iTnews: Genesys enters Aussie partnership to build ‘Quality Conversations’

As a journalist at iTnews:

Genesys has partnered with Australian developer Kevin Panozza to address a need for soft skills among contact centre staff.


Announced today at the G-FORCE APAC 2008 summit in Melbourne, the collaboration has birthed a new training program called ‘Quality Conversations’.

The distance learning program comprises 26 training modules that are expected to improve the quality of interactions between customers and contact centre agents.

With Genesys estimating that a majority of investment in contact centres goes towards ‘putting bums on the seats’, the program is expected to help businesses justify and leverage the cost of contact centre staff.

“The quality of a conversation can make or break a customer situation,” said Jason Stirling, Vice President of Genesys Australia, Indian and New Zealand.

“Quality Conversations will ensure customer-facing staff are armed with critical soft skills required to handle service and sales environments,” he said.

The program involves highly interactive, animated educational material that comes in versions for customer service and sales agents.

It has been one year in development by SalesForce e-Learning company AFrame, and uses an animated ‘mentor’ to guide contact centre agents through each 20-minute training module.

Panozza is the ex-CEO of SalesForce and current Managing Director of Engagement Matters.

According to Panozza, the program encompasses ‘everything a customer service representative needs to know about working in a contact centre’.

Modules address topics that include: vocal skills; active listening; regulating attitude; questioning; and gaining trust.

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iTnews: NAB upgrades contact centre technology

As a journalist at iTnews:

The National Australia Bank (NAB) is adding natural speech capabilities to its contact centres in an effort to ‘join the dots’.

Dubbed ‘Smarttalk’, NAB’s natural language speech portal will be launched later this year to replace current IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology.

Smarttalk combines speech recognition software and intelligent routing solutions to resolve customer queries efficiently.

NAB also will be introducing a new voice to reflect the bank’s updated persona.

“That’s going to be a big improvement on where we are,” said Steve Collier, who is NAB’s General Manager Sales Performance Retail Banking.

“The voice talent we use today in our IVR is lovely, but she needs to go into a nursing home,” he said. “It’s not the experience we’d like our customers to have.”

Speaking at Genesys’ G-FORCE APAC 2008 summit in Melbourne today, Collier challenged the perspective that ‘banks are anything but nimble’.

He described how NAB has been able to leverage its investments by building an IP solution based on existing Genesys assets.

By routing all incoming calls via one telephone number using Smarttalk, the technology also is expected to strengthen the bank’s brand.

Smarttalk joins a range of technologies that Collier has introduced since taking the reins of NAB’s contact centre operations.

Driven by the growth of Internet banking and customers’ demand for direct channels of communication to the bank, NAB’s contact centre technology has been developed to deliver a consistent multi-channel experience.

“The reality is that customers are demanding more and more of us over time,” Collier said.

SMS, e-mail and Web facilities have been introduced and improved to cater to the needs of modern, tech-savvy customers.

The NAB Web site has been designed to display a range of information according to customers’ lifestyle needs.

Using automatic data population, customers also are able to obtain an online, real-time conditional approval for credit card applications, from which NAB has reported an ‘exponential’ increase in sales and customer satisfaction.

NAB also has commenced two online chat pilots on its Web site. The first is a banker-assisted chat module that connects customers with sales and service specialists who may be working from home or remote branches of the bank.

The second chat pilot, dubbed ‘NAB Online Assistant’, involves greater technical complexity with the use of an automated chat agent that converses with customers with ‘humanised’, conversational responses and 24x7 availability.

Collier described the chat implementations as a ‘learning opportunity’ for the bank, adding that the bank has found customers to prefer chat over the bank’s call-back option.

“To be honest, I’ve learnt a lot,” he said. “These days, when a colleague in the leads area wants to do something, they come to us first.”

Communication within the organisation, a strong governance process, and the ability to leverage existing assets and business partners were highlighted as key factors for a successful technology implementation.

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iTnews: EMC launches 'next-gen' storage architecture

As a journalist at iTnews:

EMC last week introduced a new series of mid-range storage systems that it expects to be compatible with its previous and future products.

The new EMC Clariion CX4 series features enhanced support for virtualization, power-saving features, and the ability to be easily upgraded or integrate with hardware up to four generations old.

According to EMC's Director of Product Marketing ANZ, Clive Gold, mid-tier storage systems traditionally have been ‘fixed’.

He expects the CX4 series to deliver cost savings to customers by being compatible with hardware that could be up to eight years old.

The series currently supports dual-protocol Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage area network (SAN), and can be dynamically upgraded to add I/O ports to extend the flexibility of VMware environments.

Through what EMC has dubbed ‘UltraFlex’ technology, the series also is able to incorporate future connectivity technologies such as 8Gb/s Fibre Channel, 10Gb/s iSCSI and FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet).

The devices run on Intel’s Xeon processors that improve on the energy efficiency of their predecessors.

New support for solid-state disks (SSD) also is expected to improve the speed and energy efficiency of the mid-range storage systems.

SSDs are said to be more than 30 times faster than traditional drives and 98 percent more energy efficient on an Input/Outpot operations per second basis.

“This system has been designed with the ability to be a very low-powered device,” Gold told iTnews, estimating the CX4 series to be 30 percent more energy efficient than competitor devices.

EMC’s Clariion brand currently occupies the lion’s share -- 30 percent -- of the Australian storage market, Gold said.

He expects the CX4 series to drive the uptake of EMC products by offering improved performance and capacity at similar costs.

“This being a generational shift, we believe it’s putting more space between us and our nearest competitor,” he said.

“We’ve received some feedback on the pricing; there’s been a lot of surprise that it’s very competitive.”

“There’s also been a lot of interest around features like virtual provisioning, and [how] we’ve enhanced our ability to provide support for virtualisation as well,” he said.

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iTnews: linux.conf.au 2009 shapes up

As a journalist at iTnews:

Hardware hacking, licensing and art were among a broad range of topics submitted to linux.conf.au (LCA) 2009 organisers by the time a call for papers closed today.

The annual Linux conference will be celebrating its 10th anniversary at the University of Tasmania’s Sandy Bay campus in Hobart next January.

Following previous years’ successes, LCA 2009 is expected to attract 700 delegates and influential speakers from international and local Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities.

It is expected that over 100 speakers will be chosen to present at the Hobart conference, which organisers have dubbed ‘March South’.

“Something that's struck me from the submissions is the amazingly broad range of topics that people have submitted which just goes to show the broad reach that FOSS has these days,” LCA 2009 senior organiser Ben Powell told iTnews yesterday.

“Suffice to say we've had papers from just about every field of endeavour from hardware hacking, to robotics, to legal issues and licensing, to art and multimedia -- and of course plenty of kernel presentations to boot,” he said.

Since the call for papers opened last month, organisers also have received ‘a large number’ of tutorial submissions that will comprise a ‘hands-on’ component of the conference.

Organisers also will be introducing an artistic element to the conference by inviting local artists to engage with the event. Powell hopes to produce ‘interesting results’ from the collision between the arts and technology communities.

Successful presentations will be decided in mid-September and the conference will be held from 19-24 January 2009.

More information is available from the LCA Web site.

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iTnews: Researchers tout super-stretchy electronic material

As a journalist at iTnews:

Researchers have created ‘super-stretchy’ integrated circuits that could be used in intelligent surfaces for curved objects, or in movable parts such as the joints of a robot’s arm.

The circuits can be stretched by up to 70 percent without any degradation in their mechanical or electronic properties, according to the University of Tokyo researchers.

Stretchable electronics is a current challenge for material engineers, particularly for its application in large-area electronics such as bendable and rollable displays.

While soft materials currently tend to be more mechanically robust than rigid materials, stretchable electronics tend to exhibit poorer electronic properties such as performance, controllability and stability.

“Stretchability is an entirely different concept from the miniaturisation trend currently pursued by conventional electronics and has the potential to provide exciting opportunities,” said Takao Someya, lead researcher and Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo’s Quantum Phase Electronics Center.

“Large-area, flexible sensors and actuators are another emerging frontier, [but] although these achievements represent valuable advances, the utility of flexible electronics is limited to nearly flat substrates,” he told iTnews.

“Stretchable electronics can cover arbitrary curved surfaces and movable parts such as the joints of a robot’s arm, thereby significantly expanding the area of utilization of these electronics.”

Someya’s integrated circuits use a newly-developed carbon nanotube-elastomer composite material as a conducting dopant, which boasts a measured conductivity of 57 S/cm.

Researchers claim the conductivity of the new polymer to be two orders of magnitude greater than the conductivity value of previously reported single-walled nanotube (SWNT) composite polymers.

“Carbon-nanotube-based conducting materials have been produced previously [but] their conductivities are very low,” Someya said.

“One can say that the elastic conductors developed in this study are the world’s first chemically stable, highly conductive elastomers,” he said.

Researchers suggest that the stretchable circuits could enable ambient electronics, in which a multitude of devices such as sensor networks could be used to enhance aspects of security, safety, and convenience in daily life.

The technology also could by integrated with pressure sensors to yield a ‘rubber-like artificial skin’, or with an array of actuators to change the feel of a surface.

“This is an important step toward the production of intelligent surfaces that can be used as friendly human-electronics interfaces,” Someya said.

“In the future, such intelligent surfaces will be able to interact with people, objects, and the environment in new ways.”

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iTnews: IBM virtual conference closes at cyber bar

As a journalist at iTnews:

As IBM's Upload 2008 virtual summit came to a close, its virtual networking lounge bustled with greetings and introductions -- some shy, and some less so.

Stir-crazy exhibitors wound down with public offers of virtual vodka, cyber cocktails and iBeers amid a playful discussion of the weather in real-world Townsville and Hobart.

But it wasn’t just an imaginary bar tab that kept conference attendees at the event, which IBM estimates to have attracted some 350 delegates during its first hour.

Attendees who had accumulated enough points by interacting with exhibitors were given the chance to win real-world prizes that include: a 40-inch Sony HD LCD TV; a Flight Centre travel voucher; and an Apple iPhone.

“My boss suggested I participate, and to be really honest, the prizes kept me here,” Chantal Lawrence, NSW IT Coordinator of national construction company Hansen Yuncken, told iTnews at the virtual lounge.

Lawrence attended the summit with a particular interest in gold sponsor VMware, in the lead up to Hansen Yuncken’s forthcoming VMware implementation.

While the presentations were good, the delivery of VMware’s seminar was a little too muted for her liking, she said.

“Vmware wasn’t brilliant; it wasn’t that I didn't like something in particular, just that it was very reserved. A little fanfare is good,” she said.

According to Mark Wilson, Director of Marketing for IBM A/NZ, the conference was three months in the making, with conference sessions filmed throughout the U.S. and Australia, and put together by a virtual project team.

IBM hoped to attract 500 customers to yesterday’s ‘live’ event and another 500 during the following three months, when the recorded presentations will be available online.

The virtual platform is expected to allow IBM to reach a wider audience across Australia and New Zealand, and connect the audience with a global network of speakers.

Using technological reporting functions, the virtual setting is expected also to help IBM to identify specific customer needs.

“Customers can network, visit exhibition stands, attend conference sessions and receive all the same benefits they would reap from attending a physical conference,” Wilson told iTnews.

Another virtual feature that was reminiscent of a physical conference was the conference centre, which bore a fortuitous resemblance to the Sydney convention centre in Darling Harbour.

While Wilson said the virtual world was not modelled on the real-world centre, IBM was ‘pleased to note’ the similarities.

“When we saw the virtual conference platform for the first time, we were pleased to note it was very similar to Sydney convention centre,” he said.

“We were keen to go ahead and use it exactly as it was as we recognised it would give the event a nice local touch,” he said.

IBM reports having received ‘many positive responses’ to the virtual environment from exhibitors to date.

One exhibitor, PK Business Advantage (PKBA), had staff attending from its office in the Northern Queensland city of Townsville.

As most real-world functions tend to be hosted in larger cities to draw sufficient customer attention, the virtual world setting was said to be ‘a lot cheaper’ for PKBA.

“PKBA is a Premier Partner with IBM and were invited to participate,” PKBA Operations Manager James McClimont told iTnews at the virtual lounge this afternoon.

“As our Townsville location has an extensive experience and history with IBM, we felt able to utilise this to provide more info about the value we can add,” he said.

While he admitted that interactions in the virtual world lacked real-world cues such as body language and vocal tones, McClimont said PKBA has managed to attract ‘a great amount’ of interest and visitors to its exhibition booth.

“It was a great concept and has been put into practice quite well,” he said. “With more Virtual Expos I'm sure the experience could be much more [successful].”

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iTnews: IBM Uploads its first virtual ANZ conference

As a journalist at iTnews:

IT delegates from across the nation gathered online today for IBM’s first virtual customer conference to be held in Australia and New Zealand.

The Upload 2008 virtual summit aimed to address what IBM has identified as new business pressures brought about by the credit crunch, rising fuel prices and skill shortages.

Following a global study of 1,130 CEOs across geographies and industries, the summit brought together speakers from all over the world to discuss methods of accelerating change and doing business.

Attendees arrived at the conference via a free-to-use Web interface. Once in the virtual environment, each was greeted by video footage of Glen Boreham, managing director of IBM Australia and New Zealand.

“This event is a sign of things to come,” Boreham said in his opening address.

“Holding a virtual conference is just one of the hundreds of ways IBM is changing how we work in response to the new pressures facing all of our businesses.”

Boreham described pressure from the recent credit crunch to reduce costs, pressure from rising fuel prices to avoid travel, and pressure from skill shortages to achieve more within a working day.

“These pressures that were barely on the radar a few years ago have now come to the fore,” he said.

The virtual setting of Upload 2008 demonstrates one method of alleviating such pressures by allowing attendees and exhibitors to access the event via the Internet, thus avoiding the need for travel.

An interactive visual environment was coupled with hyperlinked text to create a welcoming, user-friendly blend of the Web and virtual world experience.

A virtual auditorium, exhibition hall, networking lounge, and prize centre were mere clicks away from each other, providing attendees with easy access to interactive seminars, vendor representatives, and networking opportunities.

Lenovo, Intel, Nortel, NetBox Blue and VMware were among twenty-three exhibitors who established a virtual presence in IBM’s exhibition hall.

Exhibition attendees navigated the hall either via a hyperlinked list of exhibitors, or by eyeballing the scene and exploring the hall in true virtual world fashion.

At each exhibition booth, attendees were greeted by a team of avatars –- and, in some cases, videos -- with whom they could interact via private or group chat.

“It is a very worthwhile experience,” said Anthony Groves, a spokesperson at Lenovo’s exhibition booth.

“It is a good way to learn about a number of products all without having to leave the office,” he told iTnews via the virtual world chat interface.

According to VMware System Engineer Wibowo Leksono, the virtual setting allowed exhibitors to respond to far more queries than what would be possible in a real-life situation.

“It's been great. I get coverage of a lot more people this way rather than a real life booth,” Leksono told iTnews via private chat at VMware’s exhibition booth.

“[In] the morning, [there] have been non-stop queries, but it is excellent. It has also brought to our attention what issues are out there in the field.”

While virtual environments often take some time to get used to, Leksono reported minimal difficulties in preparing the VMware team for the exhibition.

“To be honest, most of us attended just a bit of training in the morning, and were up and running in no time,” he said.

As part of the Upload 2008 summit, IBM also invited environmentally-conscious conference attendees to give their Green egos a boost with the use of a Web-based carbon counter.

Compared to a traditional conference held in Sydney, IBM estimates the virtual setting to save up to 0.001 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for an attendee based in North Sydney, and up to 0.4251 tonnes of emissions for an attendee travelling from Perth.

IT infrastructure, management and security were key topics that were discussed in the auditorium by speakers such as Future Exploration Network’s Chief Futurist Richard Watson, IBM’s CIO Mark Hennessy, software architecture and engineering veteran Grady Booch, and compliance and risk management expert Kristin Lovejoy.

Live seminars will be held until 5pm AEST today, after which recorded presentations will be available online until November 6.

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iTnews: Artificially intelligent news reader shuts down

As a journalist at iTnews:

There isn’t space in the online media market for a personalising news aggregator to grow large, an Australian web entrepreneur has claimed.

In a blog post announcing the closure of intelligent news portal ‘tiinker’ this month, the site’s co-founder and developer Alex North mentioned difficulties in competing with branded news sources.

“It’s been great fun and we’ve learnt a heap, but it seems that there just isn’t space for a personalising news aggregator to grow large,” he wrote.

tiinker was launched in January 2008 as an online news aggregator that used artificial intelligence to learn the interests of individual users and select stories tailored to each individual.

The site targeted the 'average' Internet user who reads news online, joining an array of online news aggregation tools such as Slashdot, Digg, and Google News.

“The technology we developed was great and we're happy with how it worked,” North told iTnews.

“It did a pretty good job of recommending interesting stories for us and for many users who sent us good feedback.”

“We were aiming to reduce some of the information overload that Internet users face online,” he explained. “We did create some great technology to achieve this, but unfortunately weren't able to grow the market for it.”

tiinker shut down on July 15, after North and co-founder Oleg Sushkov decided that the site ‘wasn’t going to change the world for enough people’.

Despite identifying the online news market as a rapidly growing sector with great potential for improvement, tiinker’s founders were unable to win consumers away from familiar news sites.

“News consumers have a strong affinity for the big brands in news; they like the familiarity of the SMH or News online and it proved too difficult to drag them away,” North said.

North expects personalised news to be successful in the future -- but only once large news sources implement such features within their existing sites.

He mentioned discussions with ‘local large media companies’, who were said to be interested in the idea, but unwilling to experiment with the technology as yet.

“I think personalisation will have a great future once the big news players implement similar features inside their own sites - a personalised SMH, for example - but there's not space for an external aggregator to do it,” he said.

“There's great potential for improvement here, but traditional media companies are struggling to keep up as it is. We'll see news personalisation take centre stage in a few years time,” he said.

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iTnews: Oracle embraces 'Enterprise 2.0' with new PLM module

As a journalist at iTnews:

Oracle plans to announce a new Customer Needs Management module for its Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software suite early next year.

The module will add ‘Enterprise 2.0’ functionality to Agile, which has been in the market for more than a decade and counts among its customers Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Philips Medical.

Since being acquired by Oracle in May 2007, Agile has received a small number of updates to do with integration and interoperability.

The Customer Needs Management module will incorporate elements of social software -- such as user-generated content and mass collaboration portals -- into the business software suite.

According to Oracle executive Hardeep Gulati, the popularity of Web 2.0 in the consumer space could make Enterprise 2.0 an inevitable progression for businesses.

“There is a lot of recognition in Oracle, all the way to top management, that Enterprise 2.0 is changing the business layout,” said Gulati, who is Oracle’s Vice President, PLM and PIM Product Strategy.

“Every company who’s in the business of building products needs collaboration, whether internally or externally,” he told iTnews.

Gulati expects Enterprise 2.0 to benefit PLM by facilitating collaboration between suppliers, manufacturers, and designers of software and hardware.

Enterprise 2.0 elements could also be an aid in ensuring that products are compliant with regulations such as the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) by providing an overview of various processes.

Gulati expressed an interest in the Australian market for PLM, which is valued at $90 million and bolstered by a large number of companies that deal in Consumer Packaged Goods.

“PLM is an area we see as a demand. We have a very strong pipeline, and this [Australian] market is very important to us,” he said.

But although Web 2.0 has been highlighted by analysts as an industry-shaping trend, a lasting effect of Enterprise 2.0 on businesses is yet to be seen.

While North American businesses have been seen to embrace Enterprise 2.0 tools, Asia Pacific is approaching the technology with caution, Gulati observed, noting that the technology is less common still in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Intellectual property (IP) rights have been of particular concern to businesses who may be considering the use of public Web forums to obtain user feedback and discuss future technological directions.

Noting that IP is a ‘sensitive topic’, Gulati argued that collaboration and an open discussion with users promotes innovation.

To counter IP concerns, he suggests the tiered approach employed by Oracle and its partners, in which a broader community is open to the public, and a smaller, closed-loop ‘strategy council’ caters to selected partners and industry leaders.

“As a company, if you don’t embrace it, there’s going to be some Web 2.0 community out there about your product anyway,” he concluded, alluding to the viral, user-generated nature of the Web.

“You’d [The company] might as well be a part of that community,” he said.

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iTnews: Ferromagnet imaging technique could enable 'spintronic' devices

As a journalist at iTnews:

Researchers have developed a new method of studying tiny magnets that could yield high-density memory based on the emerging field of spintronics.

By implanting tiny “ferromagnets” onto processor chips, researchers expect to create small electronic devices and computers that never need to boot up.

Ferromagnets are magnets made of ferrous metal such as iron, and are used in common items such as refrigerator magnets.

According to experimental physicist Chris Hammel, ferromagnets are central to incorporating memory directly into the basic logic elements at the heart of a computer.

“Ferromagnets offer high density memory -- that is a means of storing a great deal of information in a small volume without the problem that the information is lost when the computer is turned off,” said Hammel, who developed the new imaging technique at Ohio State University.

“This could mean computers that don't need to boot; or even more exciting prospect of being able to alter the way your computer operates on the fly and without the configuration being lost when the computer is turned off,” he told iTnews.

Historically, researchers have been unable to image the insides of tiny ferromagnets due to their size and the strong magnetic fields they emit.

The new technique combines three different kinds of technology: magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) similar to the technology used for medical purposes; and two related techniques, ferromagnetic resonance and atomic force microscopy.

Dubbed “scanned probe ferromagnetic resonance force microscopy”, or scanned probe FMRFM, it involves detecting a magnetic signal using a tiny silicon bar with an even tinier magnetic probe on its tip.

The probe captures a two dimensional cross-section of an object as it passes over a material, resulting in a curved bowl-shaped image.

Using the new technique, Hammel is measuring the properties of disk-shaped magnets that measure only two micrometres in diameter.

“MRI is fundamentally in applicable to ferromagnets because of the strong interactions between electronic spins that make the material magnetic,” Hamel explained.

“We became interested in applying this [scanned probe FMRFM technique] to the tiny ferromagnets that are used for memory or for spintronics,” he said.

Hammel and his team hope to contribute to the development of an instrument that could be sold and used routinely in laboratories.

Further developments need to occur before the technique enables new devices and spintronics-based technology.

“We need our technology to become commercially available and we need spintronics to merge with silicon,” Hammel explained. “This advance is underway and I expect significant progress in the next decade.”

“Spintronics and memory have been moving very fast; we believe that a new imaging tool such as we have discovered could hasten this progress dramatically.”

“I think we will see this technology impacting computing units included in niche applications such as cell phones within five to ten years,” he said.

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