Software
Lynx Software Technologies | January 10, 2024
Lynx Software Technologies (Lynx), a leader in the development of foundational, open architecture software solutions for the Mission Critical Edge, today announced the acquisition of Thompson Software Solutions, LLC. (TSS), a provider of software development, engineering, and integration solutions to mission-critical aerospace and defense (A&D) platforms, spanning military and commercial fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, commercial space flight, hypersonic platforms, and command-and-control systems. Its customers include the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), prime integrators, A&D original equipment manufacturers, and commercial space companies.
Since its founding in 2004, TSS has delivered technical capabilities and strategic insights to enable innovative software products requiring the highest reliability, security, and performance standards. With expertise spanning high-integrity software architecture and development, DevSecOps, cybersecurity, airworthiness certifications, open systems architecture, simulation and training, and AI and machine learning, customers across the A&D end-markets rely upon TSS to provide strategic guidance, differentiated technical capabilities, and a deep understanding of mission requirements. TSS’s Chief Executive Officer, Les Thompson, and Chief Strategy Officer, Patrick McClellen, have taken on senior roles within Lynx following the close of the transaction.
The combination of Lynx and TSS creates a scaled provider of mission-critical software solutions for customers with complex interoperability, safety, and security challenges. Lynx’s foundational software products, open-source expertise, productivity- and security-enhancing development tools, highly technical software engineering services, delivered via both professional and managed services business models, and its highly skilled and security-cleared employee base combine to create a platform company uniquely positioned to support the full software development lifecycle for clients in aerospace, defense, and other heavily regulated end-markets.
“The TSS team has built the company on a solid foundation of trusted customer relationships, innovative and cutting-edge technical capabilities, and flawless execution. With TSS’s high-value and differentiated software development and integration capabilities, we will be better equipped to enable aerospace and defense OEMs and prime integrators to accelerate the design, development, and deployment of their products and platforms,” commented Tim Reed, Chief Executive Officer of Lynx. “As we end 2023, Lynx’s portfolio of solutions spans from the operating system to the application layer, certifiable real-time, to general purpose and open-source, and from commercial-off-the-shelf (“COTS”) to government-off-the-shelf (“GOTS”) software products. I’m thrilled to work with Les and the TSS team as we continue delivering comprehensive and unique software-enabled solutions to customers whose needs extend from the development pipeline to the Mission Critical Edge.”
“Throughout my twenty years leading TSS, we’ve been consistently committed to delivering robust software solutions that meet the stringent requirements of our customers while ensuring they can stay on schedule and budget,” commented Les Thompson, Chief Executive Officer of TSS. “From our first discussions with Tim and the Lynx team, it became clear that Lynx is not just a vendor looking to push products but a committed, mission-oriented partner with the same objectives we have here at TSS, which includes continuing to deliver on our shared goal of providing resilient, secure, and performant software solutions targeted at the most demanding mission-critical environments.”
“The combination of Lynx and TSS creates a software solutions platform placed at the center of priority aerospace and defense investment areas, notably open standards, modularity, and security. Like TSS, Lynx has an established track record of exceeding customer expectations with its innovation, performance, and value proposition. As a combined company, Lynx and TSS are well-positioned to grow as our clients continue to execute on the software modernization, integration, and development priorities,” commented Patrick McClellen, Chief Strategy Officer of TSS.
About Lynx Software Technologies
Lynx Software Technologies is on a mission to improve the economics of developing, deploying, and maintaining high-assurance Mission Critical Edge platforms with modular software solutions based on open standards. Our proven technology leadership, extensive system certification expertise, and commitment to open standards have consistently saved our customers millions of dollars in development costs while delivering desired system performance, security, and reliability on schedule. Lynx is committed to enabling customers to build and manage orchestrated, cloud-connected platforms that harness a broad array of modern technologies and unique design methodologies to enable accurate, deterministic decisions at the Mission Critical Edge without compromising safety or cybersecurity requirements. For more information, visit www.lynx.com.
About Thompson Software Solutions
Founded in 2004 with locations in Atlanta, GA and Fort Worth, TX, the Thompson Software Solutions team understands what is required to develop, integrate, test, and deploy software with a safety-critical pedigree while meeting the challenges of modernization and digital transformation. Our team of proven and dedicated employees takes pride in our ability to react quickly and produce quality solutions to difficult technical challenges. We work with partners to find the right path to meet operational needs while future-proofing systems with portability and sustainment considerations to ensure next-generation success. For more information, visit https://www.thompsonsoftwaresolutions.com.
About OceanSound Partners
OceanSound Partners is a New York-based private equity firm that pursues control investments in technology and technology-enabled services companies serving government and enterprise end markets. OceanSound employs a partnership approach, working closely with founders, entrepreneurs, and executives of middle market businesses to drive transformational growth. For more information, visit www.oceansoundpartners.com.
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General AI
SysAid | January 12, 2024
SysAid, a leading provider of IT and Enterprise Service Management solutions, proudly announces the commencement of an exciting new chapter with the commercial release of SysAid Copilot, designed to liberate organizations by putting AI to work, for them and their people.
At the core of SysAid Copilot is the AI Chatbot for End Users delivering always-on, 24/7 service. This conversational self-service experience uses generative AI to help employees work through issues by delivering answers, utilizing the organization's data, from knowledge base articles through ticket resolution history – as well as verified external data sources, links, and documents.
Combating ineffective virtual agent deployment
According to Gartner, "Staffing an IT service desk is difficult and a considerable expense. Long phone queues and abandoned calls are not uncommon. Yet, many I&O leaders have experienced issues with the implementation and adoption of virtual support agents, which are aimed at alleviating some of these challenges." One of the main factors attributed to these issues is that initial deployments of chatbots were ineffective[1].
With no code zero setup required, SysAid Copilot comes with a feature set designed to counter the potential pitfalls arising from sub-optimal deployment of traditional virtual support agents.
The AI Usage Dashboard clearly reflects the value provided to both admins and end users through usage of SysAid Copilot features. For example, adoption of the AI Chatbot for End Users and Assistive AI features for admins. It also offers insights into AI-contained issues, indicating the rate at which problems were automatically resolved by SysAid Copilot using the organization's data and averting the need for ticket creation.
In parallel, admins maintain ultimate control over the quality of responses with the ability to monitor, edit, and fine-tune answers provided by the AI Chatbot enabled by a Monitor and Fine-Tune feature.
AI Author enables the provision of consistently professional service by rephrasing replies, elaborating on answers, and breaking down information into simple steps with responses that are comprehensible and accessible for employees. This also exempts admins from the need to grapple with wording and grammar.
Embedded into the channels that employees already use, SysAid Copilot facilitates quick adoption within the organization. For example, employees get service in a single click from the AI Chatbot (one-click ticket creation) or automatically via the AI Emailbot, delivering an immediate response even before an admin sees the ticket.
Increasing productivity
SysAid Copilot leverages cutting-edge generative AI technology, elevating admins to play a strategic role in the organization and improving IT productivity by over 20%.
"The release of SysAid Copilot is a momentous milestone in our quest to lead organizations on a transformative journey toward AI-driven organizational processes and excellence," said Avi Kedmi, SysAid CEO. "Tapping into specialized data accumulated from thousands of customers and millions of users, SysAid Copilot enables employees to enjoy a fully conversational experience, freeing up admins to focus on more strategic work and become the catalyst for organizational productivity. SysAid Copilot orchestrates service management across the organization, embodying our commitment to infusing intelligence and ease into the workday, reshaping the landscape of service management. And this is only the beginning, as our dynamic roadmap promises a steady stream of groundbreaking features and capabilities ahead, ensuring the success of our customers."
The General Availability of SysAid Copilot follows a 5-month design partner and beta program in which a diverse and engaged group of active customers played a pivotal role in refining and enhancing the product. The dedication and enthusiasm of the beta partners have been instrumental in shaping the product and ensuring that it is finely tuned to address the unique needs of SysAid's customer community, not only meeting but exceeding their expectations.
Enhancing CSAT scores and slashing MTTR
SysAid Copilot includes AI Intelligent Categorization automatically categorizing tickets submitted via the AI Chatbot for End Users and routes to the right people while making suggestions for more appropriate categories for tickets that come in through other channels, reducing human error in ticket categorizations by ~40%. In parallel, AI Case Summarization provides admins with a real-time summarization of the ticket content and employee sentiment (AI Emotion) so admins can understand the context, history, and end-user sentiment at a glance.
"SysAid Copilot has helped our organization a great deal in providing support quicker. Since our department is oftentimes understaffed, wait times are higher than normal, and with SysAid Copilot we've witnessed those wait times plummeting," said Nathan Gleed, IT at the City of St George. "One of the most amazing aspects of this new technology is its continual learning, consistently improving performance and generating more accurate and sophisticated output."
About SysAid
SysAid is on a mission to liberate organizations by putting AI to work for them and their people. We orchestrate service management across organizations with generative AI that taps into specialized data accumulated from thousands of customers and millions of users. With zero setup requirements, our conversational AI manages employees' requests, assists with queries, and accelerates the resolution of issues. With intelligence and ease infused into the workday, productivity thrives so that employees can focus on what they're meant to do, and organizations are free to fulfill their purpose.
With over 5,000 customers, SysAid partners with organizations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises across 140 countries. For more information, please visit www.sysaid.com
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Future Tech
Zendesk | January 08, 2024
Zendesk today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Klaus, the industry leading AI-powered quality management platform. AI is driving a rapid increase in customer interactions and radically transforming the world of customer service. Customer service teams are being asked to increase their ROI by managing a rising volume of interactions while providing quality service, and increasing their organization's efficiency in the process. With Klaus, Zendesk customers will be able to deliver consistent, high quality service across every channel and across both human and digital agents (bots) – all while unlocking the power of everyday customer interactions to increase loyalty.
"As AI drives up the speed and frequency of customer engagement, only AI-powered quality assurance (QA) can keep up as companies work to identify and fix gaps in their customer service operations," said Adrian McDermott, chief technology officer, Zendesk. "The combination of Zendesk AI and Klaus' capabilities will help businesses navigate greater complexity and volume and ensure both digital and human agents deliver highly personal and empathetic service."
"Zendesk and Klaus share a vision of AI-led, personalized CX with businesses fully anticipating and acting on their customers' needs," said Martin Kõiva, CEO and founder, Klaus. "QA software plays a critical role in this, ensuring consistency, assessing both human and digital agent performance and providing actionable insights for strategic planning. As part of Zendesk, we will continue to build and deliver these crucial capabilities, but now at an even greater scale."
With digital agents resolving more service inquiries without human interaction, having a QA solution that analyzes both human and digital agent performance is crucial to maintaining quality control and providing best-in-class customer service. While most QA software is capable of only scoring 1 to 2 percent of interactions and cannot recognize systemic trends, Klaus' AI scores 100 percent of customer support interactions. It pinpoints conversations with positive or negative sentiment, identifies outliers, churn risk, escalations and follow-ups across all conversations – even those done by digital agents or outsourced teams. Klaus spots knowledge gaps and coaching opportunities that can be used to improve agent performance and productivity, all of which results in higher customer satisfaction.
WEM is a critical capability for today's customer service leaders. The acquisition of Klaus will be the latest addition to the company's existing workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions which includes Tymeshift, a modern workforce management tool built exclusively for Zendesk. The company acquired Tymeshift in June 2023. The acquisition of Klaus is anticipated to close in the first quarter of 2024 upon receipt of required regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
About Zendesk
Zendesk is on a mission to simplify the complexity of business and make it easy for companies and customers to create connections. Our customer experience software unlocks the power of billions of interactions, enabling businesses to build rich, meaningful relationships with their customers. The company was conceived in Copenhagen, Denmark and today operates in more than 20 countries around the world.
About Klaus
Klaus is an AI-powered quality management platform that helps companies drive revenue through excellent customer service. Headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, Klaus was founded in 2018 by Martin Kõiva, Kair Käsper and Egon Sale and has nearly 100 employees.
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General AI
Glassbox | January 11, 2024
Glassbox (TASE:GLBX), a leading provider of digital experience intelligence for web and mobile applications, today announced the availability of its enterprise-ready AI assistant, which the company has named GIA (Glassbox Insights Assistant). Glassbox turned to Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, which hosts OpenAI models fully within the secure Azure environment, to elevate the security and privacy standards of its previously announced AI assistant. In combination with Glassbox’s patented data privacy measures, users of the AI assistant can be confident that the conversational interface is protected with the level of rigor they expect from both Microsoft and Glassbox.
“We developed the AI assistant earlier based on OpenAI’s GPT model. However, our commitment to responsible AI and our exacting security, data privacy and compliance standards compelled us to turn to the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service for its additional protections for potentially sensitive data shared or accessed through the new generative AI (GenAI) interface,” said Glassbox co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Yaron Gueta. “GIA sets a new bar for what organizations should expect of GenAI solutions from their software providers.”
Glassbox captures millions or billions of digital experience data points for each of its customers every month that give them the richest possible set of data about their digital customer experience. GIA allows Glassbox users to uncover deep digital insights quickly and without technical knowledge or reliance on data and analytics teams.
“Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service is ideal for companies like Glassbox that need to deliver enterprise-grade GenAI solutions based on vast, proprietary datasets,” added John Montgomery, CVP, Azure AI at Microsoft. “By using the power of our generative AI capabilities, Glassbox’s AI assistant can deliver a better experience to customers with the security measures of Azure.”
With Gartner predicting that more than half of all successful technology solutions will be delivered to “nontraditional” buyers outside of IT by 2025, one of the pillars of Glassbox’s AI strategy is to make its unparalleled set of digital experience data more actionable, more quickly by more users for greater business impact. GIA is central to this strategy as Glassbox shifts increasingly towards natural language interfaces.
The use of GenAI to unlock digital insights is also a key step in realizing Glassbox’s Autonomous CX vision, which promises to revolutionize the customer experience domain by making digital experiences fully self-optimizing.
GIA is immediately available within the Glassbox digital experience intelligence platform when deployed in a customer’s preferred cloud environment.
About Glassbox
Glassbox (TASE:GLBX) reveals the insights that empower organizations to deliver better digital customer experiences. Our Digital Experience Intelligence platform automatically captures, visualizes and analyzes every digital journey in real time across websites and mobile apps. It serves as the unifying platform for product, UX, marketing, IT, analytics teams (and more) to assess performance, prioritize projects and optimize experiences. With unparalleled data privacy and security built in, hundreds of global customers across industries have chosen Glassbox to grow and optimize their digital businesses. Learn more at glassbox.com.
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