DevOps with CloudCenter and Kubernetes in a Multicloud Environment – Part 1

The need for digital innovation

Whatever your business might be, your internal and external customers expect more and more services, greater efficiency and a better experience. Providing new services (which in most cases will mean a new or revamped application) to customers and anticipating your competitors’ moves attracts new customers and retains the existing ones.

Often the line of business developers are not satisfied with the support they receive from the IT operations teams in terms of flexibility and speed to start a new project, especially if new technologies or skills are required (e.g. developing and deploying cloud native applications).

The perception of IT operations depends also on the frequency of supporting the efforts of releasing fixes for broken services and on the process of testing so that production environments are “bug-free”, after going through functionality and reliability tests.

Frequent releases and the quality of the code can benefit a lot from automation in all the phases of a software project, though end-to-end automation is not absolutely necessary; it’s just much better!

The fundamental pillars are organizing workflows and processes to ensure they cover every need (no gaps in the responsibility, no grey area in communication among different departments, shared objectives instead of finger pointing).

Figure 1 below shows the evolution of methodologies and the impact on the value perceived by the business. The stars represent the moment when business value is realized by a release of the application in production.

With traditional waterfall projects, it happens only at the end of the project (by the way, with a lot of uncertainty due to delays and unexpected trouble during the development and the test phases).

Agile methodology reduces risk by repeating shorter cycles of design, coding and testing that can address any surprises and adjust the course of the project sooner if necessary. But deployment in production still happens at the very end of the project.

The innovation allowed by Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) brings the application in production at every cycle (new releases or bug fixing) ensuring optimal quality and a deterministic outcome: the business will appreciate the benefit in terms of time-to-market for their initiatives.

Figure 1 – CI/CD offers more business value

DevOps is not a technology nor a product

DevOps means collaboration between Developers and Operations.

The work of whoever is responsible for design and implementation of the code (the dev team) does not finish when a new build of the application is released. Developers should also collaborate in testing the entire system (code, infrastructure and process), releasing it in production, operating and measuring its KPI.

The Operations team do not just execute a defined process to maintain the system but should collaborate since the design phase of the application and, most importantly, provide constructive feedback from the production environment that can help improve and extend the application in next development cycles, e.g. application errors and their reason, performances issues, support tickets opened by users, etc.

The collaboration and the feedback loop are foundational principles in DevOps, as described in next paragraph. 

Cultural change

Necessary cultural change should be promoted (breaking silos in the organization), with incentives and gradual adoption of practices that will improve with time: the entire organization and the individuals have to digest a new way of working, openly analyzing its outcome and contributing to the progress with personal feedback and suggestions. A great book describing this cultural change is the Phoenix Project.

DevOps practices suggest that the entire lifecycle of a service is managed by a single team: from the inception phase and the requirements analysis, to the implementation, testing, release and related operational processes. They can be more efficient and provide more value if they know everything about the service and they can react to any problem quickly, as well as evolving it based on new requirements.

The DevOps team should include representatives from different departments (lines of business, IT Architecture, Operations…) that bring their skill and experience, so a new organizational model may be required. The result can be a “dotted-line” reporting structure with functional responsibilities across different teams.

It is not necessary to build a team for each service. Some services can be grouped in one team, especially if they belong to the same business area or if they are responsible for the building blocks of a composite application (in a microservices architecture).

DevOps principles

Gene Kim defines the principles of all DevOps patterns (the Three Ways) in the books “DevOps Handbook” and “The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win.” He asserts that the Three Ways describe the values and philosophies that frame the processes, procedures, practices of DevOps, as well as the prescriptive steps.

The First Way – Systems Thinking

◈ Understand the entire flow of work

◈ Seek to increase the flow of work

◈ Stop problems early and often – Don’t let them flow downstream

◈ Keep everyone thinking globally

◈ Deeply understand your systems

First Way Goals

◈ One source of truth – Code, environment and configuration in one place

◈ Consistent release process – Automation is essential (one click)

◈ Decrease cycle times, Faster release cadence

The Second Way – Feedback Loops

◈ Understand and respond to the needs of all customers (internal and external)

◈ Shorten and amplify all feedback loops

◈ With feedback comes quality

Second Way Goals

◈ Defects and performance issues fixed faster

◈ Ops and InfoSec user stories appear as part of the application

◈ Everyone is communicating better

◈ More work getting done

The Third Way – Synergy

◈ Consistent process and effective feedback result in agility

◈ Now use that agility to experiment

◈ You only learn from failure – So fail often, but recover quickly

Third Way Goals

◈ Ability to anticipate, even define new business needs through visibility in the systems

◈ Ability to test and optimize new business opportunities in the system while managing risk

◈ Joy

Now that we have covered the basics of DevOps, let’s have a look at a product from Cisco that could make it easier to adopt DevOps practices. Remember that DevOps cannot be bought: it is the set of good practices that you define and refine as continuous improvement based on experience. Automation is only a part of the story.

The Cisco multicloud approach

Many organizations are using at least one private or public cloud, but more and more use a combination of different clouds: that implies a need for consistent governance, security, networking, analytics and automation that apply to every environment.  The multicloud portfolio includes products, services and reference architectures that span all technologies mentioned above to make the adoption of clouds simpler.

This post explains how we have built a demo using products in the automation bucket to support a DevOps use case (i.e. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, aka CI/CD).

The two products are the Cisco CloudCenter Suite (CCS) and the Cisco Container Platform (CCP), briefly described in the following paragraphs before we go on to the demo.

Cisco CloudCenter Suite

Cisco CloudCenter Suite is a solution that helps the IT organization to enable developers and lines of business to deploy and operate a large number of applications and middleware platforms, made more complex by the availability of different possible targets (private and public clouds for running VM and containers).

Figure 2 – CloudCenter Suite addresses the many-to-many complexity

CloudCenter Suite is a single tool that simplifies multicloud management by enabling organizations to design, deploy, and optimize infrastructure and applications across clouds by automating application deployment and consuming resources and services from any cloud. It helps to enforce a single governance model including cost control, approval processes, security policies and consistent architecture across different clouds.

The benefit is that you don’t have to learn and use the different tools from cloud providers, or replicate the automation blueprints using the native automation technologies in each cloud (e.g. Cloud Formation for AWS, Heat for Openstack, Powershell for Azure): you only create a single model and CloudCenter Suite translates it into a call to the specific API exposed by each cloud, including public, on-premises and Kubernetes clusters.

Figure 3 – CloudCenter Suite translates a single blueprint to API calls for all clouds

Everything you do in CloudCenter Suite can be done through its API, making it easier to orchestrate it externally (e.g. from Jenkins, through a plugin that Cisco ships so that you can insert multicloud deployments in your CI/CD pipeline).

The current version of the CloudCenter Suite also includes additional modules like the Cost Optimizer and the Action Orchestrator: a useful enhancement to create a governance model and make operations easy in a heterogeneous multicloud environment.

Cisco Container Platform

Cisco Container Platform is another software product from Cisco, that Operations teams can use to create and manage enterprise-grade Kubernetes clusters. It deploys, fully configures and manages (upgrades, scales, monitors) Kubernetes clusters on-premises and in the public cloud for you – it also supports additional native integration with AWS’s EKS. It takes care of all the complexity of integrating with networking (options offered out of the box are Calico, Contiv and Cisco ACI), storage, security (SSO and RBAC are added to Kubernetes) as well as centralized monitoring and logging (Elasticsearch, Fluentd and Kibana) while shipping 100% open source binaries from the upstream repositories. With Cisco Container Platform, DevOps teams can now extend their deployment environments to include Kubernetes-based containers, without the complexity of having to actually deploy and maintain it themselves.

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Open programmable architecture delivering value beyond connectivity

We discussed how Cisco delivers consistency and simplicity, with integrated security, across Enterprise domains. Now we’ll discuss in more detail how this is done.

“People who are serious about software should make their own hardware”

Cisco uniquely develops its own hardware and software, including silicon for Switching, Wireless, and Routing platforms. This allows Cisco to deliver unique innovations and optimizations pertaining to network-specific needs, such as:

◈ Stackpower/Stackwise,  AVB, MACSec-256, and ERSPAN for Switching
◈ CleanAir, Flexible Radio Assignment and Hyperlocation for Wireless
◈ Advanced hardware queueing and Deep Packet Inspection for Routing
◈ Flexible Netflow (FNF), Scalable Group Tags (SGT), VXLAN, and NBAR2 across all the domains

These unique innovations in hardware and software enables Cisco to deliver a lot more value beyond connectivity in the areas of security, visibility, high availability, etc and are the foundation for the evolution to an Intent-based architecture.

Built-in Security and Network Visibility for Proactive Insights

FNF and NBAR2 are foundational enablers for Security and Application Visibility embedded in the platforms. Cisco Switching, Routing and Wireless platforms incorporate special hardware and software to collect information about all the flows in the network, not just sampled, and deep packet inspection capability to identify applications. All this is done without network slowdown. This is what makes advanced Security services such as Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA) able to detect malware in encrypted traffic without decrypting the traffic, working in conjunction with Cisco Talos, Cognitive Threat Analytics (CTA), and Threatgrid while using Cisco Stealthwatch. It is also what enables Application Assurance, advanced Application Policy, and Network as a Sensor.

◈ Granular Visibility: Model-driven telemetry (MDT, otherwise known as Streaming Telemetry) provides a mechanism to stream data from Switches, Routers, and Wireless devices to a destination. By subscribing to a data set defined in a YANG model, the specific event data can be streamed on-change, providing near-real-time monitoring of the network, leading to quick detection and rectification of failures.
◈ Intelligent Capture: Gather contextual data ranging from live client onboarding to on-demand RF scanning to real-time Wi-Fi analytics and client location. Actionable insights are provided by analyzing packet captures across multiple network elements, with zero packet loss.

Simplified Management for an Always-on Network

Network Automation is a new paradigm for network configuration, operation and monitoring. Cisco’s solution delivers the following across wired and wireless in the Enterprise:

◈ Automated device provisioning: This is the ability to automate the process of upgrading software images and installing configuration files on Cisco Switches, Routers, and Wireless devices when they are being deployed in the network for the first time. Cisco provides turnkey solutions such as Plug and Play (PnP) that enable an effortless and automated deployment. Automatic device provisioning is also provided using Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) which, while not a turnkey solution like PnP, is offered for greater flexibility and compatibility with numerous device types.

◈ API-driven configuration: support a wide range of automation features and provide robust open APIs over Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) using YANG data models for external tools, both off-the-shelf and custom built, to automatically provision network resources. Most platforms also support Restconf and GNMI APIs.

◈ Seamless software upgrades and patching: To enhance OS resiliency, Cisco IOS XE supports patching, which provides fixes for critical bugs and security vulnerabilities between regular maintenance releases. This support allows customers to add patches without having to wait for the next maintenance release.

◈ Application Hosting: Cisco Switches and Routers support hosting of applications directly in the infrastructure. Container/VM App hosting for Analytics, Security, IOT, Validation/Troubleshooting tools (Wireshark, iPerf, etc), Cloud Connectors, CI/CD applications, and more. These platforms support local storage starting from 120GB and above to store application data.

Orchestrating and Assuring the network from an Enterprise-wide view

Custom ASICs enable Cisco to future proof customers for the ever-changing digital businesses, by delivering beyond standards. Modern and modular IOS-XE support across the portfolio supports IT simplicity and scale. More importantly, all Cisco’s next generation platforms are built from the ground-up for Intent Based Networking (IBN). Cisco SD-Access, Cisco’s IBN architecture for the Campus, provides automated end-to-end segmentation to separate user, device and application traffic.

Cisco SD-Access automates user access policy so organizations can make sure the right policies are established for any user or device with any application across the network. Instead of defining a policy for your LAN, wireless LAN and WAN, you only define it once and apply it to all three domains. SD Access provides the ability for “policy-based automated network enforcement” for access, security, application quality and monitoring, across ALL network domains. Cisco SD-Access delivers macro-segmentation using Virtual Networks (or VRFs) and micro-segmentation using Scalable Group Tags (SGTs). VXLAN is the dataplane encapsulation protocol carrying the Virtual Networks and SGTs and forwarded with the specialized silicon in the hardware platforms, while LISP is the fabric Control Plane protocol keeping track of devices and users as they connect and move in the fabric.

“It is clear that SD-Access is the future; it is the only way we can keep up with the explosion of connected devices” 

Cisco DNA Center is the single pane of glass where all of this comes together. It is the single point of Orchestration, Automation, and Assurance for the network.

◈ Automation for Provisioning: Software Image Management (SWIM) manages the images for your network devices and, when it detects a device is not conformant with images deemed as “Golden” in your environment, can automatically update the device. Cisco Plug-n-Play (PnP) enables zero-touch deployment for new devices as they are added to your network.

◈ Analytics for Assurance: Cisco DNA Center receives contextual information from the network devices, endpoints, and applications and delivers rich assurance functionality. It delivers unprecedented visibility, proactive insights, real-time troubleshooting, and predictive performance.

“The new Cisco Catalyst 9000 provide us performance we need, and the security features that are critical for our healthcare records. The new network, powered by Cisco® Digital Network Architecture (Cisco DNA), gives us granular insight into who’re the users, the devices they use, and the applications they access—all with the ability to learn and adapt to changes and needs in the network.”

Cisco DNA Center is also the place where the network can be designed, policy is created, and devices are deployed in the network, for SD-Access (fabric based) and non-fabric based environments. Next time we’ll explore DNA Center a bit closer. In the meantime, here is a teaser showing Wired and Wireless Client Health in DNA Center.

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Accelerating Insights and Analytics with VAPP & Cisco Meraki APIs

Extend and Expand Your Cisco Meraki Dashboard Capabilities

Digital Transformation has drastically changed customer’s habits: they want to do business anytime, anywhere, and on their preferred device. In order to successfully engage these “always-connected” customers, organizations have to provide an ideal digital environment where everything can be arranged quickly and easily.

The Power Of Simplicity

Cisco has always worked to simplify powerful technology letting our users stay focused on their core business. As part of this vision, Cisco Meraki has built a cloud-based dashboard that customers around the world can use to easily manage their IT network infrastructure.

From the very beginning, our engineers have been focused on providing innovative features and extremely simple functionalities. In some cases, however, trying to address custom applications or specific use cases would have compromised the dashboard usability.

Why APIs make things different

The changing consumer experience is now made possible by exposing APIs which create extremely enticing possibilities and provide untold opportunities. Cisco is aware of how important it is to work closely with companies like Bizmate, in which the key strategy is to invest heavily in APIs allowing our partners and developers to build more specialized use cases.

VAPP – VIEW® Application Portal

In this background, Cisco and Bizmate have worked together to provide a new application portal specially designed for Cisco users adding value to the Cisco Meraki platform and building digital solutions for customers and partners.

VAPP provides pre-built web applications in a cloud computing environment with normalized authentication, APIs integration, event-driven workflows, rule-based actions and so much more.

VAPP easily integrates with the Cisco Meraki infrastructure and processes data, thanks to the vast extended library of available connectors in VIEW® – Real Time Intelligence. This innovative architecture, based on non-relational databases and inference engines, delivers a large amount of streaming data flow in order to help decision-making through precise and timely information on the status of the processes and assets involved.

VAPP Interactive Dashboards summarize the information available in a single view with immediate impact, and allows the user to extend and expand the Cisco Meraki dashboard capabilities. These Dashboards facilitate parameter tracking and indexes of interest through a dynamic and easily customizable comprehensive set of Apps to interact with data from Cisco Meraki network.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the best VAPP apps.

Concentration Map

Get insights on your user’s concentration and movements by analyzing their behaviors with the help of interactive maps. Concentration Map provides more comprehensive connections between data and location to help you understand data at finer detail. By bringing real-world context to your analysis, maps are unique in their ability to help to generate insights and make predictions that would not be possible using traditional tables and charts.

◈ Improving customer experience or targeted marketing.

Combine geospatial location, ease of access, context and proximity to make relevant marketing offers or improve experiences. This enables marketers to proactively meet customer needs.

◈ Improving safety.

Whether it’s responding to emergency situations, offering services to employee or improving procedures, all organizations are candidates for location analytics based on this app.

◈ Optimizing business processes.

Adding the location context of assets – manufacturing, assembling, logistics, distribution and servicing – helps optimize businesses process and adds value for organizations.

Configuration Backup

This App can backup and restore your Cisco Meraki Network configuration. Creating configuration backups enables you to later restore a configuration.

This is useful when you want to revert the equipment settings to an earlier configuration. You can perform the restoration as a single operation instead of manually reconfiguring each setting in the current configuration. You can either save backups on the server or export backups to an external host.

◈ Save time and effort with network backups.

Launch an instant and reliable backup for your Wi-Fi, VPN, and firewalls configuration.

◈ Store configuration data centrally.

Organize configuration backups to enable quick and easy searches. Search for and locate a configuration file to restore.

◈ Quickly recover from device or configuration failures.

Reduce downtime by easily replacing a device configuration from the archives. Quickly recover from failed configuration changes by restoring a previous known good configuration.

◈ Get alerts on errors.

Monitor for failed backup, and execute corrective actions as required.

Wi-Fi Coverage Survey

Wi-Fi Coverage Survey is a complete Wi-Fi site surveying app. Site surveys are performed in real-time producing more informative views of your wireless coverage.

Wi-Fi Coverage Survey App automatically supports network architects and engineers to define the areas over which signal levels need improvements. You won’t need to move around and collect Wi-Fi data of the entire area, the data will be automatically collected by VAPP which measures wireless signal in real-time and with actual data provided by your network users.

◈ Automatically monitor your Wi-Fi Infrastructure.

Analyze the coverage and the correct propagation of your Wi-Fi network signal to improve its performance.

◈ Dynamic Heatmaps.

Wi-Fi Coverage Survey heatmaps allows to perform Wi-Fi site survey easier and faster. It works by defining locations (maps, buildings) in specific geographic areas.

◈ Data Storage & Comparisons.

By performing Wi-Fi measurements, this App stores details of device location, signal level and other relevant data. You can compare coverages over different days and understand which conditions caused the change.

The examples above are just a few of the applications available on the VAPP marketplace. They represent a smarter approach to IT management and network data analysis based on data collected from Cisco devices.

VAPP gives you end-to-end visibility across your business processes allowing you to effectively monitor your assets, proactively address issues and provide the level of service expected by your customers. Thanks to Cisco APIs, VAPP enterprise-ready applications tie the right metrics together into real-time dashboards that help you focus on things that matter on your business.

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In Praise of the QSFP – from 40GbE to 400GbE and Beyond

The networking industry is currently testing 400GbE products and is already looking forward to how the next generation will be built. The past few years were full of industry debate around the “right” pluggable form factor for 400GbE. However, that debate seems to have ended, resulting in nearly every Ethernet equipment manufacturer building QSFP-DD based solutions.

The motivations for sticking with the QSFP-based form factor are clear. There is always intense market pressure to quickly accelerate to a single form factor and for good reason. A single form factor drives significant cost reductions, and cost reduction is critical at high volumes. LightCounting estimates (gated content) that volume from the first five years of 400GbE modules will be 20x larger than the first five years of 100GbE, due to simultaneous adoption in multiple markets, including both Service Provider and Cloud Data Center.

This overlap of key markets all wanting to deploy 400GbE simultaneously means the industry cannot spend the next five years optimizing form factors like it did for 100GbE. With every system vendor now building 400GbE products based on QSFP-DD, 400GbE will be the first speed transition where the initial form factor will also be the high-volume, dense form factor that can support all reaches and media.

There were some critical lessons learned from the 100GbE journey that should be applied to 400GbE. Even though a dense form factor called CFP4 was defined and built, it lacked backwards compatibility with the dense 40GbE QSFP+ module and, as a result, was ignored. There is no reason to suggest something similar won’t happen in the 400GbE module market if we don’t learn from the past.

It’s important to consider how it was possible to extend the QSFP form factor from 40GbE to 400GbE, in order to better understand what’s possible beyond 400GbE.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

As the co-chair of the QSFP-DD MSA, I had the unique experience to watch the collective motivation and intense collaboration that went on to bring QSFP-DD to market. With the goal of enabling the optical module costs to reduce as fast as possible, it was clear that a single form factor that supported all reaches was mandatory. History has shown this is the key to volume adoption in the networking industry. It was also agreed that supporting backwards compatibility had operational value to many and would further accelerate the desired volume adoption/cost reductions.

Given the success of QSFP28 for 100GbE, it was evident that developing a compatible solution would also be a success, if achievable. However, it wasn’t going to be easy and required overcoming technical risk. It would be far less difficult to relax the design goals and start from scratch, but our innovation experience told us the risk was manageable and it was possible to properly address all of the challenges.

Just within Cisco, we have developed nearly 300 unique linecard designs based on QSFP modules. This enormous body of experience informed us it was possible to innovate and address the thermal and high-speed electrical challenges. We knew from our close relationships with the leading component technology developers that they could see a path to fitting all the necessary components into the available space and again it was an acceptable risk. Advanced integration was enabling solutions all the way from 3m copper cables to Metro-reach coherent optical modules. The main concern was if the systems could drive and cool the modules.

Two years later, we are building and testing QSFP-DD systems and modules capable of driving 400 Gbps Ethernet electrical interfaces and being able to cool 20W modules with margin. The 20W target enables the 400ZR+ coherent DWDM optical modules capable of an impressive reach of greater than 1000km. The widely supported QSFP-DD MSA is now working to update its specs with these latest thermal capabilities. And all this without sacrificing backwards compatibility leading us to have confidence of broad industry adoption and market success.

Figure 1: QSFP-DD module showing integrated heatsink on nose that enables 20W system cooling. This is anticipated to support any 400ZR+ variant

The deep experience that Cisco and the industry has with QSFP-based designs has enabled this continual innovation. According to Dell’Oro, by the end of 2019, approximate 70 million QSFP (all rates) ports will have cumulatively shipped making it clear why supporting backwards compatibility supports many users in their network operations or investment protection goals.

Beyond 400GbE to 800GbE

While 400GbE deployments of QSFP-DD are at the start of their long deployment cycle, we’re already looking forward to what comes next. With the development of 100 Gb/s electrical SerDes happening in IEEE 802.3, we can expect future ASICs to be driving 100 Gbps signals towards these modules. QSFP modules again offer a clear advantage as we can use QSFP112 modules for 400 GbE interfaces (such as 400GBASE-DR4) and also QSFP112-DD for 800GbE capable modules (such as dual 400GbE). The interchange of these will be equally important as well as the backwards compatibility with the QSFP56-DD that we’ve been talking about for 400GbE.

The experience and innovation brought to bear in making this first generation of QSFP-DD feasible for 400GbE has opened a number of innovation opportunities that allow us to have confidence that supporting 800GbE will happen. Multiple system design approaches and configurations are already in the labs testing out support for 100

Gbps electrical SerDes and are looking very positive. The advances and innovation in thermal performances that we’ve seen already for the 400GbE work are not at the limits of what is possible as we further innovate and make progress. All the while, power is being reduced as chips move to 7nm from the current 16nm processes.

In Praise of QSFP

More than decade ago, when QSFP+ was in its early days of 40GbE development no one would have predicted that we’d be considering 800GbE variants. However, the market success of the approach and the flexibility of system design has driven a continual series of innovations to match the ongoing market needs. We’ve not seen the end of this and QSFP based modules have a strong and healthy future ahead. The networking industry is privileged to have so much technical, commercial and deployment experience with these modules that it continues to be foundational in everything we build.

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Shaping the Future of Contact Centers and Customer Experiences

Five Factors Shaping the Contact Center and Customer Experience in the Next Five Years

In the words of author and entrepreneur Seth Godin, “It’s easier to love a brand when the brand loves you back.” So how do you love your customer back? Companies that put their customers at the center of everything they do can make transformational changes to their business and their customers’ experience. This doesn’t happen overnight. It requires clear vision, cultural changes, and an honest, in-depth look at the technology that your business and your customers use through the day and forward. Your customer relationships are perpetual, and either reinforced or derailed across many touchpoints. So their journey, and the tools that enable it, must be cohesive and engaging.

All solid relationships are built on healthy communication and mutual understanding. And of course, it’s no different with your customers. To build deeper, more meaningful relationships, you must truly listen to and understand them.

But in a world where we use so many different technologies, platforms, and channels in our personal lives, the expectations around ‘listening’ have changed. To do so effectively now requires that we transform our businesses with modern technology and modern processes, all designed to meet our customers where they are. Burdensome, complicated paths that keep them from accessing the resources and information they need don’t work. And while the contact center isn’t the only customer touchpoint along the way, it plays a massively disproportionate role in forging deeper relationships with your customer and for your business.

Here is my view of the top five factors reshaping the contact center and customer experience in the next five years.

1) Customer Experience Matters

According to futurist and innovation expert Nicholas Webb, we’re currently in the experience economy.

He says that a customer’s experience across every touchpoint, in both digital and non-digital channels, is what determines the success of a company. I couldn’t agree more.

When I look back at the hundreds of experiences I’ve had with companies as a consumer, there are only a few that I feel know me and love me back. And those are the ones that have set the bar by which I judge all others. They show interest in me and are invested in me. They know me and my situation.

There are three main elements shaping your customers’ experience.

◈ The data that you have spread across a multitude of systems and applications provides you with tremendous insight about your customers’ experience as they navigate an often multi-stop process within your organization. Understanding and analyzing that data can tell you so much about how your customers are experiencing your brand, so that actions can be taken to make their journey better. This leads to brand loyalty and customer retention.

◈ Agents, whether digital or human, are seen as the difference-makers in creating meaningful customer interactions. They play a key role because they are entrusted to engage with your most precious resource – your customers. And their role directly correlates with how your customers make buying decisions. Investing in a modern, intuitive, omni-channel, AI-enabled agent client will go a long way in enhancing the agent’s state of mind, productivity, and job satisfaction.

◈ The channels your customers use to communicate with you, when siloed, hinder your agents’ productivity and your customers’ ability to easily engage with you. A thoughtfully integrated omni-channel experience enables you to optimize your workforce, while delivering a fluid experience that ranges from self-serve to assisted care, along with history and context of the interaction, to create highly personalized customer engagements.

2) Hybrid Is A Powerful Path To Cloud

Transitioning your on-premises contact centers to the cloud creates enormous opportunities for growth and innovation, but it can also create disruption that most companies simply can’t afford. Both from a cost and technology perspective, this move doesn’t just mean swapping the technology. It means changing the way your processes work, re-training your employees, shifting IT operational responsibilities, and redefining how you interact with your customers.

Nothing this important happens overnight. Taking a step-by-step approach is the most rational way to make this important transition. The contact center is one of the most interconnected applications in the enterprise, with dozens of integrations to multiple systems. This is one of the reasons cloud penetration hasn’t kept pace with other apps like email, CRM, and ERP.

Hybrid cloud services are a clever way to start benefiting from cloud innovation while continuing to run your critical operations without interruption. By adopting and integrating modern cloud services and technologies such as analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to your on-premises deployments, you can begin to slowly “cloud-enable” your contact center to capture the benefits quickly, cost-effectively, and with minimal risk.

3) Artificial Intelligence To Create Contextual, Suggestive, And Predictive Experiences

Put yourself in the shoes of a contact center agent who works with a number of different and often disconnected systems, sorts through loads of information and content, and tries to find the right expert to help solve a question or issue. All this while possibly dealing with a frustrated customer. It sounds overwhelming because it is overwhelming. If you’re wondering why agent turnover rates are so high, this is why.

Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to provide bot self-services and virtual customer assistants to help agents with real-time context, cognition, and intelligence, is one of the most effective ways to make their work-life easier and solve information overload. According to a survey conducted by the Aberdeen Group, agents spend 17% of their time searching for relevant knowledge to do their job. AI helps you predict what each customer will need next, and it puts context around the customer experience and delivers it across every channel. AI removes mundane tasks and ensures agents have information at their fingertips, so that they can care for each customer at a highly tailored, individualized level.

4) Cloud Analytics – Consolidate It, Share It, And Take Action

We have plenty of data about our customers. The problem is that it’s coming from different sources, configured in different formats, and managed by individual business units, making it difficult to get a single view of the customer. It’s no wonder I see a lot of blank stares when this topic comes up.

The solution is to consolidate the data from all these sources and look for the meaning in the data. How does it tell a story that you can act upon? How does it enable your agents? How does it help your customers? To bring it to life, look for patterns in things like purchasing, demographics, heavy traffic periods, customer comments, and social media transactions. Make some comparisons. Why is your campaign not working? How do you know your customers don’t want self-service? Why are customers reaching you more during a certain day or time? Why aren’t they buying this fantastic product?

The only way to compute and analyze this abundance of priceless data is with cloud-based analytics reporting. This will give you valuable business information and a complete view of your customer’s journey in real-time and historically so you can improve operational efficiencies, financial performance, and your customer interactions in new and innovative ways.

5) Removing Silos To Serve Customers Better

I’ve already mentioned the importance of the agent and the impact that information overload has on the agent’s ability to deliver timely, exceptional service to your customers. Agents simply can’t do it alone. They need to be intimately connected to the rest of your organization, and the best way to do this is by giving them quick and easy access to experts using unified communications (UC) and team collaboration technology.

According to the Aberdeen Group, companies that empower their agents with unified communications experience a 68% greater annual increase in customer profit margins. That’s a big deal! By helping agents reach anyone in your organization via chat or email or calling them from wherever they happen to be, you’re not only making your agents more efficient, you’re going above and beyond to improve your customers’ experience, and they will notice.

A seamlessly integrated contact center with UC is also an effective strategy for helping your business continue even during weather-related or other types of emergencies. While many inquiries to the contact center will be automated using AI, the remainder will be exceptions and, by nature, are more complex and likely to require the help of a colleague or expert. Removing the pressure from agents as they’re problem solving in real-time with your customers, empowers them to build deeper relationships with colleagues, be more productive, and have greater job satisfaction. You’ll benefit by reducing agent costs, improving first contact resolution, and providing a heightened experience for both employees and your customers.

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3 Unexpected Ways to Boost IT Efficiency, Uptime and Resolve Issues Quickly

Like the engine is to a race car, IT is at the heart of your business—to keep it running around the clock, deliver new products and services, drive transformation, and extend to new markets globally. So, it’s no surprise two of the top three operational priorities for CIOs include delivering a stable IT and increasing operational efficiencies.

Keeping your IT engine secure and running at optimal performance, while meeting the needs of your business can be a lot to juggle. With limited time and resources, we know your time is best spent on what matters most for your business. In fact, forty-six percent of IT use outsourcing to access skills and thirty-two percent plan to increase their outsourcing spend.

Having the right IT services pit crew in place who not only has the expertise to keep your network up and running but delivers business value is critical. And if something goes wrong, they can resolve it quickly, so you can focus on more important matters.

Here are three things to consider that will enhance efficiency, uptime, and resolve problems quickly to help maintain a stable IT.

1. Have better visibility to operate more efficiently

A key part of keeping everything running smoothly and error-free is knowing exactly what is installed in your network. To do this you have a couple of different options, each with their own considerations. To see what you have running on your network, you have to go through the process of accessing each device manually or running different manual scripts to collect parts of the information needed to create an inventory view. Depending on how many devices you need to manage, the first option is very labor intensive, while the latter can be error prone. If you happen to miss a device, you won’t be able to see that piece of hardware, leaving it open to potential vulnerabilities – and adding more manual efforts to your plate.

Cisco Smart Net Total Care makes having insights in your installed base effortless and automated with its integrated smart capabilities through the Smart Net Total Care portal and collector software which automatically collects device information on Cisco products. Once the collector is installed and configured, it can run automated network discoveries, automated network inventories, and automated inventory uploads back to Cisco. With the click of a mouse you can view your installed base data, helping you manage your Cisco devices easier and operate more efficiently. “The automation on the Smart Net Total Care backend makes a small team’s performance large in executionand impossible to do otherwise,” John Baldwin, IT Manager for Infrastructure Projects and Architectures, Pella.

2. Ensure devices are up-to-date and secure to maximize uptime

Keeping all of the devices in your network secure and up-to-date is critical. Part of preventing any potential vulnerabilities is making sure that your devices are running code that isn’t impacted by known critical bugs or PSIRTs, and is aligned with compliance rules. However, when a problem does arise, you have to access that device, obtain the software version and type, and manually search cisco.com to find any issue associated with that specific product type and software version. When you need to get information on your device’s lifecycle you need to manually look for all of that data using End-of-Life and End-of-Sales product bulletins for each device. If you have thousands of devices you’re tasked with tracking and keeping secure, that is a daunting task.

The Smart Net Total Care portal gives you visibility into your devices, including what IOS you’re running to help ensure you’re using the appropriate code versions across your devices, eliminating the potential for more vulnerabilities. In addition, PSIRT, BUG and automatic lifecycle data correlation and custom reports help you manage your device security more efficiently. “We can see which device are covered and at what service level, so we can appropriately cover devices to minimize risk within our environment,” Operations Manager, Service Provider.

3. Get an accurate view of your devices to resolve issues quickly

When you face a network downtime or device issue, time is always of the essence, especially if you have thousands of devices to maintain. And that’s not just the time spent in finding the number to call support. It starts with having to gather all of the device-level information you need just to open a case to get the problem resolved. That includes the device serial number, product ID, and contract number related to that device. Depending on the kind of inventory view you have (and how comprehensive it is), all of this data could take you a long time to gather. This does nothing but delay your time to issue resolution and take up even more of your limited time.

Smart Net Total Care can help you reduce your time spent in resolving issues drastically by giving you a clear and accurate view of your device information. The portal software does all of the correlation of your collected device serial numbers, product IDs, and contract numbers automatically, which means you don’t have to spend time looking for information. You can also initiate a Technical Assistance Center (TAC) case directly and instantly within the portal if you experience an issue, shortening your time to resolution even more. “Greater visibility across the network allows us tobetter prioritize and plan ahead for updates and replacement of equipment, assuringthe continuous operation of the company.”.

Whether you’re a large or small enterprise, Cisco’s Smart Net Total Care delivers world-class technical support that keeps your organization running smoothly, while driving business value.

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Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud and Microsoft Azure: reliable cloud infrastructure meets comprehensive cloud security

Isn’t it great when the enterprise technology solutions you use to achieve various business outcomes partner and work seamlessly with each other? Cisco and Microsoft have done just that to provide you with a scalable and high-performance cloud infrastructure along with easy and effective cloud security.

In 10 minutes or less, Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud extends visibility, threat detection, and compliance verification to Microsoft Azure without agents or additional sensor deployments within your cloud environment.

A new way to think about security

Enterprises are continuously adopting the public cloud for many reasons, whether it’s greater scalability, better access to resources, cost savings, increased efficiency, faster time to market, or overall higher performance. While the move to the cloud offers great opportunities, it also means that the old ways of thinking about security aren’t working for most organizations anymore, especially when it comes to visibility in the cloud.

Often this lack of visibility leads to challenges surrounding network traffic analysis, identity and access management, compliance and regulation, and threat investigation. We all know of organizations that have made security mistakes related to configuration and inadvertently exposed their private data, resulting in serious repercussions. Of course, training can be improved, configurations checked, and automated tools used to validate configuration parameters, but these efforts only address the preventative aspects of security practice.  Organizations also need to actively watch what is actually happening with their cloud assets and catch the threats that aren’t prevented. Active breach detection starts with improved visibility.  Complete visibility gives you a way to protect your cloud infrastructure in real-time, so you can be agile and address issues as they arrive.

Cloud security: a shared responsibility

While your cloud provider manages security of the cloud, security in the cloud is the responsibility of the customer. You as a customer retain control of what security you choose to implement in the cloud to protect your content, platform, applications, systems and networks, no differently than you would in your company’s private datacenter.

How do you know what is happening to data in the cloud? How do you know you’ve configured your cloud assets to be secure? How do you recognize cloud assets starting to communicate with new, possibly hostile internet sites?  How do you do it in real time and quickly enough to mitigate data loss?

To answer these questions, it’s critical to have an active breach detection solution for your public cloud. And for that solution to be effective, the cloud provider needs to enable the right visibility to tap into valuable cloud network and configuration telemetry. 

Cisco and Microsoft: better together

In the continuous effort to provide customers with industry leading solutions, Cisco has been working with Microsoft to bring Cisco Steathwatch Cloud to Azure. Stealthwatch Cloud, a software as a service (SaaS) active breach detection solution based on security analytics, can now deliver comprehensive visibility, and effective threat detection in Azure environments in as little as 10 minutes.

Traditionally, organizations have tried to overlay a patchwork of agents across cloud assets to detect bad activity. This approach requires significant costs and effort to deploy, maintain, and manage in dynamic environments such as the cloud. Importantly, it frequently doesn’t scale with your cloud environment with regard to cost.  But Stealthwatch Cloud can deploy within your Azure environment with no need for an agent and scales up and down according to your actual cloud traffic utilization.

How does it work?

Microsoft provides Azure Network Security Group (NSG) flow logs that contain valuable information on north-south and east-west traffic within an Azure virtual network. Flow logs show outbound and inbound flows on a per flow basis, the network interface (NIC) the flow applies to, 5-tuple information about the flow (Source/destination IP, source/destination port, and protocol), if the traffic was allowed or denied, and in Version 2, throughput information (Bytes and Packets, and the NSG rule applied to the traffic). Organizations use this information to audit activity on their cloud network.  Stealthwatch Cloud can natively consume NSG flow logs V2 via APIs, without having to deploy any agents or sensors.

Additionally, Microsoft has also introduced Azure virtual network TAP (Terminal Access Point) that allows you to continuously and easily stream your virtual machine network traffic to Stealthwatch Cloud like a traditional, physical network SPAN or TAP. You can add a TAP configuration on a network interface that is attached to a virtual machine deployed in your virtual network. The destination is a virtual network IP address in the same virtual network as the monitored network interface or a peered virtual network. This approach provides access to not just flow logs, but also other network traffic like DNS data.

Stealthwatch Cloud can be powered by both NSG flow logs v2 and vTAP data. Stealthwatch Cloud analyzes this data using entity modeling to identify suspicious and malicious activity. For every active entity on the network, Stealthwatch Cloud builds a behavioral model – a simulation of sorts – to understand what the entity’s role is, how it normally behaves, and what resources it normally communicates with. Then it uses this model to identify changes in behavior consistent with misuse, malware, compromise, or other threats.

For instance, if an Azure resource normally only communicates with internal hosts, but suddenly it begins sending large amounts of data to an unknown external server, it could be a sign of data exfiltration. Stealthwatch Cloud would detect this behavior in real-time and alert your security team.

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