GBS World News | Week 2 | August 2021

Czech digital security and privacy giant, Avast, and NortonLifeLock, a global leader in consumer cyber safety, are merging through a recommended offer by NortonLifeLock. The merger is based on strategic and financial rationale in creating a new, influential consumer cyber safety operation. Leveraging off established brands, technology and innovation of both entities are some of the factors that are expected to generate industry-leading consumer experience and deliver value to shareholders. 

American customers will soon be dazzled by Genesys’ new capabilities in Genesys Cloud CX™ platform that will deliver more empathetic AI and automated-based Customer Experience (CX). The platform does not require IT support and can be easily integrated into a client’s systems using low-code tools. These new capabilities include AI-Based Call Routing, Intent-Aware Bots, and Asynchronous Web Messaging.

In Canadian news, TTEC Canada Solutions has announced plans to hire over 1,400 working-from-home (WFH) Canadians for customer service and technical work, due to its growing business across the country. The new roles require Canada’s bilingual job seekers that can speak English, along with French, Portuguese, and Dutch. TTEC Canada Solutions plans to leverage Canada’s cultural diversity to bring excellent CX services to customers, no matter where they are in the world.

The Asia-Pacific region sees another major merger, with Australian communications leader, NextGen, acquiring outsourcing firm, Novatech. The acquisition will lead to the formation of a new company that will focus on sales and channel management across Asia Pacific region, augmented by NovaTech’s wealthy partnership portfolio, consisting of Oracle, SAP, IBM, Vignette and SAS. NovaTech currently provides complementary services to NextGen through its digital marketing arm Bang, cloud economics and software advisory Optima, cloud management solutions Connect and its payment arm Orbus Capita.

A different type of NeXTGEN appears on the other side of the world, although this is a West African tech summit where Nigerian solar-based internet and voice service provider, Tizeti, has announced the launch of new, robust internet plans that will increase connectivity across Nigeria. One of the new products is its Turbo internet plan that guarantees 100Mbps unlimited plans, which will be piloted in the Lekki region of the Lagos state.

In general news, four key trends in global digital transformation have been identified in MuleSoft’s 2021 IT and Business Barometer report, which was done in partnership with Coleman Parkes Research. The report noted that the pace of digitalization over the last 18 months has resulted in rapid problem solving amongst organizations to survive. The sweeping influence of digitalization has assisted already well-positioned organizations to grow and scale innovation.