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Helping build the digital future. On Europe’s terms.

Cloud computing is globally recognized as the single most effective, agile and scalable path to digitally transform and drive value creation. It has been a critical catalyst for growth, allowing private organizations and governments to support consumers and citizens alike, delivering services quickly without prohibitive capital investment. European organizations—in both the public and private sectors—want a provider to deliver a cloud on their terms, one that meets their requirements for security, privacy, and digital sovereignty, without compromising on functionality or innovation.Last year, we set out an ambitious vision of sovereignty along three distinct pillars: data sovereignty (including control over encryption and data access), operational sovereignty (visibility and control over provider operations), and software sovereignty (providing the ability to run and move cloud workloads without being locked-in to a particular provider, including in extraordinary situations such as stressed exits). After extensive dialogue with customers and policymakers, we are today unveiling ‘Cloud. On Europe’s Terms’. As part of  this initiative, we will continue to demonstrate our commitment to deliver cloud services that provide the highest levels of digital sovereignty, all while enabling the next wave of growth and transformation for Europe’s businesses and organizations.Google Cloud’s baseline controls and security features offer strong protections, meet current robust security and privacy requirements, and address many customer needs. Yet each country in Europe has its own characteristics and expectations. Certain customers in Europe may require more flexibility than current public and private cloud offerings may provide. We want to deliver a platform that allows customers to deploy workloads with the desired local control, without losing the transformational benefits of the public cloud.We are now delivering on this new vision collaboratively with trusted local technology providers in Europe, starting with T-Systems in Germany. Today, together with T-Systems, we announced a partnership to build a Sovereign Cloud offering in Germany for private and public sector organizations. The offering will become available in mid 2022 with additional features being added over time.  In this new joint offering, T-Systems will manage sovereignty controls and measures, including encryption and identity management of the Google Cloud Platform. In addition, as part of their offering, T-Systems will operate and independently control key parts of the Google Cloud infrastructure for T-Systems Sovereign Cloud customers in Germany.We are committed to building trust with European governments and enterprises with a cloud that meets their digital sovereignty, sustainability and economic objectives. We are starting with T-Systems today and will continue by partnering with trusted technology providers in selected markets across the region. Customers in other markets across Europe will be able to use these trusted partner offerings or use Google Cloud’s controls to exercise autonomous control over data access and use; exercise choice over the infrastructure that is used to process that data; and avoid cloud vendor lock-in. With Google Cloud, our customers also automatically benefit from sustainable business transformation on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Today, we are the largest annual corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally, and by 2030, we aim to operate entirely on 24/7 carbon-free energy in all of our cloud regions worldwide. We’ll continue to listen to our customers and key stakeholders across Europe who are setting policy and helping shape requirements for customer control of data. Our goal is to make Google Cloud the best possible place for sustainable, digital transformation for European organizations on their terms—and there is much more to come.Related ArticleThe cloud trust paradox: 3 scenarios where keeping encryption keys off the cloud may be necessaryAlthough rare, there are sometimes situations where encryption keys should be stored off the cloud. Here are three to consider.Read Article
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform

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Sopra Steria uses Google Cloud, Cisco, and ACTIVEO to power new generation of Virtual Agents

With people expecting to access products and services through easy, always-on experiences delivered across channels, transforming approaches to digital services is a must for every business. As a result, business leaders have to strive to provide employees with these same frictionless experiences. Sopra Steria is a European leader in consulting, digital services and software development, with 46,000 employees in 25 countries that generated revenue of €4.3 billion in 2020. It provides end-to-end solutions that help customers drive their digital transformation to obtain tangible and sustainable benefits, by combining in-depth knowledge of a wide range of business sectors and innovative technologies.To accomplish its goals, Sopra Steria planned to use conversational artificial intelligence as part of their strategy and began working closely with Google Cloud, Cisco, and Activeo. It believed that, by building out more advanced Virtual Agents for its customers to use to serve them, it could usher in a new era of frictionless experiences in the End-User support services.“To address customer demands for office and business applications support services, we looked to integrate a new generation of virtual voice assistant into our platform,” says Xavier Leroux, CTO End User Services at Sopra Steria. “We did this using Google’s proven AI and integrated it with our Cisco Contact Center by Activeo.”As many companies have learned, the need to provide customers with advanced experiences is directly attached to the services offered to their employees. By providing more contextual information and other forms of digital support to staff, those same team members will be better positioned to serve customers.Solving a complex problem with easeSopra Steria sought to solve several challenges for its customers, enabling them to:Provide all their employees with seamless, quick access to IT and business support,Offer 24/7 phone support capabilities for employees,Make services easily deployable, flexible, agile, and available in multiple languages,Reduce costs associated with delivering better support services.Sopra Steria chose Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI), built by Google Cloud and Cisco, as the best option to achieve its vision. Google Cloud CCAI is currently used in some of the world’s largest call centers, building on Google’s expertise in natural language processing.Sopra Steria implemented CCAI as its new Virtual Assistant on phone channels managed by a Cisco telephony solution, and used Activeo for its integration and implementation support.The new Virtual Assistant allows Sopra Steria clients to qualify employee requests and direct them to the right agent based on Natural Language Understanding while offering self-service options for basic requests such as password resets. These Virtual Assistants also fully automate complex incident tickets creation in synchronization within the IT service management system.Google Cloud CCAI covers three main use cases:Autonomously handles full-length conversations using natural language,Augments operator support through contextual assistance through a desktop application based on live conversation analysis,Semantic analysis of all audio and text conversations processed by customer service through Google Cloud machine learning.Cisco provides native integration of CCAI within its Cisco Contact Center solution as a part of its global partnership with Google Cloud.“The work we have done with Google Cloud has allowed Sopra Steria to create innovative and personalized conversational services to enhance both employee satisfaction and operator productivity without sacrificing security,” says Christian Laloy, EMEA Contact Center Sales Specialist at Cisco.Unlocking new, more powerful contact center experiencesSince standing up the new CCAI solution, Sopra Steria has been able to enhance its service catalog through Virtual Assistants. The offering has generated immense interest among existing and new Sopra Steria clients because it can simultaneously reduce average waiting and handling and resolution times while dramatically decreasing service costs.“The Virtual Assistant serves both the user and operator alike,” says Xavier Leroux. “The user gets a conversational experience like no other and a seamless journey to resolve their requests. With Google Cloud, Cisco and Activeo, we have increased operator efficiency, so they can focus more on adding value to every business interaction.”Related ArticleCustomers handle up to 28% more concurrent chats with Agent Assist for ChatContact Center AI Agent Assist for Chat is now in Public Preview, speeding up resolutions to customers’ problems.Read Article
Quelle: Google Cloud Platform