using old-school tools will not scale and can often lead to unsuccessful projects. Low code / no code masks much of the complexity that developers will face and simplifies digital projects.

Read next: Digital Transformation Guide

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This follows the introduction of Zoom Mail and Calendar earlier this year. The combination of Unified Communication, Contact Center, Email / Calendar, and Docs gives Zoom the broadest, fully integrated collaboration suite in the industry. While Microsoft and Google have the same components, they lack the tight integration provided by Zoom.

Zoom is rethinking document collaboration

During a pre-brief with analysts, Zoom Head of Products for Meetings, Rooms, and Workspaces, Jeff Smith, clarified that this isn’t your father’s document application when he discussed re-imagining documents.

He stated that traditional docs apps are meant to replicate paper, and the output was meant to be printed. In a world that is increasingly paperless, how we think about documents should also change.

Smith stated emphatically: “Zoom Docs marks the end of 8 ½ x 11” and called it “a next-generation way of collaborating.”

In some ways, the name Zoom Docs is a bit of a misnomer as the company delivers a workspace for people to collaborate through a document interface. While the application handles the traditional document experience, it enhances it with the following capabilities.

• Customizable documents. Workers can use content blocks to pull information into customizable layouts and workflows. Table blocks can organize data, manage projects, track tasks, and manage schedules through columns, filters, and groups.
• Easy delegation. With Zoom Docs, users can bring their team together to get more work done faster between meetings. Users can use “@” mentions of colleagues in the document to keep them in the loop, create a discussion, add comments and threads, and assign tasks to keep everyone on track.
• Combine knowledge with wikis and shared folders. Workers can create wikis to link pages and embed them in a visual tree, enabling teams to see how information is connected instantly. Pages can be grouped better to organize docs for a more complete knowledge source.
• Flexible working. Users can work directly in Zoom or Docs. The Zoom integration allows users to create, edit, and search Zoom Docs while in a Meeting or in a Team Chat. This can significantly cut down on the “toggle tax” we experience today that contributes to users spending about 40% of their time managing work.

AI Companion boosts Zoom Docs value

Another benefit of the integration with the Zoom suite is the use of AI Companion within Zoom Docs. Workers can jump-start document creation by asking the AI engine to populate content. Alternatively, AI Companion could summarize content to create an executive overview or get caught up.

At Zoomtopia, Zoom also announced its global, unified search capabilities that enable workers to find information anywhere in the Zoom platform, including some third-party applications. I’ve experienced the frustration of remembering I received a document from someone but could not remember if they sent it through Zoom Chat or in an e-mail. This causes me to search both until I find it. The unified search feature allows workers to search across Zoom, streamlining that process.

Artificial intelligence was a key theme at Zoomtopia as the company reiterated its federated, responsible, and empowering approach. Contrary to many news articles, Zoom will not use customer data without permission. This includes customer audio video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or any other information inside Zoom.

Also see: 100+ Top AI Companies

Zoom is democratizing AI

Zoom has set the price point for AI Companion at free with any paid license. During the analyst briefing, Randy Maestre, Head of Zoom AI, Ecosystem, and Industry Product Marketing, stated, “We believe AI should be affordable and accessible to everyone, so we have included AI Companion at no additional cost for customers.”

This can save companies a significant amount of money compared to the $30 per month and up for similar features from Google and Microsoft.

New AI Companion features announced at Zoomtopia include real-time feedback and coaching, AI for Zoom Phone, and the ability to handle complex tasks across Zoom and third-party applications. This complements the existing features of whiteboard content generation, smart recordings, in-meeting queries, meeting summaries, chat thread summaries, and composing emails and chats.

Most of the collaboration vendors have chosen a co-existence strategy when it comes to Microsoft Teams. Not so for Zoom, as the introduction of Zoom Docs, which follows the rollout of Mail and Calendar, is clearly a shot across Microsoft’s bow.

Also see: Best Artificial Intelligence Software

Bottom Line: Platform Integration

Will Zoom see success? Only time will tell, but what Zoom has on its side is a product that is much less complicated and has better platform integration than the bloated Microsoft Office experience.

Also, workers tend to love Zoom and often push the IT organization into bringing it in as an alternative to Teams. While the introduction of Zoom Docs will capture the headlines, it’s the use of AI and global search that creates tangible user value.

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Unlike in years past, where the year-over-year difference was negligible, 2022 to 2023 saw significant changes and surprises. Below are the notable points from the 2023 CCaaS Magic Quadrant.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant CSaaS: Shifts and Surprises

NICE

The MQ has changed significantly over the years, but one constant has been NICE in the Leader quadrant.

The company has been a de facto standard for some time, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. NICE has significantly invested in AI and partnerships and is well-aligned with industry trends.

In the MQ, Gartner says this about the company, “NICE has a strong vision for supporting end-to-end digital-first journeys, including use of search engine optimization analytics to help optimize digital self- and assisted-service experiences.” I expect to see NICE in the MQ pole position for years.

Genesys

That Genesys has remained a Leader is a surprise. Like NICE, Genesys has been a mainstay in the Leader quadrant for years, so one might wonder why being in that quadrant in 2023 would be unexpected.

Recall that in October of 2022, the company announced it was shutting down its multi-cloud division, which shows a significant change in strategy. I’m not arguing the decision, but how Genesys could be a leader pre and post-decision is unclear.

If the strategy aligned with Gartner in 2022, it should have seen its position move negatively in 2023. Or the company should not have been a Leader in past MQs and then rewarded positively for the strategy change. Based on the report, shutting down multi-cloud had no impact on Gartner’s view of the company, which is surprising given that was a such a major strategy.

Also see: Digital Transformation Guide: Definition, Types & Strategy

Five9

Five9 moves back to the Leader quadrant. From what I understand, Five9 was moved out due to geographic qualification as the MQ became global.

Despite the explanation, I never agreed with Five9 not being in the Leader quadrant, as the company has carried the CCaaS flag for about 20 years. Over the past few years, Five9 has done an excellent job expanding its addressable market both geographically and upmarket. At one time, the knock on Five9 was they had no customers over 1,000 concurrent agents. Today, they can easily handle tens of thousands. I expect to see Five9 continue to move up in both axes.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services moves into the Leader quadrant. This was another vendor who I felt should have been a Leader last year.

While some of the other vendors tend to get more media attention, AWS has quietly gathered customers of all sizes, including some of the largest contact centers in the world. I’ve talked to Amazon Connect GM Pasquale DeMaio about the MQ, and he told me that while they would like to be in the Leader quadrant, it would not change its strategy to accomplish that.

DeMaio has been consistent in the Amazon Connect mission of bringing a best-in-class, AI-based CCaaS solution to its customers, with the roadmap built from customer feedback. One of the under-appreciated aspects of Connect is the tight integration with other AWS services, which simplifies the process for developers to build on the Connect platform. From what I can tell, this broader AWS advantage isn’t reflected in the MQ analysis.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

Talkdesk 

Talkdesk moves from Leader to Visionary. Many industry watchers were surprised when Taldesk was placed in the Leader quadrant, which is still an emerging player.

One of the aspects of the company’s go-to-market I have liked is that it does not try to be all things to all people and has taken a vertical approach focusing on retail, healthcare, and financial services. Two years ago, Talkdesk was very active with the analyst community and media but had gone somewhat dark since then, giving rise to speculation that the company was struggling and had retrenched to retool. Since then, CMO Kathie Johnson has exited the business, with Christie Blake returning to a marketing role. I expect more vision from the company and better clarity on business momentum. This should help it return to the “top right” in the MQ.

Cisco 

Cisco remains a Niche player. To say CCaaS is important to Webex is as big an understatement as there is.

The company is a late entrant in an increasingly crowded market but approached the offering correctly. Instead of leveraging the existing legacy contact center, it built CCaaS to be part of the larger Webex platform, which brings tight integration with UCaaS. This can bring features such as background noise removal to agents working from home.

While this took longer than doing a “lift and shift” of the older on-premises solution, it gives Cisco a solid, cloud-native solution to build on.

One of the issues I find with all MQs is they look at the individual products in isolation. One of the unique differentiators for Webex Contact Center is the integration into the broader Cisco portfolio, such as devices and security. For example, remote agents can be more productive and secure if the customer leverages products like ThousandEyes and Duo along with Webex CCaaS. I expect Cisco to continue to move up in the MQ as it gains momentum, but the analysis negates the broader Cisco advantage.

Notable Absences 

Two vendors noticeable by their absence are Zoom and Avaya.  Over the summer, Zoom took the covers off Zoom CCaaS and appears to be off to a running start. I’ve talked to a handful of companies looking at the product, and the general feedback is positive, although it currently lacks some integrations with third-party software vendors. I expect this to be a key focus area for Zoom and hope we see them in the 2024 MQ.

For Avaya, while the product likely would meet Gartner’s product requirements, it likely does not meet the revenue requirements as it was largely ignored during Jim Chirico’s tenure.

Current CEO Alan Masarek has taken a more practical approach to delivering CCaaS to Avaya’s massive customer base, where it will use the cloud to deliver digital capabilities while enabling its customers to continue leveraging the on-premises voice solution.

Avaya CCaaS can be delivered through the Avaya Experience Platform (AXP) for customers who want a pure cloud solution. This is a solid juxtaposition for Genesys’s cut-the-cord approach, which forces its customers to move to the public cloud whether or not they are ready. While Avaya’s hybrid approach has kept them out of the MQ and may in future ones, it’s the right thing to do for its large enterprise customer base.

Bottom Line: CCaaS and AI

While the CCaaS MQ hasn’t seen many vendors move over the past several years, I expect that to change in future years. Artificial intelligence is the biggest catalyst for change since the introduction of cloud. Some vendors are partnering while others are building the capabilities in house. Which is better? Time will tell and I expect Gartner’s MQ to make AI a bigger part of the evaluation criteria.

One final note: although the MQ is a popular shortlist tool, it’s important to remember it’s not an absolute measure. Just because a vendor is more “right” or more “up” on the MQ doesn’t mean it’s the right solution for all companies. A business looking for a solution tightly bundled with UCaaS would likely be better off with 8×8 than NICE. Customers need to apply their own context and criteria to the vendors in the MQ to decide which fits their business best.

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As a result, 71 percent of these organizations are focusing on upskilling the current workforce to meet their digital transformation needs. I’ve been covering IT trends for a long time, and talent evolution is something businesses have always had to deal with. But innovation is happening so much faster today, creating an accelerated need for skills transitions.

Cisco is among the leading tech companies making significant strides to address the skills gap, particularly in the cybersecurity and network automation sectors. Recognizing that there’s no universal solution, Cisco has adopted a comprehensive approach that spans the entirety of the learning spectrum.

“This means that no matter where someone comes in—whether they’re tech curious, trying to enter the job market, or whether they’re in the job market already—we’re making this entire learning continuum available to keep up with new technologies,” said Par Merat, VP of Cisco Learning and Certifications, during a recent analyst update on bridging the skills gap.

Cisco’s approach is multifaceted. The company works with education partners, including its learning partner ecosystem and academies. Notably, in the U.S., Cisco’s outreach extends to an impressive 45 percent of community colleges. There’s also a direct-to-learner model, allowing individuals to engage with and access their resources.

Moreover, Cisco has partnered with learning as a service (LaaS) providers like Coursera and has forged ties with government agencies. Cisco enhances this learning approach with certifications, ensuring individuals can acquire the necessary skills.

Cisco Networking Academy: The Linchpin

Spearheading Cisco’s vision for an inclusive digital future is the Cisco Networking Academy. Since its inception in 1997, it has impacted over 20 million individuals. “NetAcad” functions as a conduit between learning and job readiness. Cisco has set an ambitious goal to provide digital and cybersecurity skills training to 25 million people over the next 10 years as part of the Networking Academy program.

“We prepare individuals for careers in areas of networking, cybersecurity, and other IT roles,” said Laura Quintana, VP and General Manager of the Cisco Networking Academy. “We support countries worldwide and help them accelerate their digital agendas by addressing the skills gap. When measuring student outcomes, 3.57 million people have attributed their participation in the academy to obtaining a new job.”

Ensuring the program remains cutting-edge, the academy integrates technologies that blend traditional learning with immersive experiences, such as gamified modules, interactive sessions, and artificial intelligence (AI). One of the academy’s standout programs is the junior cybersecurity analyst pathway, offering 120 hours of in-depth training in cybersecurity.

On a related topic: The Future of Artificial Intelligence

Certifications: The Cisco Stamp of Quality

Once an individual secures a job in the tech field, the learning process doesn’t stop there. Cisco also provides accessible and certification-based training to empower professionals in their careers. Over the past three decades, the company has issued more than 4.3 million certifications.

A distinguishing feature is Cisco’s recognition as industry, rather than product, certifications. These certifications have received accreditations from renowned bodies like the American National Standards (ANSI) and the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST). Cisco continually revises and adapts its certification content, reflecting the evolving job market, a recent example being the introduction of multicloud certifications.

Cisco U: The Pinnacle of Digital Training

Cisco introduced a new platform called Cisco U, emphasizing a modernized approach to digital training. The inception of this platform was a collaborative effort with the Cisco community, aiming to strike a balance between proficiency and efficiency in learning. The platform is anchored around three foundational tenets: guidance, community, and depth.

Cisco U stands out for its use of AI and machine learning (ML) to recommend specific learning paths by offering assessments that guide individuals. This ensures people access only the most relevant content for the skills they’re trying to acquire. The platform delves deep into Cisco-specific topics while also branching out to cover newer, interdisciplinary areas.

Community engagement is an essential aspect of Cisco U. Previously, the community discussions were separate from learning resources, causing a disconnect. Now, Cisco U brings these discussions directly into the learning experience. It’s a new integrated approach that fosters “vibrant conversations, tips, and informal mentoring,” Merat said.

Also see: The Pros and Cons of Deep Learning

Case Study: How North Dakota Is Bridging the Skills Gap

North Dakota, with its predominantly rural setting, faces significant challenges in technological advancement, workforce transitions, and shifts in agricultural practices. To address these, the state has taken several key steps to promote digital equity among its citizens with the help of “Skills for All,” a Cisco program that offers free online tech courses.

Recognizing the importance of comprehensive technological education, North Dakota has integrated Cisco’s educational offerings across all its institutions, ranging from pre-kindergarten all the way to Ph.D. programs. This ensures that students receive a thorough grounding in technology regardless of their academic level.

Additionally, there’s a strong push towards promoting remote work and developing skills to stay relevant in the tech landscape. Part of the vision is to expand broadband access throughout the state, ensuring that every citizen can take advantage of modern technologies like cloud connectivity and AI.

On the educational front, North Dakota launched an initiative called PK-20W, which stands for pre-kindergarten through Ph.D. and the workforce. The initiative emphasizes the importance of continuous upskilling and reskilling, offering avenues for career progression without the constant requirement of higher formal degrees.

This vision has been further cemented by recent legislation that mandates cybersecurity education as a requirement for high school graduation. Cisco plays a crucial role in PK-20W, providing resources and support, which many of the state’s educational institutions have adopted.

Upskilling the Current Workforce

Beyond just education, there’s a pressing need to adapt the current workforce’s skills, especially in the IT sector. As technologies like AI and cloud computing become more central to operations, IT professionals must be adequately trained to handle the challenges they bring. Cisco’s programs have been instrumental in offering structured training to IT staff and ensuring they remain updated in their roles.

“The digital landscape is going to continue to move forward, and we’ve got to prepare ourselves to be at the cusp of that technological change,” said Kuldip Mohanty, North Dakota Office of the Governor’s chief information officer. “That’s where the Cisco Networking Academy continues to be our strongest foundation. This collaboration extends beyond technology. It’s about fostering a culture of innovation, learning, and adaptability.”

North Dakota’s vision is technological inclusivity, where every citizen is equipped and empowered to navigate the digital age. The partnership with Cisco stands at the heart of this vision, fostering a culture of continuous learning and ensuring that the state has a skilled workforce for the future.

The topic of reskilling is something I talk to almost all IT professionals about. There are many ways to keep one’s skills current, but leveraging vendor-driven programs like Cisco offers is an excellent way to ensure the training received is current and in line with present and future technology trends.

Technology is evolving faster than ever, and those willing to continually learn new skills will have a leg up on those that don’t invest in themselves.

On a related topic: The AI Market: An Overview 

The post How Cisco is Addressing the Widening Skills Gap appeared first on eWEEK.

An interesting data point from ZK Research is that 68% of business leaders consider the network important to business transformation. This is because organizations have become more distributed and dynamic, putting the network at the center of digital transformation strategies.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

WAN Evolution is Necessary for Digital Transformation

The network, particularly the WAN, has not evolved in the better part of thirty years. In fact, the architecture most WANs are designed with is essentially the same as when I was an IT pro over two decades ago. This is what’s driving the high amounts of interest in software-defined WANs (SD-WANs). Despite the momentum, finding good case studies of real-world deployments has been challenging.

At the VMware Explore 2023, VMware hosted a breakout session with two technical implementation team members from Providence, a healthcare organization with 51 hospitals and 829 clinics in a wide variety of states around the country. 

Providence Used SD-WAN to Redesign its Network

The case study senior principal network engineer Charlie Hagen and principal network engineer Conor McCutcheon were at the VMware event to discuss “Redesigning a Mission-Critical WAN to Drive Business.”

McCutcheon described his organization’s journey. “We provide life-saving care,” he said. “Underpinning all of that healthcare delivery is our network. A patient having a stroke or heart attack does not want to wait for the network to work for them to receive that care.”

McCutcheon said that the state of the Providence network was driven by organic growth and expansion over many years. This resulted in a fractured WAN topology with different regional networks that didn’t use a common standard.

In my experience, this is, by far, the norm versus the exception, leaving most companies with a messy, unmanageable WAN environment.

WAN Evolution Required a Rethink of the Network

McCutcheon said that Providence took these actions:

• Consolidated to a single routing design enterprise-wide
• Standardized on a single routing platform
• Mediated overlapping IP space
• Unified disparate routing domains
• Set enterprise-wide standards

The consolidation fixed many issues, but selecting a single national carrier was challenging. With a national carrier, you have to take what they offer. That carrier might subcontract services to the local exchange, leading to finger-pointing when something goes wrong, which increases mean-time-to-recovery and can slow down new services or upgrades.

“Finally, we didn’t always see eye-to-eye with our national carriers on [technological] diversity,” McCutcheon said. “There were numerous occasions where incidents like fiber-seeking backhoes or carrier maintenance took both circuits down at a site even though we ordered diversity for that site.”

Charlie Hagan joined the discussion and said Providence decided to return to the table and reexamine the requirements. They wanted to develop the best WAN in healthcare and embrace change rather than depending on yesterday’s architecture and approaches.

SD-WAN Provides Superior Application Experience 

“We wanted to deliver the best application experience because our caregivers experience our network through the applications that consume it,” Hagan said. “We wanted the WAN to enable the business to be agile in response to new opportunities and demands, including absorbing bandwidth-intensive needs of new medical equipment rather than being the bottleneck.”

Being able to shift the network because of unforeseen events (maybe a global pandemic?) was a critical requirement.

Hagan and McCutcheon decided to select an SD-WAN to enable the following advantages:

• Dynamic remediation of impaired circuits through error correction and real-time detection and failover of impaired circuits.
• Abstraction of the transport from the routing to enable integration of additional circuit types like internet connectivity into an enterprise connectivity model without having a separate solution.
• Simplified management of the entire platform from a single pane of glass.
• Standardization of the configuration and design.

“As Yogi Berra said, ‘When you come to a fork on the road, take it,'” McCutcheon said. “Our proposal was nothing less than a reinvention of our WAN.” So, with stakes so high, McCutcheon said the selection had to be correct. Providence asked a third party to build a test environment.

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guid

Selecting the SD-WAN Solution

“Several platform vendors participated and underwent an extensive test plan to ensure that they met our requirements and that we understood their behavior under load and failure conditions,” he said.

McCutcheon then shared some criteria they used to select their next SD-WAN solution, including dynamic path selection, zero-touch provisioning, orchestration and automation, link impairment detection and remediation, and interoperability with the legacy network.

“So as a result of this extensive testing, and because we’re here at VMware Explore, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that VMware was our selected SD-WAN vendor,” McCutcheon said. “Since we’ve made that selection, we’ve finished the final design of our network integrating SD-WAN and begun to implement.”

As a result, McCutcheon said that the Providence WAN is rapidly becoming a strategic asset that enables the organization to be agile when new opportunities and demands arise. Now, Providence can move healthcare out of hospitals and into its network of ambulatory clinics.

No transition like this is flawless. In fact, Providence experienced an issue right off the bat. “During our very first cutover, we experienced an unplanned failover event during a morning executive briefing,” Hagan said. “This was a user, not a platform error. But after the event, we were pleased to be able to surprise the executives with the news that we’d had a failover. There was no perceived impact during their call. Since that time, we continue to see the same excellent responsiveness to circuit issues. The VMware SD-WAN platform provides detailed reportable telemetry on the performance of our network.”

Providence recently had another incident where they used telemetry within the SD-WAN to isolate an issue. “Because our internet upstream at our data center was the endpoint for multiple tunnels for multiple locations, we were able to identify that only some of those tunnels were impacted by a carrier issue unidirectionally,” McCutcheon said. “In short, we were able to feed that to our upstream provider to identify that there was a peering issue upstream of them. It was all available to us within the orchestrator, and it was enlightening.”

Maybe more important, Providence can now use telemetry to hold their carriers accountable and to identify the graded circuit performance despite the lack of impact on caregivers. We throw around terms like mission-critical all the time, which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t really accurate most of the time.

But, at healthcare organizations like Providence, those words ring true. They are, quite literally, saving lives. It’s nice to see the thinking that Providence put into their move to an SD-WAN. The willingness to rethink WAN operations and break the status quo is something all companies should consider.

The post How Providence Healthcare Redesigned its WAN for Digital Transformation appeared first on eWEEK.

Teams can be unpredictable. Say what you will about the other players, but they just work.

Zoom started as a standalone product—and if it didn’t work, the company would’ve gone under. Webex was one of the earliest players, so they know how to make meetings work. Google Meet always feels strange, but it’s generally competent, although essentially a “me too” product. Skype is, well, Skype. It’s nothing fancy—kind of AOL Messenger on steroids—but it works.

Poor User Experience is the Teams Challenge

The trouble with Teams is that, in an effort to integrate all its products, Microsoft appears to have forgotten about the experience of actually using the individual product. Most people don’t care about integration—or, more correctly, users don’t care about integration if the product itself doesn’t work.

The Teams experience, at least for me and many users I have talked to, has not been good. Most times I go to use it, I get stuck in some kind of login issue. On more than one occasion, almost as a throwback to the late 90s or early 2000s, I’ve resorted to just using the dial-in numbers.

If I can solve login, I have to change the settings for backgrounds, etc., as I’m getting set to enter a meeting. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and I’m late for a meeting.

One of the most significant issues with Teams is guest access. If I host a meeting or call, I’ll use Zoom, so I often join Teams as a guest.

The experience as a guest is inconsistent. Some features, like chat, work on some calls and not others. It also creates multiple user IDs, which can create confusion for end users. This is why many organizations use Teams for internal meetings but a product like Zoom for external. Guest access is better in the latest release but it’s still not on par with other vendors.

Also see: Digital Transformation Guide

The EU and Unbundling

Once inside Teams, things work all right. Yet the experience, compared to Zoom or Webex, is severely lacking. But there may be hope on the horizon—in the unlikely guise of EU regulators. You may have read that the EU has prompted Microsoft to unbundle Teams.

One news article I read about the unbundling said Teams was considered the crown jewel of the Office 365 suite. I’m not sure about that, but it’s apparent that Microsoft is unhappy about unbundling. From a business standpoint, no one would be happy about this. Government regulators interfering in the way a company operates is generally abhorrent.

Looking back, Microsoft wasn’t happy about making it easier to uninstall Explorer after wrangling with the Justice Department in the late ’90s and early 2000s. But they survived allowing non-Microsoft software into its walled garden and grew into a trillion-plus dollar company—despite years of feckless management under Steve Ballmer. 

For users of Teams in the EU, unbundling could be a good thing if Microsoft approaches it correctly. Thinking about the user experience for Teams itself rather than the overall integration should help the company address the usability issues.

The ability to link to a doc from SharePoint is probably not a high priority for people just trying to have a seamless meeting. But those integrations should be relatively easy to maintain. One big step the company could take in improving usability is to acquire a company like Box. One might think that Box and Microsoft OneDrive are overlapping products, but the reality is that Box improves the Microsoft user experience better than Microsoft’s own product.

I know many people think I’m anti-Teams but, in reality, I’m anti-bad user experience. I want to like Teams. I really do. I hope that the company will use the unbundling to free it from those shackles everywhere and focus its usability experts on creating a great product that is easy to use and just works.

Microsoft Needs to Prioritize Usability 

I might be shouting into the void, but Microsoft product engineers might want to rethink how they approach Teams. It’s a simple thought: Prioritize the core functionality that users need or want. Then, approach that development from the inside out, like Zoom did. Think about enabling great meetings and messaging. Worry about everything else later.

The challenge with Microsoft is that the company appears to prioritize locking customers into license bundles over everything else, including usability. By making the job of procuring the product so frictionless, it can use that audience to push substandard products on corporate workers. This is why so many workers will say something like, “I really don’t like using Teams, but the IT department made the decision.”

The danger that unbundling creates is that it removes that lock and creates an opening for better products. Proof of that is how fast Google managed to have Chrome usurp Internet Explorer’s once dominant position.

If you’re a customer of Teams in one of the countries where it will be unbundled, do your due diligence and look at Zoom, RingCentral, Webex, 8×8, Avaya, or any of the other many products and use Box as the solution to integrate data across them. You’ll have happier customers and likely save yourself some money.

Read next: Top Digital Transformation Companies

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VMware’s announcement is well-timed, as the edge is where the action is. It’s so vital to enterprise success that ZK Research sees the market doubling—from about $50 billion annually to more than $100 billion—over the next five years.

Much of that will come from the industries where IT and OT (operational technology) are coming together, such as manufacturing and warehousing. Other verticals such as healthcare and retail are looking to use the edge to process information where the data is versus having to backhaul information to a centralized cloud.

Edge Computing Key Announcements 

During the Day 1 keynote on edge computing solutions, VMware announced several new capabilities, solutions, and services to help its customers speed up edge digital transformations.

The announcement included:

• VMware edge orchestration capabilities for multiple edge services.
• A retail edge industry solution for customer engagement, loss prevention, and point-of-sale transformation.
• VMware Edge managed connectivity service, which will soon be available to wireless service providers looking to deliver private 4G/5G services to enterprises.

In his keynote, Sanjay Uppal, VMware’s Senior VP and General Manager of Service Provider and Edge, said, “The growing demand for edge computing across industries is driving the need for automation and orchestration. The VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator is a powerful new tool that extends our proven network automation and orchestration capabilities to help organizations install, configure, operate, and maintain their edge deployments more securely and cost-effectively.”

Critical elements of the announcement:

VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator

Formerly known as the VMware SASE Orchestrator, the company’s Edge Cloud Orchestrator aims to unify management for VMware SASE and the VMware Edge Compute Stack.

Jörg Spindler, Global Head of Manufacturing Engineering at Audi, said in a press release that his company is looking to take its automation at its global factories to the next level with a scalable edge infrastructure. “VMware Edge Compute Stack (ECS) and the VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator (VECO) will offer a scalable way for Audi to operate a distributed edge infrastructure, manage resources more efficiently, and lower its operations costs.”

VMware Edge Compute Stack

Based on the company’s Project Keswick, the Edge Compute Stack enables edge administrators to work with VMware to develop use cases with simplified lifecycle management of VM and container-based applications and infrastructure.

The company believes that customers can consolidate hardware and modernize applications at a speed that matches their business needs. The overall goal is to reduce infrastructure and management overhead so that customers can scale edge operations.

VMware Retail Edge

Retail stores can use VMware Retail Edge to build, run, manage, connect, and protect their business services across all locations to reduce in-store infrastructure costs and management.

According to VMware, retailers can remotely deploy and maintain applications on demand and accelerate the deployment of next-gen AI apps. Retail Edge will integrate with partners to support various retail needs, including customer engagement and loss prevention. Given that the budget for edge may fall outside IT purchasing, rolling out vertical solutions is the right approach.

In the future, I expect to see other industry-specific edges such as transportation, warehousing, and healthcare.

VMware Private Mobile Network

This managed connectivity service aims to speed up edge digital transformation and remove the complexity associated with private mobile. VMware is working with wireless providers Betacom, Boingo Wireless, and Federated Wireless in a beta program ahead of general availability sometime this quarter.

Dr. Derek Peterson, CTO at Boingo, said, “Boingo is collaborating with VMware to enhance our managed private 5G networks that connect mobile and IoT devices at airports, stadiums, and large venues. VMware’s Private Mobile Network simplifies network integration and management, helping us accelerate deployments.”

Also see: Top Edge Companies 

Support for Edge Use Cases

VMware says that its edge solutions will support use cases across:

• Manufacturing: autonomous vehicles, digital twins, inventory management, safety, and security.
• Retail: loss prevention, inventory management, safety, security, and computer vision.
• Energy: increased production visibility and efficiency, reduced unplanned downtime, maintain regulatory compliance.
• Healthcare: IoT wearables, smart utilities, and surgical robotics.

In the Expo Hall, VMware had a Ford F-150 police vehicle with its edge appliance in it that would make license plate scanning and other video analytics much faster than having to punch numbers into a computer manually.

Competitive Advantage and the Broadcom Acquisition 

While there are many edge providers, VMware does have an interesting advantage. Its software-defined data center solution is one of the most widely deployed. It can use its position in the data center and position the edge as an extension of the data center as part of its multi-cloud vision. This would enable VMware customers to manage the edge using the data center’s operational model.

One of the concerns I had going into Explore was that the pending acquisition by Broadcom could slow down innovation, but that does not appear to be the case. With competition only increasing in the coming years, it will be interesting to see how Broadcom’s acquisition—and the integration of Broadcom’s software group into VMware—will change the company.

For now, the focus on the edge is extending VMware’s reach, and this latest announcement is an essential and necessary step in the journey to multi-cloud.

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Aware of the limits of ChatGPT, some companies are harnessing the power of generative AI to help transform business operations.

Dialpad announced it has launched DialpadGPT, which it describes as “a domain-specific LLM tailored specifically to power features that automate tasks for enterprises of all sizes, improving customer service, sales, and recruiting experiences.”

Dialpad’s DialpadGPT: LLMs, NLP, Semantic Search

Dialpad has been focused on AI solutions for some time, with products in the contact center, sales, voice, meetings, and messaging. While almost every cloud communications vendor has AI initiatives, Dialpad’s differentiation is that Dialpad Ai is still the engine that powers a large portion of its product offerings.

AI-based transcriptions, Natural Language Processing (NLP), semantic search, omnichannel, and digital self-service are all powered by Dialpad Ai. DialpadGPT is the company’s new LLM that underlies its tech stack, and it will power Dialpad’s new generative AI capabilities such as Ai Recap, Ai Playbooks, and more.

The company says it designed the new product using five billion minutes of conversational data for the language of business. Dialpad says that existing LLM-based solutions like ChatGPT have been a good way for businesses to become acquainted with artificial intelligence. But they lack scale, accuracy or business-specific data, privacy, and security that businesses need.

Businesses are clamoring for AI capabilities, but hurdles remain. To address this, Dialpad says it designed DialpadGPT to be immediately available and scalable. The company says the new solution enables enterprises to take advantage of Dialpad’s generative features right away versus placing it on some future roadmap.

Many companies looking to implement generative AI face gaps in expertise and find it hard to locate the right talent. DialpadGPT includes no-code options so that there is no learning curve to add purpose-built DialpadGPT for a very broad group of buyers and users in sales, customer service, collaboration, and recruiting.

Targeting a wider group of customers is a smart play by Dialpad. The company is one of many cloud UCC and contact center providers but now appears to be creating differentiation for itself as an AI company.

Also see: Top Generative AI Apps and Tools

DialpadGPT: Built on Homegrown AI

DialpadGPT leverages the expertise of the company’s AI engineers and data scientists, who have built Dialpad’s AI tech stack, including the proprietary real-time speech recognition (ASR) engine, natural language processing (NLP) models, and semantic search capabilities.

The company says DialpadGPT can boost worker productivity and drive insights on customer attitudes and sentiments. At the same time, it can change how an organization works with its customers.

Dialpad developed its natural language processing and AI expertise over the past five years.

• In early 2018, the company acquired Salesforce-backed TalkIQ, an enterprise AI leader in conversational data. The acquisition brought TalkIQ CEO Dan O’Connell, and CTO Jim Palmer into the fold.
• Five years later, O’Connell is Chief AI & Strategy Officer and Palmer serves as VP of AI engineering.
• The team from the TalkIQ acquisition leads Dialpad’s AI vision.
• Alongside its AI development, Dialpad says it has published nine academic research papers in the past year.

Also see: Generative AI Companies: Top 12 Leaders

Bottom Line: Commitment to AI

When it comes to delivering AI, there are many approaches. Most of the industry has chosen to leverage third-party LLMs. Dialpad’s longtime vision has always been to build its own AI, creating an early mover advantage as the company can build precisely what its customers need.

Dialpad is moving fast, releasing AI products each month that align with its “12 Months of Ai ” launch initiative and growing well organically. In fact, before it announced DialpadGPT, the company said it crossed $200 million in annual recurring revenue for the first time.

The company shows great promise, and its commitment to AI indicates it’s heading “where the puck is going.” Of course, customer uptake of these new solutions (and their ability to improve end-customer interactions) will be the ultimate judge.

Read next: 100+ Top AI Companies 2023

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Five years ago, NVIDIA introduced RTX, enabling real-time ray tracing with graphics processing units (GPUs) through AI. Not long after, it launched GauGAN, an early form of generative AI that can translate doodles and text into images.

Today, Nvidia is customizing and fine-tuning generative AI models in applications ranging from text-to-image and text-to-3D.

Also see: Top Generative AI Apps and Tools

Generative AI: Easy as 1-2-3

NVIDIA follows a three-step process that involves utilizing the right foundation models, customizing them with domain-specific data, and incorporating them into apps and services for production.

During a SIGGRAPH news briefing, NVIDIA’s VP of enterprise computing, Manuvir Das, emphasized the importance of customizing pre-trained models for specific apps. To demonstrate how the models worked, he gave a command to create “Toy Jensen” in space.

As expected, the more images the model was fed, the more accurate the results. What was a surprise was that it took only eight images to create a workable image, and then by 50 it was fully accurate.

“This is a message that NVIDIA has been delivering since the beginning of this year in every forum. The real-life example of Toy Jensen is where we used our toolkit to fine-tune it with fifty images of Jensen, highlighting the efficacy and the output of the model,” Das said.

Also see: 100+ Top AI Companies 2023

NVIDIA Partners with Hugging Face for Generative AI

To help provide companies with starting points for working on generative AI models, NVIDIA formed a partnership with a platform called Hugging Face.

At SIGGRAPH, NVIDIA announced that Hugging Face is adding a new service to its site, allowing users to train and fine-tune AI models. Hugging Face will integrate the training service on NVIDIA’s DGX Cloud, housing all the necessary software for customization, guidance, and inference.

Also, NVIDIA unveiled AI Enterprise 4.0, a major upgrade to its enterprise-level AI software.

AI Enterprise 4.0 now integrates NVIDIA NeMo, providing organizations with a toolkit to process generative AI. NeMo allows developers to build, customize, and deploy large-scale models with billions of parameters. It also supports multi-GPU and multi-node configurations, streamlining the process of handling extensive models.

NVIDIA: AI Workbench Makes AI Location Independent

NVIDIA’s third announcement at SIGGRAPH centered on flexibility and mobility with the introduction of the NVIDIA AI Workbench, designed to run directly on a user’s laptop.

Users can select the location where they want to do their work, whether on a PC, data center, cloud, or NVIDIA’s DGX Cloud. Moving between these different locations is designed to be a one-click process, all packaged up within the AI Workbench.

“Whether you’re an independent software vendor (ISV) or a data scientist, AI Workbench is your single pane of glass. It’s a way for you to package up your AI work uniformly and consistently and move it from one location to another. So, you do your work one time, the same way, no matter where you are,” Das said.

Also see: Generative AI Companies: Top 12 Leaders

More Updates to Omniverse

Additionally, NVIDIA shared updates on the continued growth of its Omniverse platform, which is reshaping industries such as manufacturing, transportation, and telecommunications.

Omniverse is a tool that lets artists and designers work together on 3D projects. It helps create realistic images and animations by utilizing Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD). NVIDIA has formed major partnerships with brands like Denza, WPP, Pixar, Adobe, Apple, and Autodesk, standardizing OpenUSD and transforming traditional design processes.

For example, Denza, a joint venture between BYD and Mercedes-Benz, has tapped WPP to build a fully-interactive 3D car configurator on Omniverse Cloud.

“To build a configurator today, you need to individually render hundreds of thousands of 2D images with every possible variant of the car. With Omniverse, WPP and BYD can create a single super digital twin of a car model based off of all the original engineering and design data, and deploy it across marketing channels instantaneously without any manual rework,” said Rev Lebaredian, VP of Omniverse and simulation technology at NVIDIA.

NVIDIA also made a major update to Omniverse, enhancing its 3D graphics rendering capabilities and adding a centralized tool that simplifies the management of Omniverse’s features for developers. Furthermore, the update provides pre-designed OpenUSD templates, making the creation of 3D apps more streamlined.

New NVIDIA Workstations, GPUs

NVIDIA launched new high-end RTX workstations and three new GPUs: RTX 5000 (available now), RX 4500 (available in October), and RTX 4000 (available in September).

The GPUs are set to revolutionize photorealistic ray tracing and AI video enhancements, solidifying NVIDIA’s position as an innovator in GPU technology, said Bob Pette, VP of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA.

“RTX 4000 is going to be the most powerful single slot GPU on the planet, with massive breakthroughs, speed, and power efficiency—packing this level of performance into a single card,” Pette said.

Lastly, at the event, NVIDIA announced its next-generation NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper platform based on the new HMB3e Grace Hopper Superchip, explicitly built for the era of generative AI.

The processor is designed to handle generative AI workloads such as large language models, recommender systems, and vector databases. The new platform will be available in several configurations for various requirements. The dual configuration delivers 3.5x more memory capacity and 3x more bandwidth than the current generation.

Also see: Best Artificial Intelligence Software 2023

Bottom Line: Making Generative AI More Accessible and Versatile

At the SIGGRAPH conference, NVIDIA showcased its efforts to make generative AI not only more accessible but also more versatile. Through strategic partnerships and technological advancements, NVIDIA’s innovations echo a significant industry trend where many different sectors are beginning to harness the power of AI.

The AI space has become highly competitive, but NVIDIA has maintained and arguably stretched its lead over rivals AMD and Intel.

What makes the company unique is that it takes a systems approach. Many think of NVIDIA as a GPU manufacturer but, in reality, it delivers not only the processors but the programming languages, platforms, systems and partnerships required to simplify the journey to AI.

Read next: The Future of Artificial Intelligence

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