Determining if Containerized CX Software Is Right for You

 

A quantum leap.

That’s how McKinsey & Company describes the acceleration of digital technology adoption resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the McKinsey Global Survey of executives, funding for digital initiatives has increased more than anything else — more than increases in costs, the number of people in tech roles or the number of customers.

And when it comes to the contact center, enterprises are accelerating their moves to the cloud.

“Gartner^® projects a 29% CCaaS revenue CAGR reaching $17.9 billion by 2024, as users adopt more expansive capabilities including multichannel, AI, analytics and WEM,” according to the Gartner Forecast Analysis: Contact Center, Worldwide 2021.¹

The cloud has many benefits — and there are multiple ways to get there. Finding your path starts with selecting a public, private or hybrid infrastructure model. Second, you can choose a partner to operate and administer the solution; you can do it yourself; or you can split the responsibilities. Third, you can choose an all-in-one solution, a best-of-breed approach where you select the best-in-class vendor for each capability, or a custom solution.

Once you have an understanding of the five archetypes of cloud deployment, including the advantages and disadvantages of each, you can dig in a bit deeper. In this blog, we’ll examine the customer-managed archetype where the customer maintains complete control — and provides highly personalized experiences — with containerized customer experience (CX) software.

Container Technology

A container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all its dependencies, so your application runs quickly and reliably across computing environments. Because everything is bundled in one package, you don’t have to worry about differences in operating systems and underlying infrastructure.

The global application container market is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2025, according to Grand View Research. This market has gained prominence through increasing adoption, particularly in retail, healthcare, banking and finance, and telecommunications.

The benefits of containers include:

• Consistent installation and secure API connections for cloud services in a private cloud or in data centers
• Faster installs and less disruption during upgrades
• Flexibility through external API connections
• Freedom to run testing independently from automated deployments

Genesys uses Kubernetes to automate containerized application deployment, scaling and management. Kubernetes, or K8s, is a container orchestration system originally built by Google that was open-sourced in 2014; today, K8s benefits from over 15 years of Google experience running production workloads at scale. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, maintains K8s.

Containerization and the CX Market

The customer-managed approach with containerized software allows organizations to:

• Maintain complete control over their applications and tech stack to provide highly tailored customer experiences.
• Gain flexibility with control over procurement, infrastructure setup, and hardware and software configurations.
• Extend availability to local geographies and business sites.
• Control the speed at which they adopt new features and innovations.
• Enjoy the tightest level of control over security and regulatory compliance requirements.

Regulatory standards for organizations that choose the customer-managed approach might include:

• Data residency/sovereignty rules that limit data transit to regional or national borders
• Regulations involving sensitive information in:
  • IVR
  • Call recordings
  • Screen captures
  • Captured ID, social security or credit card numbers
• Customer privacy compliance and consent governance

A customer-managed deployment path is the best fit for larger companies that aren’t ready to make a one-time migration to a public CCaaS solution. Typically, these are businesses that maintain complex IT environments with internal IT staff.

Internal IT responsibilities for such organizations might include:

• Self-service application building/testing upgrades
• Desktop integration with multiple backend systems, including commercial and homegrown CRM systems
• Billing and HR system integrations
• Creation and maintenance of routing rules
• Report customization and integration with business intelligence and/or reporting systems

Unlock the Power of Control — and the Cloud

The Genesys Multicloud CX™ private edition solution offers unparalleled control and flexibility in supporting both public and private cloud models. You can migrate to the cloud with a private or on-premises deployment, or with your choice of an Infrastructure as a Service provider.

Google

We recently extended our partnership with Google Cloud as we pursue innovations together. Now, you can benefit from these innovations with Genesys Multicloud CX private edition on Google Cloud, a fully containerized solution orchestrated by Google Kubernetes Engine.

Microsoft

Leverage Microsoft solutions, expertise and scale with Genesys Multicloud CX private edition on Microsoft Azure. If you have existing Microsoft investments, Genesys and Microsoft are developing integrations for Teams, Dynamics 365 and Azure Cognitive Services.

Discover how you can accelerate innovation, realize cost savings and reduce your security risks.

¹ Gartner, Forecast Analysis: Contact Center, Daniel O’Connell, Megan Fernandez, 19 January 2021.

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