It was just a matter of time before “containers” and “Kubernetes” would enter the everyday lexicon of contact center administrators and CX aficionados. With the introduction of Genesys “multi-cloud” Engage offering, that time is now.

Genesys, and its ecosystem partners, have anticipated the trend for some time. Global enterprises like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (mentioned in this press release) and its peers have made it clear that they do not want to be “locked in” to a singe cloud service provider as they update their customer care and self-service infrastructures with elements of Conversational AI. The hybrid approach embodied by the Genesys Engage Cloud enables enterprises to run Genesys services “on the private cloud of their choice,” a roster that spans Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. Think of it as a counterpoint to Salesforce’s latest action in the contact center arena, emphasizing the advantages of working solely with Amazon Connect and its partners.

The new architectural approach and its advantages are well articulated by Tod Famous in this blog post. In sum, the purpose of the containerized approach is to speed-up, simplify and reduce the cost of migrating all or part of an enterprise’s contact center infrastructure. This takes on heightened importance as enterprises of all sizes shop around for what they perceive to be “best-of-breed” solutions for introducing Conversational AI, Intelligent Virtual Assistants or even “chatbots” to assist customers, customer care agents or other support personnel.

Some companies are bound to adopt a modernized (dare I say “containerized”) version of managed services. Thus Genesys sees partners like Accenture, Aria Solutions, Avtex, BT, Cognizant, ConvergeOne, Infosys, NTT LTD or Orange Business Services to continue their role of managing the processes involved with initiating and maintaining hybrid cloud solutions. To further accelerate the introduction of new services, features and functions, Genesys features a short list of “application providers” that includes AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Nuance and Calabrio.

Nuance’s 20-Year Experience with Genesys at the Account Level

Nuance has achieved special status among the named application providers for Engage Cloud. It has almost two decades of experience with Genesys and its large enterprise clients because Nuance Recognizer (automated speech recognition) and Vocalizer (text-to-speech) were foundational technologies for speech-enabling the Genesys Voice Portal (GVP). Today Amazon, Google and Microsoft are doing their best to turn highly accurate speech recognition and human-like text-to-speech rendering into a commodities that can be accessed through APIs or other connectors. Meanwhile, Nuance has expanded its set of cloud-based offerings to include digital and human-assisted virtual assistants as well as intelligent authentication (IAuth) and fraud prevention built on biometrics and elements of artificial intelligence.

Both Nuance and Genesys re-architected their solutions in parallel. In Nuance’s case, three separate services comprise its Intelligent Engagement Cloud:

• Conversational AI: A cloud-native and containerized packaging of ASR, TTS, NLU, Dialog Management and Mix, its rapid application development environment.
• Engagement AI: An agent-facing service that embraces messaging platforms and supports both live and asynchronous conversations. It is also the domain of “Agent Coach” which applies Conversational AI to prompt agents with recommended next best actions or scripts.
• Security AI: The third pillar of Nuance’s cloud-native offerings includes biometrics, security and fraud detection resources. The most comprehensive packaging is Gatekeeper.

The two companies have a large installed base that cut their teeth on bringing natural language interactions to IVRs and now have an opportunity to use the same resources to digital channels. The Mix design tool places emphasis on writing an application once and then “publishing” to alternative modes or media. That includes a mobile app, Web page or IVR system. This lowers the cost of implementation because it can be built on a single set of connectors to back-office applications and resources. It also lays the foundation for extending similar customer experience from a Nuance-powered virtual assistant to support an Alexa Skill, Google Action or Samsung Pod.

Now the executives in charge of contact center administration and digital transformation can focus on the business models associated with introducing new AI-infused services. Costs are more predictable and the investment in Conversational AI-infused virtual assistants can be spread across multiple channels.

Platform or “Best of Breed”? That’s No Longer the Question

Opus Research recently reported that Amazon Connect appears to be Salesforce’s most favored cloud contact center offering as enterprises sort out their strategies for adding Conversational AI. The Genesys’ multi-cloud approach makes it clear that enterprise decision makers can afford to be fickle. Robert Weideman, EVP & GM Nuance Enterprise, recommends that they “choose wisely.” Traditionally, contact center infrastructure is a long-lived asset that is also very expensive. The cloud-based approach represents a move to opex, so other considerations take on first order importance, namely flexibility to react to changing demands and innovation to support new services, channels and use cases.

In all cases, the availability to be agile across multiple public or private clouds while being able to aggregate demand for specific resources will be a major factor in building and offering affordable, trustworthy intelligent assistants.

Categories: Intelligent Assistants, Intelligent Authentication