Cisco Live was held last week in what has become my second home, Las Vegas. I had dubbed this the most important Cisco Live in the Chuck Robbins era, as the company is looking to put a stake in the artificial intelligence ground. Simultaneously, Cisco Systems Inc. is integrating its Splunk acquisitions and reshaping the security business in real time. For most companies, doing one of these things would be all-encompassing, but these are not typical times.
At VeeamON 24 last week in Florida, the opening general session was kicked off by Tamecka McKay, chief information officer for the City of Fort Lauderdale, who touted the city as an economic hub with industries as diverse as aviation, technology, finance, marine, and tech — and no state tax. The city is also home to soccer phenom Lionel Messi. After introducing Veeam Inc. Chief Executive Anand Eswaran (pictured), McKay discussed her current challenges and those she faced as CIO of the Broward County Public Schools — everything from 1,000-year floods to ransomware attacks.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of Arista Networks Inc. as a publicly traded company, and to celebrate, the company held a special event at the New York Stock Exchange, which is not only the exchange that trades ANET stock but also one of the early Arista customers. However, the shindig at the NYSE wasn’t the only way the company marked the IPOiversary. Arista also announced some artificial intelligence-related news.
Customer Contact Week, being held in Las Vegas this week, has evolved from focusing on hard-core contact centers to a broader customer experience event. This aligns with the contact-center-as-a-service or CCaaS providers’ direction, where their products have expanded beyond the traditional agent to other customer-facing roles.
We’ve all faced the frustration of interactive voice response (IVR), which often fails to address specific problems and can be highly irritating. IVR systems make getting through to an agent difficult, leading to a poor customer experience (CX). At Customer Contact Week (CCW) Las Vegas 2024, Talkdesk launched two new generative AI (Gen AI) tools that address the challenges associated with traditional IVRs.