FEATURE: 2020 TECHNOLOGY FORECAST
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that customers still overwhelmingly prefer
to speak to another human for important
queries, is ushering in a new Golden Age of
Voice. I believe that 2020 will be the year
Natural Language Processing (NLP) steps
out of the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage and
goes mainstream in the UC industry.
“Over the past year or so, NLP has cemented
itself as a tool that opens up unprecedented
insight into voice data, especially in the
contact centre scenario. The results are
far richer than those gleaned from the
metadata analysis we have been restricted
to until recently and a much larger quantity
of data can be analysed.
“Advancements in sentiment tracking will
be the next big step for NLP in the UC
space and will continue to pave the way
for monumental gains in the UC industry in
2020. This is where a sophisticated mix of
keywords, tone of voice and volume to create
a much deeper picture of the caller and their
needs, helping to ensure the most vulnerable
customers are prioritised and all enquiries
are dealt with far more efficiently.”
Ziv Kedem, CEO at Zerto
“Today, we are living in an environment
where we’re experiencing increased intensity
IN 2020, TO BE
SUCCESSFUL
AND PROVIDE
VALUE TO THE
BUSINESS,
ENTERPRISE
IT WILL NEED
TO BE ABLE TO
STRADDLE THE
WORLDS OF
THE CLOUD AND
ON-PREMISES
STORAGE.
44
INTELLIGENTCIO
and frequency of hurricanes, forest fires
and other natural disasters, we’re also
seeing an increased focus on infrastructure
stability. This increased focus usually involves
looking into the solidity of roads, bridges,
dams, hospitals, water systems and more,
but in today’s digital world, network and
technology infrastructure resilience needs to
be a major part of the conversation as well.
Internet access and data centre operations
are critical to community recovery efforts,
and ensuring resilience on the IT side of
infrastructure also has the added benefit
of protecting against damaging effects of
other digital disasters, like ransomware.”
Jeff Ready, CEO at
Scale Computing
“For a long time, the conversation around
Edge Computing has been focused on
hitting the right buzz words without actually
addressing the customer’s needs. Everyone
has forgotten that the customer’s objectives
don’t revolve around the latest technology;
what they care about is that their
applications are online and working correctly.
When catering to these businesses in 2020,
technology partners have to remember
to think about their needs and wants
versus what’s currently trending among
IT professionals. Edge Computing is about
running mission critical applications outside
the data centre. Full stop. There are varying
use cases, workloads and needs within that
envelope, but at the root of the issue is the
need to run applications somewhere other
than the cloud or data centre. Customers
want a simple solution equipped with the
right technology to manage their IT and
decrease the two biggest costs affecting IT
departments: downtime and people.
“While IT professionals are concerned with
the conveniences of data centres, customers
care more about how physical size, noise and
power consumption will affect the quality
of their business and productivity. In 2020,
businesses offering Edge solutions should
worry less about marketing and focus on
what Edge Computing actually is – delivering
the solutions your customers really want.”
Eltjo Hofstee, Managing
Director at Leaseweb UK
“The colocation industry will continue to grow,
particularly in the enterprise space as more
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