Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 25 | Page 44

FEATURE: 2020 TECHNOLOGY FORECAST ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 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 www.intelligentcio.com