The FinOps FOCUS spec, which transforms complex cloud billing data into a standardized schema, has been adopted by the top cloud providers including Google, AWS and Microsoft. Envisors merges this cloud data with enterprise data, empowering businesses with unique insights crucial for cloud optimization.

Envisor, a cloud cost management platform provider, announced that the next generation of its Cloud Analytics platform supports the new FinOps FOCUS specification. The FOCUS spec, which transforms complex cloud billing data into a standardized schema, has been adopted by the top cloud providers including Google, AWS and Microsoft. The announcement was made at today's AWS re:Invent 2023 conference.

Envisor Cloud Analytics 2.0, now in preview, is the first cloud cost management platform to incorporate FOCUS. The specification brings consistency and standardization to cloud cost data from AWS, Google and Microsoft for improved cloud cost management. Envisor supports FOCUS files and uses FOCUS terminology where relevant. Envisor is an active contributor to the FinOps Foundation group that developed the spec.

"We are thrilled to be a contributing member of the FOCUS project and to embrace the FOCUS 1.0 spec so quickly. As SaaS providers like Salesforce and Office365 also make the move to adopt FOCUS, we'll be able to provide a full view of the cloud. Incredible opportunities will arise for organizations to gain complete governance over their clouds," said Keith Knowles, Managing Director, Envisor.

Envisor Cloud Analytics empowers organizations to optimize their cloud spend and performance by swiftly combining enterprise and cloud data in a fully customizable reporting environment. At the core of Envisor's nextgen platform is a highly performant data warehouse atop a data lake, ensuring unmatched scalability and extensibility. The 2.0 architecture seamlessly ingests huge volumes of cloud and enterprise data facilitating automated forecasting and executive dashboards with key metrics including unit economics.

Users can expect a comprehensive, near-real-time understanding of contact drivers, customer sentiment, satisfaction, and preferences with Call Journey CI advanced technology.

Call Journey CI, a leader in deriving customer experience insights from interaction analytics, proudly announces the launch of its groundbreaking Conversation Intelligence (CI) suite that captures and analyzes the Voice of the Customer (VoC) to support easier data-driven business transformation. Based on innovative data modeling and drawing upon its full suite of CI capabilities, it caters to a range of data appetites from across the enterprise, from aggregated trends down to granular dissatisfaction audits. Users can expect a comprehensive, near-real-time understanding of contact drivers, customer sentiment, satisfaction, and preferences in one technology solution, without having to resource an entire team of analysts to sift and sort data from various platforms. Users can also leverage the benefits of Call Journey CI's existing automated QA capabilities and assess agents not just on their professional competencies, but also their competencies at handling particular call types.

In an era where reducing customer effort is the main focus of customer-centric companies, Call Journey CI recognizes the critical importance of continuous feedback loops based on conversation analysis to identify and remedy points of customer effort and dissatisfaction. The enhanced VoC capabilities harness the power of advanced natural language processing, AI, and machine learning to analyze customer interactions across various channels, including calls, chats, and emails. By leveraging these technologies, businesses can complement or replace their survey practice, and uncover a wealth of valuable information to share throughout the business to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Key Features of Call Journey CI's Conversation Intelligence Software, complementing its existing automated QA capabilities:

• Customer Dissatisfaction Reporting: Call Journey CI's VoC software goes beyond traditional analytics by flagging and profiling customer dissatisfaction. This empowers businesses to address issues promptly and proactively and prevent potential negative impacts on brand reputation.
• Multi-Layered Dashboards: The intuitive dashboards provide a holistic view of customer insights, making it easy for businesses to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities for improvement. Users can also opt to drill down into specific conversations to gain a granular understanding of customer feedback.
• Thematic Reporting: The dashboards do the heavy lifting for users by amalgamating various data points to create themed reports based on dissatisfaction, productivity and cost efficiency, and customer sentiment.
• Full-Suite Security Including PII/PCI Redaction On-Premise or In-Cloud: Call Journey CI vigilantly maintains comprehensive security controls and is compliant with leading security frameworks including SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, RegTech, and Australian Fintech. Furthermore, the PII & PCI Redaction capabilities are deployable either on-premise or via cloud and protect your customers' identities, helping you fulfill your security commitments while maintaining the trust of your customers and democratizing insights throughout the business.
• Easier Data Democratization: Rather than gatekeeping data in-platform, Call Journey CI allows organizations to ingest all data points, including metadata, into their own data environment if required. PII & PCI Redaction means the data is safeguarded throughout the sharing process.

Leading global solutions provider showcases new product support for Oracle cloud backup and recovery operations and achieves AWS Level 1 MSSP Competency

Syntax Systems, a leading global technology solutions and services provider for cloud application implementation and management, announced Syntax CxLink Backup solution for Oracle databases at AWS re:Invent 2023. This is a strategic enhancement to its suite of solutions that now supports the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN). CxLink Backup addresses a critical need for enterprise customers running Oracle databases, including SAP customers, as Oracle Database underpins more than 60% of SAP ERP Central Component customer implementations and RMAN integration options are limited.

Enterprise teams managing multiple clouds and stores of data, each with their own routine for proper storage, now have access to a cutting-edge tool to simplify backup and recovery processes as well as disaster recovery strategies. With CxLink Backup, customers now have access to several impactful functions that Oracle Recovery Manager fulfills:

• Spares users the complexity of managing backup file details because it's a module that streamlines and automates backup and recovery.
• Supports various backup types like full, incremental, differential, and image copies.
• Enhances backup efficiency and minimizes size with features like compression, parallel processing, and multisection.
• Ensures data security and reliability through validation, encryption, and cataloging of backups, as well as the ability to rectify corruption or errors.
• Offers flexible data restoration, including options like flashback, point-in-time recovery, and incomplete recovery, which allows recovery to any specific moment.

"In today's fast-paced digital world, backups are critical for enterprise applications," said Ricardo Casanovas Ortega, VP of Product Innovation at Syntax. "Many enterprise teams are managing these processes from disparate sources and tools. Our latest features for CxLink Backup, unify and automate recovery processes, giving users a powerful tool that enhances reliability while minimizing complexity."

In addition to revealing new capabilities in its CxLink solution, Syntax also announced its achievement of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Level 1 Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) Competency and renewed its status in the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) Partner Program. These designations recognize and validate leading AWS Partner Network (APN) members that provide full lifecycle solutions to customers and who have met AWS's requirements for a baseline of managed security services to protect and monitor essential AWS resources 24/7, known as Level 1 Managed Security Services.

"Syntax is very proud to now be part of the elite AWS Partners who have achieved the AWS Level 1 MSSP Competency," said Christian Primeau, Global CEO of Syntax. "Our strategy is 3-pronged: operate-to-protect, monitor-to-respond and built-to-recover. We are focused on ensuring the integrity of applications running on AWS and the data they store and process. Achieving this AWS Competency designation is recognition of the work the Syntax team delivers and our growing relationship with AWS, which adds value across our entire portfolio."

The Syntax portfolio offers a wide range of AWS solutions as an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner. Syntax previously achieved the AWS SAP Competency, AWS Oracle Competency, and AWS Migration Competency, and AWS MSP Partner designations and is a member of the AWS Well-Architected Partner Program.

Acqueon Workspace Leverages AI to Enhance Productivity Across Multiple Cloud Contact Center Platforms

Acqueon today announced multiple enhancements to its leading sales, collections, and proactive service agent desktop solution, Acqueon Workspace, including new AI features, easy migrations across platforms, and industry-leading multi-region redundancy that is key to large scale enterprise deployments. These enhancements are delivered via Acqueon's cloud-native solution deployed in AWS.

Powerful AI-fueled Call Summarization

Acqueon continues to innovate in artificial intelligence tools to enhance sales, collections, and proactive service agent productivity. Our latest release of Acqueon Summarize leverages powerful Generative AI Large Language Model technology to provide accurate and concise post-call summaries of the important components of agent-customer calls, including reason for the call, next steps, objections, and outcomes. Acqueon Summarize reduces the need for manual notetaking during and after calls by agents, improves efficiency so they can respond more quickly to customers, and streamline supervisor reviews since call summaries are much quicker to digest than entire transcripts.

Agent Desktop Makes Cross-platform Migration Easy and Productive

From the beginning, Acqueon Workspace was designed with flexibility in mind. Acqueon Workspace provides a single interface to simplify sales, collections, and proactive service agents' working environments by unifying multiple CRM, CCaaS, and enterprise systems into a common primary agent application. Depending on the needs of the contact center, Acqueon Workspace can alternatively reside inside a CRM desktop or a CCaaS desktop, or can provide widgets and other components for a fully customized desktop. Built on AWS, Acqueon Workspace also can be leveraged across contact center platforms—a crucial capability as many enterprises continue their move from on-prem contact centers to cloud contact centers. Agents that are used to working in Acqueon Workspace will have no change or learning curve associated with a migration from one contact center platform or provider to another.

Multi-region Redundancy Support Recognizes a Critical Need for Enterprises

Recognizing the need for enterprise resilience and availability, Acqueon Workspace supports redundancy support across multiple AWS regions. Sales, collections, and proactive service agents that rely on Acqueon Workspace for inbound screen pops, call control, and CRM access require minimal disruption in the event of a regional outage. Acqueon's leading-edge capability replicates desktop configuration data across AWS US-East and US-West regions with full backups and configuration snapshots enabled. This architecture enables for minimal switchover time at a low cost.

"Acqueon continues to deliver for enterprises seeking to balance contact center migrations to the cloud with the need to innovate with AI. The capabilities in Acqueon Summarize, along with the cross platform compatibility and multi-region redundancy in Acqueon Workspace ensures that agents focused on revenue outcomes maximize their productivity with minimal disruption as enterprises take the journey to the cloud contact center," said Ashish Koul, CEO of Acqueon. "B2C enterprises focused on revenue generation and revenue recovery are seeing the advantages of our approach and will continue to benefit from Acqueon's leadership in this space."

New AI services to help clients develop software and modernize application environments faster

Accenture and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the two companies will collaborate to help developers and enterprise customers accelerate the adoption of advanced generative AI technology launched this week at AWS re:Invent 2023.

Generative AI shows incredible promise in transforming software development and application modernization. Building on its AI-focused strategic collaboration, the two companies will offer accelerators, hands-on expertise and best practices within Accenture’s Center for Advanced AI to help clients bring use cases from concept to production, using Amazon Q and other AWS AI services.

As part of this initiative, AWS AI services will be integrated with Accenture’s automation platforms, infusing AI into systems and applications across the software development lifecycle. For example, Accenture’s own data reports up to a 30% boost in development efforts using Amazon CodeWhisperer, while enhancing security, quality and performance. Over the next two years, Accenture will enable up to 50,000 development engineers with AWS AI services including Amazon Q and Amazon CodeWhisperer.

“Accenture and AWS are helping clients hit the ground running with powerful tools like Amazon Q which can be tailored to their organization,” said Karthik Narain, group chief executive, Accenture Technology. “Companies will realize the most value from these tools by taking the right steps to prepare application environments for an AI-assisted future. We’ve industrialized our own experience and learnings from deploying over 300 generative AI projects in the last year and expanded investments in training to help companies realize the value of generative AI-powered software development faster.”

Nearly all (97%) C-suite executives surveyed by Accenture expect generative AI to be transformative and that same percentage expects to increase market share as a result. With the rise of generative AI, embracing change and investing in a strong digital core with data at the center is essential for organizations to adapt to the now and prepare for the future.

“Generative AI will have a positive and transformative impact on almost every organization, from startups to enterprises and the public sector, and the launch of Amazon Q will be a strong catalyst in that shift,” said Matt Garman, senior vice president of sales, marketing, and global services, AWS. “Working alongside Accenture, we are setting up our joint customers for success as they accelerate innovation within their organizations and move towards a generative AI-powered future.”

Accenture’s Center for Advanced AI is already helping joint customers harness AWS’s data and AI services, such as Amazon Bedrock, Amazon CodeWhisperer and now, Amazon Q. One of these customers is the European Commission’s Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE), which is responsible for managing the EU policy on fisheries and maritime affairs. In collaboration with Accenture, DG MARE is striving to modernize its systems, making them radically faster and more cost effective by using AWS AI services and its integrated, cloud-native platform. In this context, DG MARE was able to generate code for their business rule engine based on existing documentation. Generating a new business rule using AI took about one minute and resulted in high-quality code, with greater than 90% accuracy when validating with developers. In the future, DG MARE aims to extend this use case to other code generation use cases.

With a 15-year relationship, Accenture and AWS—through its Accenture AWS Business Group—brings together collective resources to help companies build a modern digital core essential to capitalize on new capabilities and meet the high computing demands of generative AI. Accenture has more than 26,000 AWS certified specialists who hold over 33,000 AWS certifications. Accenture most recently obtained AWS competencies in resilience, advertising and marketing technology, and automotive on top of its 25 AWS competencies.

Innovative and passionate tech executive to drive Mitel’s technology vision and strategy

Mitel®, a global leader in business communications, today announced that Luiz Domingos has been named Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Head of Large Enterprise R&D. Domingos joined Mitel through its acquisition of Unify earlier this year.

Domingos will play a central role in delivering Mitel’s innovation agenda and leading the company’s technology vision and strategy. He will work closely with the company’s R&D and product development leaders to ensure emerging technologies are integrated into Mitel’s product roadmaps and oversee the company’s intellectual property assets. As CTO, Domingos will also provide executive direction around strengthening and expanding Mitel’s flexible UC solutions to align with changing customer needs and the company’s growth strategies.

Over the past two decades, Domingos has developed a proven track record of delivering innovative communication and collaboration solutions, leading global R&D teams, and bringing high-quality products to market. During his tenure at Unify, he served as Chief Product and Technology Officer, managing the complete portfolio and developing disruptive cloud solutions.

“Innovation is an integral part of Mitel’s DNA, and adding Luiz’s knowledge and experience will allow us to further capitalize on integrating emerging technologies into our world-class portfolio,” said Tarun Loomba, Mitel President and Chief Executive Officer. “His leadership will be especially valuable as we bring together Mitel and Unify's extensive R&D operations over the coming months and deliver a combined go-to-market strategy and product portfolio.”

The announcement of Domingos’ appointment coincides with Mitel’s 13^th Annual Innovation Day, which takes place on November 29. The event showcases the company’s latest product and service offerings, processes, and tools. It also promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration through an innovation competition for employees worldwide. Top competitors will earn a spot in Mitel’s ‘Shark Tank’ style event, where they can pitch their concept and business case to Mitel executives and guest judges for future production.

“I am thrilled and honored to take on this role, especially during such a significant time at Mitel," said Domingos. “The UC sector is evolving rapidly, and I believe we are exceptionally well-positioned to deliver the next-gen communications experiences our customers need to grow and thrive. As Mitel enters a new era as a global UC powerhouse, our commitment to innovation and technical excellence has never been stronger.”

Domingos earned a dual bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunications engineering from Parana Federal University UFPr in Curitiba, Brazil. He has completed executive education from INSEAD Paris, holds a PMP certification from the Project Management Institute, and has several patents with the US Patent Office in his name.

The Mailchain and Pikespeak integration ushers in a new era for personalized project-to-user engagement: NEAR projects can make data-driven decisions and send customized communication to subgroups of their users directly through web3 email.

Mailchain, the multichain communication layer for web3, has announced a new integration with Pikespeak, a leading blockchain data platform for projects built on NEAR Protocol. The Mailchain and Pikespeak integration ushers in a new era for personalized project-to-user engagement: NEAR projects can make data-driven decisions and send customized communication to subgroups of their users directly through web3 email.

Built on the NEAR Protocol, Pikespeak is a visual data and analytics solution which empowers individuals and projects (DeFi, DAOs, Gaming, and NFT, etc.) to unlock key insights and trends. The data and analytics solution has attracted top NEAR projects, including Ref Finance, Immunefi, Proximity Labs, and Octopus Network, most recently being used to ensure the success of the NEAR Digital Collective election. The integration with Mailchain allows for secure, personalized communication based on curated insights. Mailchain's communication protocol ensures end-to-end encryption and verification of sender and receiver so that users can trust the communications from their favorite projects.

Drop by Pikespeak is an integration with Mailchain which offers an analytics dashboard that enables grouping or segmenting of wallet addresses by smart contract(s) or other data points (i.e. period of activity, amount spent). Once segmented, projects can send web3 emails directly from the platform to these contacts. Each email campaign includes analytics to gain insight into relevant on-chain actions taken by the wallet addresses.

Ref Finance, a leading crypto trading platform which oversees approximately 80% of the volume on the NEAR protocol, with over 92,000 top traders, showcases the power of this integration. They use Pikespeak to identify these top traders and reach out to them directly, using just their wallet address, to relay exclusive and relevant content. Ref Finance is also using Pikespeak to help onboard new users by automating the delivery of "getting started" content direct to users' inboxes. Ref Finance users can now check their Mailchain inbox and hear directly from the team about what's coming next.

"Pikespeak's integration with Mailchain represents a significant step forward in our vision to make web3 email not just a communication tool but a way projects can actively engage their users from verifiable addresses. By understanding user data at a granular level and being able to communicate insights directly, Pikespeak is pioneering a new era of user engagement." said Tim Boeckmann, CEO of Mailchain.

"The integration with Mailchain will enable projects and marketers to engage with their users through the most successful communications tool ever invented: email. Icing on the cake, the end-to-end experience for users will remain 100% Web3. I am very excited about our collaboration with Mailchain and I see this integration as the beginning of a long and fruitful journey with additional features (ie email on-chain notifications, NFT or token drops)" said Didier Pironi, CEO and Co-founder at Pikespeak

Fuel Cycle, the insights platform to accelerate decision intelligence, today introduced a new feature to its Research Engine: Insight Reels, which seamlessly integrates multimedia elements to provide an entirely new, yet familiar way to capture actionable insights that drive confident business decisions for legendary brands. Consumer behaviors and patterns are shifting more dynamically than ever, making it much more important to engage with them in formats that they are already excited about. This newest feature reinforces Fuel Cycle's continued leadership in innovation and research delivery.

The pervasiveness of digital access has caused traditional market research methods, such as surveys and focus groups, to quickly shift online. Fuel Cycle's Insight Reels will take that a step further by providing new innovative methods to run traditional market research in formats that respondents are using in their everyday life. Infused with artificial intelligence for further verification and research rigor, Insight Reels operate like many other qualitative research methods but provides more flexibility for participants to respond on their schedule and choose what format they are most comfortable with.

Key functions include:

• Community moderators can launch activities with a video description, such as "What holiday shopping trends are you most excited to see this season?".
• Members can reply with a comment, much like leaving one on Instagram.
• Members can also reply with a video response of their own, akin to the Duet function on TikTok.

This latest feature introduction is a step further in advancing Fuel Cycle's relationship with AI and providing agile research constructs rooted in validity and true engagement. These tenets of the Fuel Cycle Research Engine bring further ease to insight needs and provide the evidence-based decision intelligence required in today's market increasingly dictated by microtrends, and Insight Reels aim to infuse new levels of engagement to keep up with this change.

"At Fuel Cycle, we are not just adapting to change; we actively shape it to keep our customers at the forefront of dynamic market trends," stated Ali Soukhakian, Vice President of Engineering at Fuel Cycle. "Our Insight Reels go beyond modernizing market research; they empower participants with the flexibility to engage in a seamless, intuitive manner. This innovation centers on harnessing rich media to elevate research precision, allowing brands to swiftly and effectively capture valuable insights."