Coffee Briefings are timely deliveries of the latest ITWC headlines, interviews, and podcasts. Today’s Coffee Briefing is delivered by IT World Canada reporter Pragya Sehgal, with files from the rest of the editorial team!
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What’s new this week
Amazon Connect’s new features to help improve contact centre agent productivity
Tens of thousands of Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers use Amazon Connect, its omnichannel cloud contact centre solution, to support more than 10 million contact centre interactions every day, says AWS.
The company yesterday announced three new capabilities for Amazon Connect with the aim to improve contact centre agent productivity. AWS says these new features will help agents answer customer questions faster, provide fast and secure caller authentication, and make communicating with customers easier and more efficient.
- Amazon Connect Wisdom: To offer real-time agent assistance (now generally available), ingests and organizes content that agents need from homegrown databases and a company’s third-party knowledge repositories, with pre-built connectors to Salesforce and ServiceNow.
- Amazon Connect Voice ID: Caller authentication (now generally available), delivers real-time caller authentication using machine learning powered voice analysis.
- Currently in preview, the new automated outbound communications for calls, texts, and emails help contact centre agents scale to reach millions of customers daily through the predictive dialer feature that automatically calls customers in a list, but throttles outreach based on agent availability. It also uses a machine learning model to distinguish between a live customer, voicemail greeting, or busy signal to increase agent efficiency by ensuring agents only connect to a live customer.
Payfare collaborates with Visa to offer discounts to DoorDashers
Toronto-based Payfare, a global fintech offering instant payout and digital banking solutions for gig workers, has announced its collaboration with digital banking solutions firm Visa to add Visa SavingsEdge to its platform, starting with the nationwide DoorDash DasherDirect card program.
The new Visa SavingsEdge gives eligible Visa business cardholders who opt into the program access to savings on qualified purchases at participating merchants, with merchant categories including fuel, auto parts, dining, and travel, the company noted.
Visa Canada to grant select women entrepreneurs $10,000 each for business expansion
lemono | Getty Images
Visa Canada has announced the second round of She’s Next grant recipients, Canadian women entrepreneurs who will receive $10,000 CAD each and one-year of business coaching through IFundWomen to support, grow and expand their businesses.
The recipients span diverse backgrounds and industries from apparel, food & beverage and home goods, to professional services, non-profit and social good-for-profit, each offering innovative solutions and products.
Related:
Visa Canada announces winners of IFundWomen grant program
Businesses recognize the benefits of DevOps and container services adoption, yet cloud-native practices remain low
LeoWolfert | Getty Images
Hybrid multi-cloud managed service provider Aptum has released the fourth and final part of its Cloud Impact study, which reveals that only 20 per cent of respondents are utilizing DevOps across all applications, and just 17 per cent use container services to develop and deploy all apps.
One way organizations can unlock their cloud potential is through DevOps and container services, which speed up application deployment times, improve productivity through continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), enable easy and frequent patching, and minimize production cost. Despite the clear benefits, deployment of DevOps and container services remains surprisingly low.
The final part of the study — The Modernization Minefield — highlights these tools and techniques while evaluating organizations’ decisions to host certain workloads in different environments. Finally, the report reveals how CIOs and IT teams can optimize their workloads in alignment with their business objectives.
More to explore
The cores of Alder Lake: Gracemont and Golden Cove
Intel’s next-gen Alder Lake processors are set to release later this year, bringing with them a new design philosophy on a new node meant to challenge AMD. But before its release, Intel provided a breakdown of its best features at Intel Architecture Day 2021 to answer one question: what makes Alder Lake tick?
Resourceful data: Alberta Energy Regulator
Alberta Energy Regulator has made it a point to tap into the power of data to help make energy-transportation safer.
Exchange Autodiscover design flaw creates security risk, says report
Microsoft is reportedly moving quickly to blunt the impact of a security issue with the Autodiscover protocol for automatic configuration of clients — such as Microsoft Outlook — in Microsoft Exchange, which could allow an attacker to access Windows domain credentials used to authenticate to Exchange servers.
Despite Meng deal, expert suggests that Huawei won’t get OK to sell 5G network equipment to Canadian telcos
Huawei Canada shouldn’t necessarily expect the resolution of the extradition case against CFO Meng Wanzhou to lead to the Canadian government approving the sale of 5G networking equipment to telecom providers here, says a security expert.
3 smart ways to adapt during IT supply shortages
Incorporating a few key strategies can help organizations during IT supply shortages. Read all about these strategies here.
Ontarians are getting digital ID this fall: All you need to know
The Ontario government, in a virtual conversation with the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) on Ontario’s digital future, has finally revealed information about the technology and standards that the province will use to build its digital identity ecosystem.
Get ready for Windows 11 with these tips
The Microsoft Windows 11 release date of October 5 is looming, which means serious deployment planning is underway at many organizations, and there’s a lot to think about before diving into any new operating system. Here are a few things to consider before you start deploying Windows 11.
Staying informed is a constant challenge. There’s so much to do, and so little time. But we have you covered. Grab a coffee and take five while you nibble on these tidbits.
Square launches Square Register in Canada to advance contactless payments
Square Register is an all-in-one payment and point of sale (POS) device for medium to large businesses. It is an extension of Square’s existing hardware, software and services and does not require an iPad, app, or software to manage the system.
BlackBerry hires former McAfee president to lead cybersecurity business
BlackBerry has hired former McAfee president John Giamatteo as president of its cyber security business unit.
ITWC Podcasts
Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Trending
Retail giants like Amazon can no longer punish workers unjustly under a new California law, Japan breaks the internet speed record, and Facebook denies that Instagram makes body image issues worse.
Listen to the latest episode of Cyber Security Today
A new ransomware group found, AlphaBay criminal marketplace is back and updates from Chrome and Apple to install.
Listen to the latest episode of Hashtag Tendances (Hosted by Direction Informatique)
