Avaya, a worldwide technology company specializing in cloud communications and workstream collaboration solutions, announced that its Avaya OneCloud™ contact center solutions are allowing children all across the world to follow Santa Claus on his Christmas Eve voyage. Avaya is assisting the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) Operations Center at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, in tracking Santa’s movements throughout his popular travel path. NORAD utilizes Avaya’s OneCloud CCaaS driven by AI to communicate in real time with millions of children of all ages who are keen to know where Santa is and when he will arrive at their houses. Last year, despite having a small staff, 175 volunteers fielded over 20,000 phone calls, answering queries on Santa’s location. Also, more than 11 million people visited the NORAD Tracks Santa website http://www.noradsanta.org, last year. “Where is Santa?” was queried by at least 12.3 million Amazon Alexa…
Avaya, an American tech company specializing in unified business communications, and RingCentral, a provider of cloud-based communications for small businesses and enterprise companies, have announced a strategic partnership for a new cloud offering worth at least USD 500 million. RingCentral’s multi-million contribution includes a one-time USD 125 million preferred equity investment and a USD 375 million advance to Avaya for selling the RingCentral unified communications as-a-service (UCaaS) solution in selected countries. According to the terms of the agreement, Avaya will introduce a new global UCaaS solution called Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral (Avaya Cloud Office) in the first quarter of 2020. Avaya Cloud Office will build up the company’s existing portfolio to offer a full suite of UC, CC, UCaaS and CCaaS solutions to a global customer base, which currently includes more than 120000 customers, over 100 million UC lines and 5 million CC users in over 180 countries. This solution…
Avaya first filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2017, revealing US$6 billion in debt. But after a long and painful eight-month process through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the company now has a plan to move forward. The plan includes the appointment of Jim Chirico to the position of chief executive officer, effective October 1. Current CEO Kevin Kennedy will retire from both the position and the board of directors but has agreed to remain a part of the company in an advisory role. Under Kennedy, the company transitioned nearly 80% of its revenues to software and services but also went bankrupt amid the IT industry’s shift to cloud and mobile services. Prior to Avaya, the future CEO Jim Chirico held key posts at IBM and Seagate and joined the American tech giant in 2008, where he is currently COO and global sales leader, responsible for Operations, Global Sales, Sales…
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Vodafone Germany to cut 1,300 jobs in realignment efforts Vodafone Germany has revealed intentions to cut 1,300 positions in management, double functions, and areas with no direct customer interaction as part of a realignment and return to growth effort. In addition, the operator intends to establish 400 new customer-facing positions, resulting in a total loss of 900 positions. The decision comes on the heels of a 1.8% year-on-year decline in fiscal Q3 service income due to client losses in Germany, which is likely to be a special focus of cost-cutting efforts. Telecom companies such as BT and Orange Business have also recently announced layoffs. Read the full article. Five9 launches AI Summary tool for contact centers Five9, a cloud contact center service provider, has released Five9 Agent Assist 2.0 with AI Summary, driven by OpenAI’s language model technology. The solution produces summary highlights of client call recordings in seconds, decreasing…
Salesforce launches a generative AI CRM technology The world’s first generative AI customer relationship management (CRM) platform, Einstein GPT, has been released by Salesforce. The system will provide personalized content for interactions across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT using real-time data from the Salesforce Data Cloud. Clients may integrate data with OpenAI’s cutting-edge AI models or employ external models within Salesforce CRM to create dynamic content that responds to user requirements. In order to invest in high-potential businesses and support ethical, reliable, and generative AI, Salesforce Ventures has also established a $250 million Generative AI Fund. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2vu9vhnn Dish Wireless receives FCC permission to test T-Mobile’s 5G spectrum Dish Wireless will perform 5G testing using part of T-Mobile’s low-band spectrum before determining whether to acquire the spectrum later this year. The Federal Communications Commission approved the testing, which will be conducted in Arizona until September 30. Dish…
DIDWW, a leading provider of virtual phone numbers and SIP trunking services to operators and businesses all over the world, has further expanded its toll-free number coverage. Moldova, Malaysia and Kenya have been added to the list of 62 countries where DIDWW customers can use the company’s toll-free DID service and benefit from premium quality cloud communications. Toll-free numbers provide companies with a cost-effective way to extend their reach to customers, as these numbers allow any size businesses to be accessible locally without the callers having to incur high long-distance charges. The powerful DIDWW SIP trunking service offers an extensive global phone number inventory with instantly available toll-free DIDs, including gold and vanity numbers. Delivered over a private, global IP network, this solution ensures a fully-compliant and robust service with virtually unlimited call capacity, flexible SIP trunk settings and premium voice quality. In addition, the DIDWW number porting service allows…
TextNow to pay off $50,000 worth of phone bills TextNow, a mobile app that provides free cellular and WiFi-enabled phone service, said that it will start the holiday season by paying off $50,000 in phone bills owed by selected phone company customers. The company is aiming to promote consumer knowledge that they may cancel their pricey phone service subscriptions. TextNow has identified individuals who are in great need, such as single parents, veterans, students, and people impacted by job loss, sickness, injuries, or recent losses. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/yckux44v Cisco releases its annual Security Outcomes Report This week saw the release of Cisco’s annual Security Outcomes Report. 62% of the companies questioned reported having encountered a security incident that affected their business in the last two years. Ransomware occurrences, outages, and network or data breaches were the most common types of incidents. Security resilience is a top issue for 96%…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently one of the most talked-about and experimented-with technologies in practically every sector. Being amongst the most significant new technical advances, AI has major implications for Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC). With its numerous capabilities, VoIP telephony is already transforming the communication capabilities of many businesses. However, when AI technology becomes an active participant, the efficiency and potential of this market will skyrocket. So, let us see how AI will revolutionize and influence VoIP, and how this technology will become an essential component in all corporate processes. How AI works in VoIP VoIP service providers are always adding new features to their VoIP services in order to attract consumers on both individual and business levels. With the inclusion of AI in communications, new market opportunities are anticipated to emerge. This is why AI has become an essential factor in several VoIP and…
French telecoms to reduce their energy use Orange has proposed numerous energy-saving measures in order to address the current energy crisis that is expected to strike Europe this winter. Orange has announced that it will reduce its immediate power use by 5 to 10% for one hour every day. Altice will also assess its mobile network settings and implement power consumption cutbacks based on system traffic. The telecom provider will also phase out less energy-efficient equipment and limit its use of air conditioning when feasible in its data centers. Its offices and businesses will also have tighter controls over air conditioning and lighting usage. Read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2p83c9km Elon Musk decides to buy Twitter after all In the upcoming days, Elon Musk and Twitter may come to a settlement to terminate their legal dispute, paving the way for the richest man in the world to finalize his $44 billion purchase…