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The digital world continues to evolve a rapid pace. Customers’ expectations have risen, and the user experience now must match the rising tide of their needs. So while cloud has made it faster and easier to deliver services, the same can’t be said for troubleshooting and solving issues caused by cloud connectivity. That is, until now…
“Cloud A.I. changes both the experience between the business and his customer, between the business and his vendor. From a customer to business point of view, where it really ends up is fewer support tickets. So at that level, A.I. is basically proactively finding problems ahead of time. And when you reduce the number of support tickets, that translates into a better user experience.”
Bob Friday is the Co-founder and CTO of Mist, a Juniper company. Mist is deploying artificial intelligence via the cloud to help revolutionize the world of IT. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Bob delves into how the Mist cloud network is helping companies save time and money with network automation, while also delivering a reliable and efficient network that creates a valuable customer experience. Plus, he previews the future of automated assistants in IT.
Main Takeaways
- A Real Problem Solver: One of the biggest advantages of cloud-based A.I. infrastructure is the ability for A.I. to quickly and efficiently identify network problems — such as poorly-configured routers or offline systems — and correct them before the user ever knows there is a problem.
- All About the… Insights!: While a system’s ability to identify and self-correct its own issues is important, being able to break down the data it is ingesting everyday is critical. By doing this, you will be able to understand where those same issues are coming from to prevent problems from ever occurring .
- The Next Big Thing: Automated assistants will be the next big shift for all IT departments. As IT administrators begin to trust A.I. on a deeper level, and trust the data that their systems are providing them, the use of A.I. and its abilities will continue to expand into assistants that can help administrators complete rudimentary tasks.
For a more in-depth look at this episode, check out the article below.
The digital world continues to evolve a rapid pace. Customers expectations have risen, and the user experience now must match the rising tide of their needs. So while cloud has made it faster and easier to deliver services, the same can’t be said for troubleshooting and solving issues caused by cloud connectivity. That is, until now… But as the world of IT becomes more complex, and IT budgets continue to dwindle, how are businesses expected to adapt to meet the needs of digital transformation? The answer is in the cloud.
“Cloud A.I. changes both the experience between the business and his customer, between the business and his vendor. From a customer to business point of view, where it really ends up is fewer support tickets. So at that level, A.I. is basically proactively finding problems ahead of time. And when you reduce the number of support tickets, that translates into a better user experience.”
Bob Friday is the Co-founder and CTO of Mist, a Juniper company. Mist is deploying artificial intelligence via the cloud to help revolutionize the world of IT. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Friday delves into how their cloud network is helping companies save time and money with network automation, while delivering a reliable and efficient network that creates a valuable customer experience. Plus, he previews the future of automated assistants in IT.
Founded in 2014, Mist is a new enterprise network, powered by A.I. and built when Friday saw a need. After a successful nine-year run at Cisco System as its Vice President and CTO, Friday felt the industry was changing, especially when it came to the way network systems were designed and deployed.
“Networking really needed a new cloud architecture and the cloud is what really brought speed,” he said. “Because the cloud is a much better way of developing software and maintaining software than any piece of hardware, A.I. was really a way to provide that end-to-end visibility.”
As the gap between the user and application shrinks, and more and more companies rely on delivery services such as curbside pickup, touchless checkout, or just-in-time inventory replenishment or any number of other use cases, their reliance on a network stability and reliability has also risen.
“When you start to get in those experiences, that is where the networking really becomes more of a business critical,” Friday said. “These retailers, they’re almost becoming mini SPs, they’re in the business between our cellular connection and our wifi connection in the store. They’re in the business now of making sure that you have connectivity, because usually there is a business critical app for you to complete your shopping experience.”
So how is Mist helping to make those experiences better for both the customer and the client? According to Friday, the solution centers around how its A.I. algorithm is able to identify problems and issues before the consumer ever does.
“We were in a big retail store where the users couldn’t connect to the network,” Friday said. “But what had happened in that case, there is a misconfigured router somewhere. That is where A.I. was not able to correlate and configure a changeover without some sort of user experience problem. That’s a classic point where someone’s connected to the network and can’t move data. That’s where A.I. can quickly figure out that misconfiguration and quickly sense that there’s a user connection problem going on in the store.”
The biggest obstacle Mist had to overcome was getting investors to buy into that idea that there needed to be a fundamental change in how cloud networks were constructed and how companies migrated their data to the cloud. Investors had to take a leap of faith, he said, stating that it’s much easier to buy into software rather than hardware issues.
So how can this technology be deployed in ways that are more helpful than just identifying which parts of the network are down? According to Friday, he believes that we are at the early stages of the biggest revolution in the IT sector.
To hear more about Mist and the future of A.I. within the IT departments, check out the full episode of IT Visionaries.
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To hear the entire discussion, tune into IT Visionaries here.
