Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Diane Bryant, CIO Of Intel (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Siddharth Garg and Rahul Nagpal

About Intel

Intel Corporation is an American global technology company and the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue.

Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation and is based in Santa Clara, California. Outside of California, the company has facilities in 63 countries and regions internationally, including China, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Israel, Ireland, India, Russia, and Vietnam.

Intel also makes motherboard chip sets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors, and other devices related to communications and computing. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: That is true on the marketing side. You are talking about the pre-sale situation, market research situation where customers are trying to make a decision. But what about the actual customer support piece where you are a customer and you have bought a product. I had this experience recently, and it is really irritating me. I was calling Comcast for customer support with something, and I was kept on the phone. There is this relationship between Comcast and Netgear, and I had a problem with my Netgear equipment, but it was on the Comcast line. So, Comcast and Netgear kept pushing me back and forth this way and that way and I was being kept on the phone for hours! >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: So, are there nuggets of information that you can share about strategies you are using as far as cloud computing is concerned?

Mandy Edwards: Well, in terms of strategy, everything we do has to be secure. We also have to understand risks and vulnerabilities, and our job, when we are going through a client implementation, is to work with our customers to ensure that those companies are satisfied with the security that is inherent in that integrated solution. It can be both technology related and operationally related, and I will give you an example. Some clients require that we have a complete clean desk policy; that is, the agents who service that client would be allowed to have nothing on the workstations. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: In your industry, what is available today as infrastructure as a service? Obviously, storage was one of the first value propositions to be adopted as an infrastructure as a service, but is there something beyond that that is specific to your industry that you are able to leverage? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: Right. What is the procedure of updating the knowledge base? Let’s say your agents come up with a scenario that is not addressed in the knowledge base, and somehow or the other you have to figure out how to answer that question. How does that path, the integration path, between you and the customer’s knowledge base happen in that updating process or enhancement process? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: OK. Would you talk more about integration? I would love to know more about what is happening in the area of knowledge base. Where is the knowledge base? Do customers maintain it, or does Sitel? What is the process that goes on in augmenting the knowledge base, based on what your agents are learning? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

Sramana Mitra: This is a great example that you are moving e-mail to the cloud. What is the strategy from a vendor point of view? I have been doing a lot of these interviews, talking to a lot of CIOs, and one category that is coming up is email and productivity applications and the office suite. This entire suite, bread-and-butter applications are moving to the cloud. People are moving out of legacy systems such as Lotus Notes and so forth. So, what is your legacy system and what is it that you’re moving into? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Mandy Edwards, CIO Of Sitel (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Siddharth Garg

In this interview, we spoke with Mandy Edwards, the global chief information officer at Sitel. Sitel is the leading business process outsourcing (BPO) call center provider, as ranked by the Black Book of Outsourcing, a Data Monitor company. Sitel’s customer interaction outsourcing solutions span more than 135 domestic, nearshore, and offshore call centers in 26 countries across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia Pacific. The company has more than 52,000 employees. >>>