Cisco wants its channel partners to invest in their own intellectual property as a way of differentiating themselves from competitors.

The vendor gave its partners an innovation challenge and said that the partner deemed to have developed the best application on top of Cisco’s platform being awarded $100,000.

Speaking to the assorted throngs at its Partner Connection Week in the Bahamas, Cisco VP Nirav Sheth said: “I look at this whole concept of extensibility and programmability, and taking advantage of our APIs, as an opportunity for you to develop your own digital business.

“We are committed to open and extensible [technology] across the entire portfolio. You can increase your customer relevancy, develop new services offers and extend your reach and value.”

He said he would love it if partners turned into ISVs to resell and drive Cisco business. This would increase company valuations.

Cisco has been doing a lot to help partners come up with their innovations by providing APIs and software development kits to help develop their solutions.

The CEO of Puzzel Børge Astrup has been mulling over the outfit’s first year of operation and all the developments in the contact centre industry.

This time last year, Intelecom combined its contact centre, interactive mobile messaging and payments divisions to create a new organisation called Puzzel.

Astrup said that over the year the number of agents on the Puzzel platform was at an all-time high and the company now employs 150 people across six different countries. Some of that expansion was thanks to the transformation in the contact centre industry as a whole.

“Mobility, digitalisation and the need for speed have increased customer demand for fully integrated solutions that improve customer interactions. The number of communication channels and personal devices customers use is changing, but the requirement for fast and efficient response remains the same”, Astrup said.

Puzzel wanted to expand geographically to take advantage of international contact centres looking to manage their operations using one unified solution across multiple countries. At the same time, it sought to improve local support by adding new regional offices and expanding its channel network.

In September 2017, Puzzel appointed Petr Bocek as General Manager of Bulgarian operations and Director, Business Development Central and Eastern Europe. Bocek joined Puzzel from Telenor Bulgaria and was hired for his local knowledge. At the end of 2017 a new office was opened in Helsinki, Finland lead by Gunnar Aasen, Vice President Sales to complete support for Nordic customers across Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

In June 2017, Puzzel announced one of its most significant business wins when If, the leading insurance company in the Nordic and Baltic countries serving 3.6 million customers, created what it claims is Europe’s most significant cloud-based contact centre with 3,400 agents.

Astrup said that in the last year, Artificial Intelligence (AI) arrived in contact centres. Virtual assistants, digital assistants and Bots are regular guests at the self-service party and could potentially change the landscape forever. Puzzel is actively helping organisations to deploy Bots in their contact centres.

Puzzel is focused on introducing new technology which was easy-to-use delivered high levels of stability and security and promises to provide exceptional, multi-channel customer experiences for assisted and automated interactions. This year, we went one step further by creating a dedicated Innovation Team devoted to delivering more of these shifts in technology to the market. Automated customer service will be a focus for this team in the coming months, he said.

In response to demand for electronic card payments and mobility, Puzzel met its year-one objective and introduced Puzzel Pay. Using this new mobile-enabled debt collection and instant payment method, organisations can expect to deliver a seamless, improved customer experience, reduce the number of customer enquiries and lower financial costs with less invoicing and fewer unpaid claims, Bocek said.

It’s all a bit puzzling.

TalkTalk Business is trialling for G.fast through its Wholesale and Partner customers.

The move follows the recent announcement that TalkTalk Business are extending its FTTP, 1Gb full fibre network, beyond York and snuggling up to the Ultrafast connectivity.

G.Fast is complementary to FTTP and can boost internet speeds over the existing copper infrastructure (up to 330MB). G.fast will be available during a trial rollout from April 2018, with a launch expected in line with Openreach’s start in the summer.

This is somewhat useful for TalkTalk Business Wholesale and Partner customers who want to include cost-effective high-speed connectivity in their portfolio,  to deliver over the new services, facilitate the transition to the Cloud or merely to offer the best speeds.

G.fast is available alongside ADSL and FTTC via the Partners API or portal for ease of provisioning, upgrades and in-life management.

TalkTalk Business will launch an unlimited usage G.fast proposition, in line with its FTTC offering, and will pay a fixed monthly cost regardless of the anticipated significant increase in usage. This knocks out the risk for the Partner community where spiralling bandwidth usage costs could be prohibitive.

Pete Tomlinson, Commercial Director at TalkTalk Business, commented: “As businesses and consumers, we have developed an insatiable appetite for bandwidth and TalkTalk continues to lead the way in meeting this need, embracing new technologies to make them simple and affordable. As we continue to champion the drive towards a full fibre future, which for many is still too far away, G.Fast can play an important role in helping customers enjoy the speeds they deserve.”