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Sales Engineering Ninja Notes – Security, UC, and CC Vendor and Technology Updates

Ninja Notes

As a Trusted Advisor, keeping up with the latest advancements and changes becomes paramount. In doing so, you are able to effectively assist and steer your clients. This is why AVANT Sales Engineers remain dedicated to taking part in ongoing training sessions with our vendors! Our SEs engage with leading solution providers and work to acquire agnostic certifications. This equips them with the latest insights, updates, and information that they can then share with you and your customers to ensure they can adeptly navigate the dynamic tech landscape. 

Explore our newest Ninja Notes, carefully crafted to provide in-depth analyses of emerging products, features, and the diverse array of providers behind them! 

CCaaS & UCaaS

  • 8×8 continues to innovate, adding exciting new AI-powered capabilities to its contact center platform, while also offering enhancements to its meetings application. 
  • Alvaria is a private/dedicated instance contact center software provider, formed by the merging of Aspect Software and Noble Systems. 
  • AptEdge offers AnswerGPT, a form of Agent Assist technology that enables agents to intelligently search company knowledgebases/data sources for answers to customer/patient questions. AnswerGPT will generate customer-facing responses for agents to deliver, saving them precious time. 
  • Authenticx offers a Quality Assurance/Monitoring solution purpose-built for the healthcare vertical. Their platform will analyze channel usage, including digital and voice bots, to determine their effectiveness as well as where these tools can be deployed in a more optimized manner.
  • Assembled offers a Workforce Management (WFM) solution purpose-built for today’s omnichannel communications. It offers granular reporting and scheduling capabilities not found in legacy WFM solutions. 
  • Buwelo is a full-service BPO (Business Process Outsourcer) offering their customers highly trained offshore call center agents. 
  • Edify is a UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS vendor built across all 3 major hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP). Their sweet spot is small to midsize contact centers (~20-200 agents) that have Salesforce and/or Zendesk environments. They offer flexible pricing models, including the industry-standard named user license as well as a Pay-By-The-Hour option ideal for customers with seasonal spikes in contact center agent counts. 
  • Evolve IP has a strong story to tell with Microsoft & Teams as a Microsoft Gold Partner, CSP, and Operator Connect provider. They have an industry-exclusive “Office in a Box” offering that includes the desktop, storage, Microsoft licensing, security, server, backup, collaboration, & voice. For customers not needing a Microsoft Teams voice solution, they also offer a Cisco Broadsoft solution with Webex, dedicated voice circuits, and SIP trunking. 
  • GoTo now offers their own proprietary CCaaS solution for larger contact center environments (sweet spot is 50-750 agents). It boasts supporting over a dozen digital and voice channels, off-the-shelf integrations with Salesforce and Microsoft Teams, as well as with legacy Workforce Management (WFM) and Quality Monitoring (QM) solutions like Verint and Calabrio. 
  • Regal.io specializes in helping their customers optimize their outbound sales and marketing initiatives. Its platform includes advanced auto-dialers as well as facilitates creative digital outreach strategies, typically increasing answer rates by up to 30%.  
  • Replicant offers an AI-powered self-service solution designed to resolve frequent/routine/transactional inquiries, improving the customer experience and saving human agents from repetitive tasks. Its advanced platform has the ability to assist with multiple intents e.g., “I’d like to update my address as well as the VIN number for my car’s insurance policy.” 
  • RingCentral now offers an SMB-focused omnichannel contact center solution best suited for contact center environments up to 200 agents. It includes its own proprietary Workforce Management (WFM) and Quality Monitoring (QM) solutions as well as RingSense AI, which assists agents with after-call tasks such as summarizing interaction notes. 
  • Sanas offers a noise elimination and accent neutralization software designed to improve sound quality as well as reduce friction due to accent-related miscommunication. Best suited for organizations that staff contact center agents offshore, minimum of 100 agents.  
  • SuccessKPI provides customers a platform-agnostic analytics and reporting engine that allows customers to retain important, bespoke reporting formats even as they migrate off their legacy contact center to a modern, cloud-based replacement. A variety of agent and supervisor dashboards are available, as are “playbooks” with next-best action guidance for agents. 
  • Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams allows Verizon Business Wireless customers to elect to use Verizon to connect their Microsoft Teams PBX to the PSTN. End users will be able to make/receive calls to/from their Teams DID using their mobile device’s native dialer (vs. the Microsoft Teams app). End users benefit from having a single number to be reachable while mobile as well as via Microsoft Teams. 

Security

  • 11:11 Systems has expanded beyond their traditional IaaS, BaaS, DRaaS, and managed Fortinet security services to offer BCDR and security consulting services. They highlighted their Business Impact Analysis (BIA), Cyber Recovery Tabletop Exercise, and vCISO/Advisory Services as particularly useful in uncovering customer needs. 
  • AT&T continues to see the most success with their Managed XDR, Vulnerability Scanning & Pen Testing, Managed SentinelOne, SASE, Risk/Gap/Compliance Assessments, and Check Point Email Security services. They highlighted people, technology, process, and accountability as their top differentiators. 
  • eSentire’s comprehensive MDR solution has five components – network, endpoint, log, cloud, and vulnerability – which can be sold together or a la carte. They support leading EDR solutions like Carbon Black, Microsoft Defender, CrowdStrike, and SentinelOne. They’ve recently added standalone dark web monitoring as well. 
  • Fortra – Alert Logic is now part of Fortra, formerly known as Help Systems. MDR packages (Essentials, Professional, Enterprise) remain the same. They are gradually replacing their existing endpoint protection platform (EPP) with Digital Guardian, a DLP and EDR solution within the Fortra umbrella. 
  • Quest has several new security offerings, including the CyberDefense Suite – a mix of products including EDR, email security, MFA, SIEM, and ZTNA, plus pro services and managed services – Cybersecurity Checkups for various services, Cyber Risk Monitoring, and Arctic Wolf. 
  • Thrive continues to acquire MSPs and MSSPs as they see their cloud, managed services, and cyber revenue increase. On the security front, they’ve added automated pen testing and MDR with Microsoft Defender. Their cloud platform is available in 15 data centers globally. Thrive’s ideal customer is 100 to 2000 employees, willing to spend at least $5k MRR. 

Learn more about these providers and AVANT’s vast vendor portfolio by visiting our provider page here! Plus, you can dive into each provider’s overview and additional marketing and training materials on Pathfinder, under Provider Portfolio. Log into your company’s custom Pathfinder URL to get started.