Hybrid Chat Wins the Cisco & Google Cloud Challenge - Cisco Certifications

A harmonious interaction between customer, agent, and bot

Expertflow, together with Bucher + Suter, have won the grand prize for the Cisco & Google Cloud Challenge by implementing a hybrid chat solution that leverages the Cisco Cloud and Google Cloud platforms to powerful effect. Together, these companies have collaborated to reframe how contact center agents and AI chatbots serve customers across the customer lifetime journey.

The Problem

Our award-winning solution came out of an effort to better integrate bot – agent functionality as a way of optimizing agent resource utilization.

Normally, bots have a hard time effectively handling complex customer transactions; inevitably, customers will ask questions the bots can’t answer, which typically has made it necessary for certain classes of transactions to be exclusively agent-based.

Our goal was to make it possible for businesses to implement a solution that could utilize both bots and agents in a seamless and highly efficient way. Here’s what we did…

The Solution

We created a hybrid chat solution that makes it possible for chatbots to handle the majority of customer interactions, and to remain involved even when interactions are escalated to agents. When a bot is stuck with a customer question, a color-coding system alerts a monitoring agent, who can then seamlessly and instantaneously intervene with an appropriate, bot-suggested response, or craft a manual response. Because these bots are responsive to tagged training data, and can improve their AI-based NLU models, bot response accuracy and breadth of response competency improves through progressive data exposure.

The solution is innovative in at least four respects:

First: One of the most exciting things about this solution is that the bots are in continuous conversation with customers, even during agent interventions. This is the essence of what this hybrid implementation means: bots are involved in a three-way interaction with customer and agent rather than being turned off when customer questions are escalated. Consequently, agents can be off-loaded for any recurrent conversation elements.

Second: Our solution fully leverages the contact center for media routing, agent skills, CTI, and reporting. These elements are therefore common to all media.

Third: We track interactions across all channels. As a result, the bots are aware of every interaction through any media type. For example, if a customer calls, and later initiates a chat, the bot will be aware of the earlier call.

Fourth: In the near future, our implementation will allow supervisors to train bots more rapidly by using clustering and grouped messages from real conversations, rather than painstakingly creating dialog interaction samples. Administrators can thus focus bot training on high-value and high-volume situations, to optimize bot improvement. With this approach, bot participation will progressively increase as bot competency improves. For example, companies can start with a chat solution without bot interaction, and then gradually introduce small portions of the conversation to be managed by the bot.

Nuts and Bots

When we learned about the Cisco & Google Cloud Challenge, we knew right away it would be an ideal platform to showcase a solution we first developed for, and in conjunction with, Helvetia Insurances. We’d like to explain what our implementation looks like from an infrastructure perspective to clarify what we envisioned, and what we ultimately created.

Our Hybrid Chat solution is deployed on Docker Containers and is orchestrated via Kubernetes. Consequently, the solution can run on-premise, or in-cloud on Google GCP, where we also have Google Dialogflow. The decision about where to run is flexible and can track with whether or not the implementation requires an on-premise solution, such as Cisco CCX or CCE, or can utilize a cloud-based offering, such as Cisco HCS.

The advantage with Kubernetes, and related technologies, is that we were able to focus our development energies on the application itself, without needing to worry about things like failover, scaling, security, or where each component was running. Kubernetes orchestration allows applications to scale down (making certain features available for smaller clients, with few servers), and scale up (adding cloud capacity on GCP) for very large and fault-tolerant deployments. Server capacity then auto-scales to dynamically changing business requirements.

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SD-WAN: What is it and how can you realize the benefits now - Cisco Certifications

Cisco Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) holds promising opportunity for enterprises that want to use the Cloud to enhance their technological and competitive advantage. Cisco Capital flexible payment solutions offer many ways for your organization to realize the benefits this technology can provide. Before we dive into the different ways to acquire SD-WAN, we wanted to give you an overview of this technology, how it works, and how you can get started.

What is SD-WAN, exactly?

As businesses race to adopt the use of SaaS/IaaS applications in multiple clouds, IT is realizing that the user application experience is poor. That is because WAN networks designed for a different era are not ready for the unprecedented explosion of WAN traffic that cloud adoption brings. That traffic causes management complexity, application performance unpredictability, and data vulnerability. Cisco SD-WAN delivers better user experiences in the following ways:

• Deliver applications in minutes, on any platform, with consistent application performance.
• Greater agility: Simplify the deployment and operation of your WAN.
• Simplified security: Securely connect your users to applications and protect your data from the WAN edge to the cloud using less bandwidth

Until now, IT professionals have faced trade-offs between application experience or security when evaluating SD-WAN solutions. With this next step forward in the Cisco SD-WAN portfolio, IT professionals can address the changing nature of how technology deployed across an organization can simultaneously get the best possible networking and security. On top of that, you can easily enable security anywhere it’s needed – you don’t stay in one place, and a secure network should be available wherever you are working, and with Cisco SD-WAN that’s now a reality.

Tapping into Cisco Capital to get started

Cisco SD-WAN can help you save thousands of dollars (depending on the number of sites and the site bandwidth). By combining Cisco Capital flexible payment solutions and the power of SD-WAN, the larger the implementation, the more cash you can potentially save. The second you implement SD-WAN you begin saving, and with our flexible payment solutions, we can simplify the acquisition and upgrade process to make it as seamless as possible.

Cisco Capital provides bespoke payment solutions like Cisco Easy Pay  to acquire the right technology to help your business achieve its desired outcomes. With Cisco Easy Pay organizations can acquire a Cisco offering like SD-WAN while managing costs, meeting business demands, and avoiding obsolescence with flexible migration options. We offer predictable monthly payments and no upfront costs, so you can keep pace with your digital business needs, keep your customers happy, and grow your organization.

Cisco SD-WAN is a new approach to connect your business to the cloud, one that lowers operational costs and improves resource usage for multi-site deployments, especially when paired with Cisco Capital flexible payment solutions. SD-WAN helps network administrators use available bandwidth more efficiently and ensures the highest possible level of performance for critical applications without sacrificing security. Simultaneously, IT admins can save on the resources required to implement and acquire SD-WAN through simplified or bundled financial acquisition options like Cisco Open Pay.

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5G IP Transport – A Strategic Opportunity for Service Providers

The race to 5G is intensifying as exemplified by a number of public announcements made by leading mobile operators. However, deeper conversations with service providers yield a very simple but important question. How will we make the investments in 5G upgrades profitable?  The bet is that 5G technology will support massively scalable, low-latency-enabled applications that in turn will open up new ecosystems, business models, and creativity across the enterprise and residential markets in every industry.

While industry conversations revolve around these new services, we should not dismiss the fundamental role that the IP network plays in delivering them. The step to make your IP transport network ready for 5G requires some thorough analysis. Don’t think of it as simply one more network upgrade—5G brings new demands on your transport network that necessitates new capabilities.

Convergence

The days are gone when service providers rolled out multiple transport networks to support different services. A modern transport network is converged and capable of concurrently supporting:

• Fixed and mobile consumer broadband
• Enterprise, small and medium businesses
• Retail and wholesale business models
• Real-time immersive experiences
• IoT connectivity and value-add

Flexibility

With convergence comes the need for flexibility. The transport network must support a wide range of requirements as not every application is the same – some are latency-sensitive, while others are bandwidth-hungry and do not have the same requirements vis-à-vis the network.

Network slicing turns out to be the technology of choice to custom fit 5G networks to specific applications (e.g., allocate a piece of an operator’s mobile network for different use cases, subscriber services, and classes of customers).

Automation

With increase in network size, the span across multiple network domains, and the high volume of xHaul network configuration changes put automation front and center to a successful 5G implementation.

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Cisco Building the Intent-Based Network with DevNet

Networkers are developers

Here’s some news: If you’re building and running a network, you are a developer. Why? Because your network is transforming and getting more capabilities. Your network is a software system that runs software and hardware. Your network is programmable. Your network has APIs. Your network is code. Your network is becoming an intent-based network. If you are a developer of networks, you are a network developer.

Now let me explain more about what I mean by “developer.” When I say developer, I don’t mean you have to be a coder who pounds out hundreds of lines of code a day. I do mean you need to be a power user of software, because your network is a big software system. Now that your network is programmable with network APIs, you need to understand how the network can respond to and interact with applications at all layers of the network stack and across network domains. Your title may be network engineer/admin/architect, but you are the developer who will super-charge the business opportunities available with the programmable network.

These two types of developers, coders and power users of networks, need to work together. During our various DevNet hackathons, we found that the winning teams are always combinations of these two. The winning teams have network experts who understand the power of software and APIs along with coders who can pound out lines of code. When talking to our customers who have successfully transformed their networks to embrace programmability in their workflows, they have said their secret to success was to pair up application developers with network and IT professionals.

Intent-based networking

Intent-based networking is a major advancement in networking that includes both new capabilities and a new operational model for networks, and this combination drives the connection between the network and business. Specifically, a business owner can state a business intent for the network, such as “add a new cash register to my business” or “Webex is a business critical application”, then the intent is translated into network action. The action is then activated in the network and assurance is used to continuously monitor, learn, and optimize the network’s performance in operating the intent.

Cisco just made an announcement about releasing new developer capabilities for intent-based networking. Cisco’s new DNA Center platform adds programmability to DNA Center, which is its command and control center for campus, branch, and edge networks. DNA Center lets you create, automate, enforce and verify policies across the network. The combination of DNA Center platform with the programmability of Cisco’s data center, wireless, and service provider networks and Cisco’s security, IoT, and cloud solutions gives Cisco the broadest programmable networking portfolio in the industry.

DevNet announcements for intent-based networking

We’re pleased to announce the new DevNet DNA Developer Center. This developer center helps developers, solutions architects, and business professionals use the DNA Center Platform. Developers can find solutions, use cases, developer resources, and learning materials they need to build solutions using the DNA Center platform. The DevNet DNA Developer Center includes a library of APIs and SDKs, Sandboxes, Learning Labs, a support community, and partner and developer use cases and documentation. Using the new DNA Center APIs, infrastructure developers can empower application developers with Self-Service IT operations. Developers can go to the DevNet DNA Center Sandbox to code with the newest EFT release of DNA Center platform running a live network with hardware and software network devices.

Next steps

With all these resources, you’re probably wondering how to get started in the world of intent-based networking.  Here are some tips:

• If you’re ready to get hands on and start coding, take a coding 101 class.
• If you want to build solutions then take a look at the DevNet DNA Developer Center.
• If you’ve been coding and using network APIs, we have a special request – Code an intent and share it with the DevNet community.

Cisco business Networking Services and Networking small solution of business

Cisco is opening up its network to a whole world of new possibilities for customers, partners, and developers in a move that could have a profound impact on the future of IT.

As part of progress towards intent-based networks that constantly learn, adapt, and protect, many more groups, including partners and developers will now be able to create new network-aware applications, IT process integrations, and products using the Cisco Network as a platform.

The move could unleash a barrage of business-changing apps and integrations that allow for better operations, stronger security, and faster innovation.

This next breed of designs will for the first time to able to build off the network, opening the door for concepts that we have never seen before.

For instance, the Cisco channel partner Accenture has integrated the network with other systems like ServiceNow, so that when a network problem arises, a process is triggered to issue trouble tickets, provide the approvals and close – automated for the first time.

This relies on Cisco's Digital Network Architecture (DNA), an open, software-driven approach to network architecture that helps firms innovate, reduce costs, and lower risk. Much, much more could be on the way. Cisco has only opened its network up to a select group of partners in the early stages.

Cisco DNA Center Platform:Intent-Based Networking’s Next Evolution

DNA Center makes it possible for network operators to react to business needs and security threats at machine speed, across their entire network. This means, first, that they don’t have to rely on time-consuming human-powered workflows, making changes one network device at a time; they  can interact with the network as a single fabric. And second, that when there’s an issue with the network (like a cyber attack), the network can react to it in real time.

More recently, we rolled out DNA Assurance, which provides deep visibility and insights into everything that happens on a network, and everything that has happened previously. When there’s an issue to solve, it gives network administrators the capability to go back in time and see exactly what was happening at the precise moment that the user or device experienced a problem. It makes troubleshooting immeasurably faster, and more proactive, than it is today.

Now DNA Center is an Open Platform

And now we’re opening the network fabric itself to developers. DNA Center’s new open platform capabilities mean all its powerful, networkwide automation and assurance tools are available to our partners and customers. With the network as a programmable platform, they will be able to make IT and business applications run better and more securely, deliver better experiences to employees and customers, and extract the value of the data that their networks are collecting.

The first uses of the new DNA Center platform capabilities will be IT applications. Already, the IT service management system ServiceNow has an integration into DNA Center.  With it, DNA Center can automatically create trouble tickets in ServiceNow. The tickets are enriched with insights that IT personnel  can use to resolve network, user, and application issues. IT operators can also trigger  remediation events using ServiceNow, that take advantage of DNA Center’s reach across the network. Together, DNA Center and ServiceNow can create and close out a ticket — faster and more accurately than either system could independently.

As more customers learn what DNA Center can do, its applicability will extend into line-of-business applications. For example, new platform capabilities will expose location data from network devices, which can be used to dramatically improve logistics. In healthcare, location data (for personnel and equipment), can improve care and lower costs.

Open to Ideas

We’re proud to be able to open up this rich and valuable resource to our customers. But it’s still early in the evolution of intent-based networking, and we want to help people learn and share new ways to make their assets work better for their organizations. Our DevNet program is where this all comes together. We have 500,000 developers on the program already, and we continue to add resources to help everyone grow.   We also launched this week three new programs for DevNet: Ecosystem Exchange, Code Exchange, and DNA Developer Center.