Cloud has taken every industry by storm. But the report shows that, despite the apparent benefits, “a variety of challenges still get in their way, mostly around cost control, security expertise, and a skills gap.” Furthermore, the ongoing “cloud sprawl” has not helped these issues. In fact, they’ve gotten worse. There’s a lack of visibility, accountability, and governance of the costs of SaaS and IaaS.

The report, based on a survey by Foundry of 200 enterprise IT decision-makers in a number of industries, looked at the benefits of FinOps, which is a framework that maximizes the business value of cloud computing. 

Overcoming Cloud Challenges with FinOps

FinOps can be a path to overcoming cloud cost challenges, with respondents reporting these are the main drivers for using FinOps:

• 70% say they’re interested in increasing cloud resource performance.
• 60% say they want to make budget cuts.
• 58% say they want to manage rising costs and macroeconomic pressures.

When it comes to the benefits, the survey showed increased productivity (44%), cost savings (43%), and reduced security risk (43%) at the top of the list.

Implementations vary widely, but there are three factors, according to Foundry, that increase the likelihood of success: implementation approach, the use of artificial intelligence, and wide-reaching optimization programs spanning both IaaS and SaaS.

For a deeper portrait of the cloud market, read our in-depth overview: Top Cloud Service Providers and Companies

In-House vs. Outsourced

When it comes to in-house vs. outsourced implementations, outsourced is the clear winner, with in-house FinOps solutions fetching less than 10% in savings and outsourced solutions bringing in 20% savings.

Tangoe’s chief product officer, Chris Ortbals, quoted in the report, says that although DIY is the way most companies go, they’re not best suited to optimize those implementations. “Strategic partners are essential because they look at usage and expenses from a different perspective,” he said. This diverse vantage point provides them with “the context of understanding how hundreds of companies optimize millions of dollars in IT spending.”

AI in FinOps

With AI top-of-mind for everyone these days, this report doesn’t disappoint. The survey shows that 71% of respondents use or plan to use AI in their programs.

That makes sense when you see that companies that use AI in FinOps are 53% more likely to save more than 20%. On the other side of the ledger, companies that don’t use AI will get savings of only 6% to 10%.

Ortbals adds that every FinOps practitioner should include AI in their bag of tricks. “Without AI it’s simply impossible to evaluate massive amounts of data against all possible configuration options, playing out what-if scenarios to quickly determine which action will yield the highest savings,” he said.

“AI can do this at enterprise scale. Plus, it can help IT engineers implement cost-saving recommendations once approved. This results in faster time-to-savings and programs that can achieve higher returns.”

The report says 63% of respondents think analytics is the top use case for AI in FinOps, with 50% saying it eases the FinOps management burden and 48% saying they have seen productivity gains from AI automation.

Also see: 100+ Top AI Companies 2024

SaaS and IaaS

When it comes to SaaS and IaaS, the report shows SaaS users can save 20% or more while IaaS users save less than 10%.

Ortbals said that savings add up with one high-volume application or a few smaller applications that can break a budget.

“But CIOs and CFOs should drive broader cloud ROI,” he said. “FinOps is designed to maximize the benefits of SaaS and IaaS. Start with applications, expand into cloud infrastructure, and consider how you can apply FinOps principles to other areas of IT spending like mobile and telecom.”

Choosing a FinOps Solution

So, what should you consider when selecting a solution? The report says that these are the top five criteria:

• 70%: Industry expertise. Customers want a partner who is versed in the complexities of cloud optimization but also understands the specific insights of each vertical, as mapping them to FinOps is mandatory for success.
• 69%: AI and automation capabilities. There is no bigger transformative technology today than AI, which will have a massive impact on FinOps. Basic use cases include automation of basic tasks, but long-term, generative AI will enable users to access information via natural language.
• 68%: Fully managed services. Not all businesses have the desire to operate FinOps themselves, particularly with AI accelerating the pace of change. Managed services are an excellent option for companies that want to take advantage of FinOps but do not want to go through the deployment and management process.
• 63%: Flexibility of solution. Businesses want choices, and vendors that offer optimization for only one or two cloud service providers or a limited number of applications are quickly outgrown as customers look to cut costs across their rapidly changing multicloud estates.
• 62%: Certifications, licenses, awards. These validate that the vendor solutions work as advertised and have the leading features to give customers a competitive advantage.

Bottom Line: The Value of FinOps

This report provides some fascinating insights for cloud users. FinOps is a great use case for AI, and managing cloud resource utilization could be one of the more intriguing implementations of the technology, with significant savings for enterprises possible in the near term.

To learn more about how companies are modernizing their IT processes, read our in-depth article: Digital Transformation Guide

The post How FinOps and AI Curb Escalating Cloud Costs appeared first on eWEEK.

On the driving range, the PGA TOUR and AWS had set up a Generative AI demo with Scott Gutterman, Senior VP of Digital Operations with the PGA TOUR, and a handful of PGA TOUR and LPGA tour golf pros.

He presented a virtual interface built on data from the PGA TOUR’s ShotLink, powered by a CDW system, collected from 2005 to 2023. It included a massive 160,000 hours of video from their media asset management system, and 30 years of media guides in PDFs.

The application is built on various AWS tools, including Amazon Bedrock with the Anthropic Claude 2.0 Instant model, Amazon Kendra, and Amazon Athena.

Gutterman explained that the PGA TOUR and AWS have been working on creating a new experience with the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center for eight months. As impressive as the demo was, the potential is still greater. “We’ve all heard about ChatGPT and other platforms, and that’s caused many people to use these tools,” he said. “The PGA TOUR has been busy looking at what we can do and create for our players, fans, broadcasters, and for us internally.”

Generative AI: Interacting With the PGA Using Natural Language

The generative AI interface was demonstrated through a series of use cases where a question was posed, and the AI tool answered. Then the TOUR pro in attendance would try to replicate the golf shot in real time.

First up was the question, “What was Collin Morikawa’s longest drive at the Shriners Children’s Open?” which has been played at TPC Summerlin for several years. The bot answered that in 2019, Morikawa hit a 334-yard drive on the 15th hole. In addition to the information, the interface provided the actual TV footage from that shot. Morikawa then had three attempts to hit a drive that far.

Gutterman asked a series of questions, including Tony Finau’s longest drive at the Shriners Children’s Open, Charley Hull’s eagle, and Rose Zhang’s birdie from the 2023 US Women’s Open at Pebble Beach. In each case, the interface returned the relevant information and a video asset of the shot.

Generative AI Simplifies Search

After the demonstrations, I asked Gutterman about the generative aspect of what was shown. He explained that they’ve been able to search the data for some time, but you had to be precise about what you queried, and the response would be very specific.

In contrast, using large language models allowed the user to interact with natural language and then receive a response in natural language. Also, the tool packages up the relevant text and combines it with the video, providing more information to the user.

This is still in the beta phase, but Gutterman did talk about the tool’s potential. “The potential is massive,” he said. “When the players walk off the course, they could ask their personal bot how they did, and it could return a full performance report to help them prepare for the next round. They can learn much about what is happening within their game and what to work on.”

Gutterman also talked about the potential for the audience. “Our broadcasters could have better information on how each player performs on every course. They could use the data to help fans understand shot percentages, the likelihood of making putts, and more. For the fans, they could get information on players without digging through media guides and other data sources.”

Fans Gets an Enhanced Experience

Personally, I’m most excited about the fan-facing aspect of generative AI’s use by the PGA. When one watches a PGA TOUR event on TV, it’s hard, particularly for a casual fan, to fully understand how difficult the shots are. If, for instance, a viewer knew that a certain shot had only a 10% chance of success, that could add a lot of tension and excitement to the experience. AI enables the untrained eye to see things that experts can, and that’s a win for everyone.

Post-event, golf pro Adam Hadwin was kind enough to stay and chat with a few of us. We asked him about the potential. “The analytics can help us understand how to play certain shots,” he said. “As an example, the data might show that you’re better off missing the fairway left than right, so a player would then favor the left side. Or with a certain pin placement, the data might show that players three-put most often from a certain spot, so you’ll avoid that with your approach shot.”

Bottom Line: Generative AI is Changing Sports

The artificial intelligence era has arrived and will change almost every aspect of our lives. It was fascinating to see how the PGA TOUR is thinking of making its data more accessible to more audiences using generative AI.

It’s a good lesson for all businesses. Every company has massive amounts of data today, but it’s only useful if people can access the insights easily, and generative AI makes that possible.

The post How the PGA TOUR Uses Generative AI appeared first on eWEEK.

The solution, which can run on commodity hardware or in the public cloud, seeks to help enterprises vexed by unstructured data. The company says that Scale Anywhere uses a unified approach to improve efficiency, security, and business agility.

In a briefing with ZK Research, Qumulo CTO Kiran Bhageshpur gave me some background on the platform. “We look at this as being the third era of unstructured data,” he told me. “The first era was NetApp with scale-up, dual controller architectures, and millions of files. It was really a sort of analysis box, if you will. The second era was Isilon, then EMC Isilon, now Dell EMC Isilon, which is scale-out storage, hardware appliances, on-premises, lots of them together to form large single volumes.”

Cloud-Based Qumulo Competes with Legacy Systems

Kiran said that Qumulo started in the cloud computing era, looked at the world, and realized it was no longer the scale-up or scale-out era.

“This is the scale-anywhere era of large-scale data,” he said. “It’s not only lots of data in the enterprise data center—there is incredible growth in the cloud and out at the edge. And Qumulo, with a pure software solution, can now present a solution for all of this data—cloud, on-premises, and the edge in one consistent way.”

Qumulo says that Scale Anywhere introduces a way for enterprises to use on-premises storage in a similar way to cloud storage.

The company jointly developed Azure Native Qumulo (ANQ) with Microsoft. This cloud-native enterprise file system helps eliminate the tradeoffs that often come with balancing scale, economics, and performance.

Qumulo is trumpeting a number of advantages to the approach, including:

• Affordability: Qumulo says that ANQ is about 80% cheaper than competitive offerings and compares well to the costs of traditional on-premises storage.
• Elasticity: Qumulo says that ANQ separates the scalability of capacity and performance so they can operate independently.
• Cloud configurable: Qumulo says enterprises can use the Azure service portal to configure and deploy ANQ quickly.
• Data services: Qumulo says that ANQ provides several data services, including quotas, snapshots, multi-protocol access, enterprise security integrations, and real-time data analytics.

The company also announced Qumulo Global Namespace (Q-GNS), which acts as a unified data plane for unstructured data.

“This is the core feature of the underlying Qumulo file system, and it allows the customer to access remote data on a remote Qumulo cluster as if it were local,” Kiran told me. “Think of two, three, or four Qumulo clusters talking to each other. You can connect to the local one. And as long as it’s configured correctly, you can access data on a Qumulo cluster in the cloud or on-premises halfway across the world, and it feels as though it were local.”

In the announcement, JD Whitlock, CIO of Dayton Children’s Hospital, said that his hospital uses Q-GNS.

“We are rapidly adopting cloud to store our long-term radiology images while keeping new images on-premises,” Whitlock said. “Qumulo’s Global Namespace makes it easy to bring our file-based workloads to the cloud without refactoring any applications.”

Also see: Top Cloud Service Providers and Companies

Bottom Line: Storage for the Cloud Era

Legacy storage vendors like Dell EMC view data storage as an entitlement and haven’t delivered innovation in years. Many believe storage to be a commodity with little room for new features and functions, but that’s not true. The announcement by Qumulo modernizes storage for the cloud era. The company has a lot of work ahead of it, but the approach is innovative and might just make a dent in the defenses of the legacy players.

Read next: Top Digital Transformation Companies

The post Qumulo’s New Scale Anywhere Platform Aims to Modernize Data Storage appeared first on eWEEK.

A key finding from the survey’s many results: a remarkable 77 percent of the respondents acknowledge the importance of responsible AI, with younger leaders—aged 18 to 44—showing a higher familiarity with the concept of responsible AI compared to their older counterparts.

The survey was highlighted at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent event, held recently in Las Vegas. As one would expect, artificial intelligence was one of the show’s key themes.

Responsible AI In Its Infancy

The survey reflected quickly changing attitudes after a busy year for artificial intelligence. The launch of ChatGPT created an awareness of AI, particularly generative AI, which is unprecedented in technology. A little over a year ago, only tech professionals talked about AI, but now everyone is looking at how AI can change their lives.

Despite this growing awareness, the implementation of responsible AI strategies is still in its infancy. Only a quarter of the leaders surveyed have begun to develop a strategy for responsible AI, and most companies need a dedicated team.

However, the future looks promising as many businesses (47 percent) plan to increase their investment in responsible AI in 2024, while few (10 percent) plan to invest less. This is driven partly by the directives from their boards.

Nearly half of the respondents (46 percent) expect their boards to ask for a responsible AI plan in 2024. When it comes to training employees in responsible AI, opinions are evenly divided, with some favoring it (39 percent) and some not (39 percent).

To gain a deeper understanding of ethical AI, read our guide AI Policy: What You Need to Know

Businesses Understand the Value of AI

The majority of businesses (75 percent) recognize the tangible benefits of AI, such as increased revenue (30 percent), improved creativity and innovation (27 percent), and higher employee productivity (19 percent).

Another interesting finding is that the overwhelming majority of organizations (92 percent) plan to use AI-powered solutions by 2028. Leaders are aware of the financial risks of not using AI responsibly. Over one-third (35 percent) believe that irresponsible AI use could cost their company at least $1 million or otherwise endanger their business. Only a small group of respondents (17 percent) think there would be no financial cost for using AI irresponsibly.

Finally, the survey underscores a shared responsibility for developing responsible AI. A portion of the respondents (29 percent) view vendors who build AI services for businesses as the primary bearers of this responsibility. In comparison, a roughly equal amount (27 percent) believe that the obligation falls on businesses themselves, particularly those using AI to develop new apps and use cases.

Bottom Line: The Rise of Responsible AI

The survey findings paint a picture of a business world increasingly conscious of the ethical implications of AI. As we move into 2024, the commitment to responsible AI seems to be deepening, where education, strategic planning, and a collective effort in navigating the challenges of AI technologies will play a crucial role.

At the end of his re:Invent keynote, AWS CEO, Adam Selipsky talked about how AI will change the world and urged everyone to go out and re-invent their businesses. This is a great call to action but, as the survey data shows, companies need to do this responsibly to ensure their use of AI is fair, inclusive and secure.

Read Next: Generative AI Ethics: Concerns and Possible Solutions

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The mission of AWS has been to “reinvent” the markets it touches. At the event, the announcements included generative AI capabilities in Amazon Connect, AWS’s cloud contact center, and enterprise hardware to provide businesses with easy-to-use virtual desktops. The company also expanded its partnership with Salesforce.

Amazon Connect Gets a Dose of Generative AI

AWS’s Connect is an open platform that integrates with a variety of applications. AWS is adding generative AI capabilities to Connect that build on its machine learning features to enhance customer service capabilities, including:

• Generative AI that can recommend responses and actions for customer support: AWS’s new generative AI assistant, Amazon Q, can help agents understand the intents of a customer and help them with responses and actions that can resolve issues.
• Summarization of interactions: Amazon Connect Contact Lens creates summaries of customer contacts for supervisors as an interaction ends. These summaries include the customer’s issue, the actions taken by the agent, and the next steps required.
• Generative AI that enables simpler bot creation: With the Amazon Lex administrator console, admins use natural language to describe their self-service system goals to create chatbots and IVRs.
• Personalized customer experiences: Amazon Connect Customer Profiles uses models that quickly provide personalized customer experiences.

AWS said customers as varied as Choice Hotels, NatWest Group bank, ISV NeuraFlash, Traeger Grills, and USAN employ Amazon Connect.

Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client Simplifies Hybrid Working

AWS has taken a familiar-looking device—the Fire TV Cube—and repurposed it as a thin client that can reduce tech costs and enhance an organization’s security. AWS said customers had asked for a lower-cost device, especially in high-turnover environments like call centers or payment processing.

Melissa Stein, Director of Product for End User Computing at AWS, oversaw the Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client project. “We looked for options and found that the hardware we used for the Amazon Fire TV Cube provided all the resources customers needed to access their cloud-based virtual desktops,” she said. “So we built an entirely new software stack for that device, and since we didn’t have to design and build new hardware, we’re passing those savings along to customers.”

The Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client looks just like a Fire TV Cube. But its USB and HDMI ports can connect to dual monitors, a mouse, a keyboard, a camera, and a headset. The Thin Client uses firmware and software designed just for this device, with a fast, simple, secure OS that provides cloud-based access to applications and remote IT management capabilities.

The Thin Clients start at $195, well under the $600-$1,200 similar devices often cost. AWS sells them through the Amazon Business B2B marketplace. AWS can configure the device hardware to a company’s requirements and ship it to homes or offices.

Stein said that simplicity was the watchword. “IT leaders can easily manage their entire organization’s device fleet centrally, and typically have an employee up and running in a few minutes, compared to hours or days with traditional laptops and desktops,” she said.

The AWS team said they talked to AWS customers about a range of concerns, including cost, security, and management. In those conversations, a common pain point kept coming up: shipping expensive desktops and laptops. That’s when they realized they had an answer right in front of them.

“We have an entire division in our company that makes devices already,” Stein said. “Combining the expertise from the Amazon Devices group with logistics from Amazon Business and the power of the AWS Cloud is a strong combination for customers.”

Expanded Partnership with Salesforce Brings Greater Intelligence Across the Customer Journey

AWS also announced that it was expanding its partnership with Salesforce.

AWS will start offering Salesforce products in the AWS marketplace and plans to expand product integrations across data and AI. The partnership aims to streamline purchase options, unify data management, and bring AWS data and AI services to Salesforce’s Einstein 1 platform.

The company also trumpets its seamless customer service with Service Cloud and Amazon Connect, as well as the ability for Salesforce developers to utilize AWS Compute and development services.

Also see: Best Artificial Intelligence Software

Bottom Line: Gen AI and Contact Centers

AWS is in the vanguard with generative AI. The announcements at re:Invent underscore that leadership. Few functions will benefit more from generative AI than contact centers.

So focusing on that with Amazon Connect and the thin clients should be a boon for companies looking to jumpstart their generative AI efforts and roll out the capabilities throughout their organizations. The expanded partnership with Salesforce should also help companies that have hitched their wagons to AWS and Salesforce.

Regarding Amazon Connect, AWS has come a long way in a short period. When the company launched its own Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution, many, myself included, were highly skeptical that a company that delivers application building blocks could be successful in the SaaS space. AWS has not only been successful but has also broken down many preconceived notions of CCaaS, including that it isn’t appropriate for large enterprises. Amazon Connect is used by some of the largest contact centers in the world, including its own, and I see it continuing to deliver innovation through AI.

Read next: Top Generative AI Apps and Tools

The post AWS Aims to Reinvent Contact Centers with Gen AI appeared first on eWEEK.

Ring CX is a cloud-native contact center solution that uses RingSense AI, the AI engine currently integrated into RingCentral MVP, the company’s UC suite. Also unveiled was the general availability of RingCentral Events, formerly Hopin Events, which enables customers to hold virtual, in-person, or hybrid events.

Let’s look at the news and what it means for the larger contact center industry.

With Communications, Platform is the Way Forward

The communications industry is rapidly shifting from best of breed to best of suite. Historically, customers have had to buy product A for calling, product B for meetings, product C for contact center, and so on. The result was that customers had to pay two to five times what they needed to pay if they could consolidate to a single platform.

In response to this complex budget issue, the vendor community added more and more capabilities, creating a single platform that can deliver communications and collaboration of all forms – at one price.

There’s an obvious “one throat to choke” benefit in this approach. And in the long term, as the industry becomes AI-driven, the single stack will equate to a single data center with which to train the models.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

RingCX is Designed for Companies that Want a Digital-First Contact Center

RingCX is the company’s own cloud contact center solution. The product is designed with a modern contact center in mind, where the assumption is that customers will start interacting with the brand through some kind of digital channels such as bots, messaging, or self-service.

RingCX is infused with RingSense AI, which has three primary benefits:

• It makes the digital channels smarter so a customer can converse with a bot and have a more natural conversations.
• If the interaction needs to move to an agent, the agent is equipped with insights from that call and previous ones. During calls, the platform generates AI-powered summaries so agents can keep track of key points when talking to customers.
• After a call is completed, the solution provides detailed transcriptions and summaries, giving supervisors a clearer view of each interaction.

Beyond its AI capabilities, RingCX stands out for its rich omnichannel capabilities. It unifies multiple communication modes, such as voice, video, social media, SMS, and email, into a single, user-friendly interface. This allows agents to interact with customers through their preferred channels while maintaining a deeper understanding of the customer’s history and needs.

RingCentral is being aggressive with pricing. At $65 per agent per month, it includes various features like voice and video communication, over 20 digital channels, AI-driven summaries, and unlimited domestic inbound and outbound minutes.

The new RingCX solution complements its RingCentral Contact Center product, delivered via its partner NICE. I asked RingCentral if they plan to stop selling the product, and they said no. RingCentral Contact Center is ideally suited for large customers with complex requirements, whereas RingCX suits companies with a digital-first mindset.

RingCentral Events Makes Virtual, In-Person and Hybrid Events Easy

The second announcement, RingCentral Events, is the company’s hybrid event platform. One of the key advantages of RingCentral Events is its all-in-one nature. It can be used to register attendees and track analytics and can be accessed via a mobile app.

It also offers features like check-in systems, badge printing, and lead retrieval tools. The platform has integrations with over 40 different apps and data systems, making it flexible and easy for businesses that want to simplify event management.

Ease of use is a major selling point of RingCentral Events. Companies can use the platform to create custom, branded event pages without coding knowledge. These pages can be tailored to display specific agendas, speakers, sponsors, and other relevant content, enhancing an event’s visual appeal and overall value. Additionally, it can comfortably accommodate events with over 100,000 attendees.

Soon, RingCentral will also introduce artificial intelligence features in RingCentral Events to simplify and automate event management. One of these features is the Smart Content Generator, which uses AI to create various written materials for events, including titles, descriptions, email templates, and schedules.

Another upcoming feature is the Smart Q&A, which uses AI to sort and categorize attendees’ questions, making it easier for organizers to manage questions during events. Additionally, the Smart Clips feature is an AI video editor that creates short, engaging video clips, which can be used to market events on social media.

Also see: 100+ Top AI Companies

Bottom Line: RingCentral Events

As the latest addition to RingCentral’s suite of business communication tools, RingCentral Events complements existing products like RingCentral MVP, RingCX, RingCentral Video, RingCentral Rooms, and RingCentral Webinar. Pricing plans for RingCentral Events start at $750 annually for events with up to 100 attendees.

The collaboration industry was once filled with best-of-breed products, but now every vendor tries to deliver a full stack of tools – from video to calling to events and contact centers. Customers have no shortage of options available today and should evaluate vendors on how integrated the features are across the suite of products.

RingCX provides much tighter integration with RingCentral MVP and RingCentral quickly integrated Hopin into the platform. The ultimate winners of the platform wars will be the customer as they’ll get more features, faster at a lower cost.

The post RingCentral Expands Its Collaboration Platform appeared first on eWEEK.

Partner Simplification a Key Initiative for Cisco

Cisco has simplified and combined current incentives into a single Cisco Partner Incentive. Implemented in a phased approach, the new incentive is expected to roll out in the second half of 2024. It will align with Cisco’s shift toward software and services, providing partners with rebates that encourage and reward business growth, according to Jason W. Gallo, Vice President of Global Partner GTM Acceleration at Cisco.

Cisco relies heavily on its partner community to drive its business. During his keynote, Cisco EVP and Chief Customer and Partner Officer Jeff Sharritts mentioned that 92% of the company’s business currently flows through partners.

While partners are generally positive about Cisco, some partners have stated that the incentive programs can often be confusing due to the multiple facets of the program. Cisco has been committed to streamlining incentives, making it easier for partners to understand how they are compensated, and this week’s announcements are part of the simplification of the partner experience.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companie

One Incentive Plan to Rule Them All

The Partner Incentive will feature three main components:

• Rebates for one-time sales deals.
• Incentives for recurring business.
• Bonuses for delivering customer value, such as driving solution adoption and increasing subscription volumes.

Partners will receive rebates linked to the total value of their sales contracts, activities related to customer engagement, and any growth in yearly subscription revenue. They can also earn extra rewards for investing in their partnership with Cisco and selling its solutions.

PXP Portal Gets a Dose of AI

Furthermore, Cisco is expanding the Partner Experience Platform (PXP), a customized portal for partners. The PXP now includes artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities that offer insights to help partners identify growth opportunities.

Cisco updated the platform with a new dashboard that gives partners a complete overview of their financial engagements and investments. A new Growth Finder module provides insights into a company’s customer base and shows opportunities for refreshes, renewals, and new prospects.

Partners Access to Sustainability Tools

Alongside these enhancements, Cisco is introducing a Sustainability Estimator tool, set to launch later this month. The tool will help partners evaluate potential energy savings, emission reductions, cost savings, and the overall environmental benefits that can be achieved by updating their IT infrastructure.

The tool will include a Sustainability Partner Journey, which is a collection of resources designed to assist partners in developing their sustainability initiatives.

“The Sustainability Estimator that we’re making available to our partners has inputs from the International Energy Agency (IEA), so it allows you to precisely pinpoint energy changes and carbon footprint impact as a part of the tool. We use the standards that convert energy consumption changes into carbon footprint,” said Gallo, during a briefing with analysts.

Managed Services: Simplifying Customer Deployments

Managed services providers (MSPs) are also getting a boost from Cisco with the launch of Partner Advanced Support.

This new offering gives MSPs additional options and better support to avoid service disruptions and resolve issues more quickly through expedited access to Cisco’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC). TAC provides 24/7 global access to experts offering assistance and troubleshooting for Cisco products.

Furthermore, Cisco is launching Managed Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Managed Firewall services, broadening the security solutions available to MSPs. Such services offer organizations an integrated approach to cybersecurity, where monitoring and defense are consolidated across networks, endpoints, and the cloud.

Around-the-clock surveillance eliminates blind spots that isolated security solutions might miss. This is especially valuable for companies that need more resources to house a specialized security team.

“For those looking to expand their perimeter security, these offers will have multi-tenancy and multi-instance scalability. The enriched capabilities will complement our security portfolio with guided service creation, attractive pricing, and multiple incentives to enhance the partners’ profitability in this space,” said Gallo.

Managed service providers have been a growing part of Cisco’s partner base. Infrastructure continues to grow in complexity and is so challenging that many organizations are choosing to offload operations to MSPs. This can lead to faster deployment times and more consistent operations as the MSP takes on the challenge of managing the complexity, enabling the customer to realize faster time to value.

Cisco is implementing new Solution Specializations to support further partners, including Internet of Things (IoT) and small and medium business (SMB) categories. The SMB Specialization has been refreshed to focus on solutions that include Smart SMB, Hybrid SMB, Secure SMB, and Remote SMB.

Cisco plans to introduce two new IoT Solution Specializations in the first half of 2024, addressing both industrial and non-industrial IoT markets. These changes aim to align partner specializations more closely with Cisco’s overall strategy.

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guide

Bottom Line: Supporting the Partner Network

The initiatives announced at the summit underscore Cisco’s focus on fostering a supportive and profitable environment for its partners, with a clear emphasis on growth, differentiation, and sustainability. During all the keynotes, every executive, including CEO Chuck Robbins, reiterated the importance of partners in Cisco’s ability to scale and deliver their solutions to customers faster.

The post At Summit, Cisco Revs Up Its Partner Engine appeared first on eWEEK.

In fact, more than 85% of enterprises ZK Research surveyed said they have separate deployments or plans for all of those technologies. The survey, sponsored by CommScope, included 402 North American enterprises and was fielded and analyzed by ZK Research.

For cellular and Wi-Fi, it’s an “and” world 

There is tremendous industry chatter surrounding private 4G/5G cellular and Wi-Fi. One can find articles claiming cellular services will eventually kill Wi-Fi and others saying the opposite.

The reality is that customers want both, according to our survey.  Wi-Fi is ubiquitous but, in some cases, cellular is the better option because of its broad coverage. Industries that cover a wide geographic area, that value mobility or that can’t put up with latency, will likely opt for cellular.

Many businesses will use Wi-Fi and cellular because, although the technologies seem competitive, they are highly complementary. Wi-Fi is an excellent technology for ad hoc wireless to connect laptops, mobile phones, and other user devices. Cellular 4G/5G is ideal where resilient connectivity is required.

Also see: NTT Addresses the Why and When of Private 5G 

Enterprises are paying the price for “too much to manage”

The multiple technologies themselves are enough to induce stress with even the most seasoned network professionals as they need to worry about management, security, and QoS systems.

Seventy percent of the enterprises we surveyed say they’re running 2+ management systems, 2+ security systems, and 2+ QoS systems for each wired, Wi-Fi, and private 4G/5G network. Thirty-four percent say they use more than three, and 12 percent use 4+.

In addition, enterprises say their network operations staff wastes 17% of their time and 19% of their budget running separate access networks.

There’s simply too much to manage, troubleshoot, and secure—even as the stakes have never been higher. It’s no surprise that enterprises are looking to simplify. They just want to run their businesses. Yet even though this is a pressing need, enterprises haven’t addressed it internally. Neither have the large system vendors.

Also see: Digital Transformation Guide

Bottom Line: Nine in 10 enterprises want a converged multi-access wireless network

The cries for help from within enterprises couldn’t be clearer. Almost 9 in 10 enterprises think that a converged multi-access wireless network would benefit their organization.

Enterprises across public venues, manufacturing, and transportation are nearly unanimous in saying such an approach would be superior to running separate networks.

Read next: Understand the Differences Between 5G, WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E

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Generative AI: The Game-Changer

For nearly a decade, the NVIDIA Jetson platform has seen significant adoption across various industries like transportation, manufacturing, and healthcare, with over 10,000 companies, 1,000 partners, and more than a million developers using it.

As generative AI continues to revolutionize text and natural language processing, it’s also impacting computer vision. This transformative technology is expected to bring advancements in autonomous machines and robotics, where cameras play a pivotal role.

While traditional convolutional neural networks (CNN) have been the mainstay for computer vision in the past, they are often tailored for specific tasks and require vast amounts of data, leading to longer development cycles. Generative AI, however, offers greater generalization, allowing for faster development and increased accuracy.

Furthermore, generative AI can recognize and interact with elements it hasn’t been trained on, which is the focal point of NVIDIA’s announcement. Generative AI has already shown its power in various applications, such as video search, real-time asset tracking, autonomous planning, robot navigation, imitation learning for robots, defect inspection, and natural human-robot interaction.

Also see: Top Generative AI Apps and Tools

NVIDIA has discovered that these advancements can also be leveraged at the edge. The company is pushing the boundaries of computer vision through generative AI.

NVIDIA has developed a variety of tutorials, guides, and samples to facilitate the use of popular generative AI models. While many NVIDIA customers – including tech giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cisco, and Siemens – are integrating Jetson into their operations, NVIDIA introduced the Jetson Generative AI Lab to supercharge AI app development. The new software offers developers access to state-of-the-art open-source generative AI models.

“Almost all the popular generative AI models are only running in the cloud, but you can now run them at the edge using Jetson. We also have sample scripts if you want to create a distilled version. So Jetson developers can go ahead and start developing applications with generative AI,” said Deepu Talla, vice president of embedded and edge computing at NVIDIA, during a news briefing.

Also see: 100+ Top AI Companies 2023

Updates to Metropolis and Isaac Frameworks

Metropolis aims to help companies use computer vision AI to address critical operational and safety issues. It provides application programming interfaces (APIs) and microservices that facilitate the development of complex vision-based apps, primarily for video analytics.

Companies like BMW and PepsiCo are utilizing Metropolis tools to address issues related to the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, and operations using vision artificial intelligence. By the end of the year, NVIDIA plans to release an enhanced set of Metropolis APIs and microservices for the Jetson platform.

The Isaac platform is popular among various sectors, such as warehouse automation, smart manufacturing, and agriculture, for creating robust robotics solutions. NVIDIA made significant upgrades to the Isaac platform, particularly its perception and simulation features. The Isaac ROS software offers a range of graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated functions like depth perception and 3D scene reconstruction. The latest version, Isaac ROS 2.0, is now available to be used with Jetson for developing robotic solutions.

Additionally, NVIDIA introduced AI reference workflows to reduce development time and costs, with plans to unveil NVIDIA JetPack 6 later this year. JetPack 6 will allow AI developers to access the latest computing features without fully upgrading Jetson Linux. The new version will work with various Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Wind River Linux, and Redhawk Linux, among others.

Also see: Best Artificial Intelligence Software 2023

Pushing the Boundaries in Computer Vision

Generative AI’s transformative capabilities are set to redefine industries that rely on computer vision technologies. Real-world application is not a mere vision but an achievable future, according to Talla, who shared three use cases that showcase the potential of generative AI:

• The Transformer PeopleNet model has been trained to detect people in videos with high accuracy.
• The Detection Anything model employs vision transformers to perceive and classify objects in real-time.
• The Multi-Modal AI Visual Agent model facilitates text-to-image and image-to-image contextual searches.

In a retail setting, for example, this can provide real-time intelligence, analyze traffic flow, detect people, and generate alerts for potential security breaches. All three models are freely available for public use.

“People want to try these models out before they go into production, so we created a playground to allow folks to download the latest models and try them out,” said Talla.

Given the advancements made by NVIDIA, the Jetson platform will likely be instrumental in shaping how AI and robotics evolve. It promises to streamline development processes and offer a variety of real-world applications. 

Also see: Generative AI Companies: Top 12 Leaders

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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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