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Scott Petersen


Scott Petersen is a CDW contact center technical architect with more than 20 years of combined implementation and consulting experience. He primarily focuses on implementing Cisco technology, including voice, data, compute platforms and contact center solutions in both UCCE/UCCX. Scott leads CDW contact center field engineers in best-practice implementations and works closely with Cisco and its business units in providing real-world customer feedback. Scott also assists with partner enablement/engagement regarding contact center products integrated into the Cisco contact center framework.

Contact Center Technical Architect


A Look at Five9: Past, Present and Future

This provider was busy in 2020, and is making moves in the Cloud Contact Center industry.

By Scott Petersen
|
April 6, 2021
Cloud, Services, Software

2020 is over. And while it was an unprecedented year, the As a Service companies like Five9 helped make the widespread adoption of remote work a reality. For more As a Service information, check out my other blog series. Learn how CDW can assist with your collaboration solutions and services needs. It takes a catastrophic…

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Cisco Systems: Cloud Contact Center Product Review Series

Expanding on its on-premises strengths, Cisco moves into the cloud for contact center.

By Scott Petersen
|
October 23, 2020
Cloud, Digital Workspace, Services, Software

Welcome to the third part of this blog series, where I’ve been exploring the options available in the cloud contact center space. A quick recap of who we have talked about in this series: The first post was on the power of RingCentral, the second was showing off the red-hot Five9. Learn how CDW can…

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Moving Your Customer Engagement Center to the Cloud

A cloud-hosted center offers a number of potential benefits, but organizations must be thoughtful when making the move.

By Scott Petersen
|
June 30, 2020
Cloud, Services

[sayit]The public cloud hasn’t yet become the most popular place to host a customer engagement center — but it will. The shift is inevitable, as the benefits of migrating a customer engagement center to the public cloud are simply too powerful to ignore. Learn about CDW's Amplified Workspace Services. The move can bring many of…

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Five9: Cloud Contact Center Product Review Series

Five9’s solutions are quick to deploy and deliver a quality customer and agent experience.

By Scott Petersen
|
April 2, 2020
Cloud, Digital Workspace, Software

More and more organizations are looking to migrate services to the cloud and toward a more OPEX subscription billing experience — but how does that change affect the contact center? As the contact center technical architect for CDW’s research and development group, I spend much of my time looking at products and determining where they…

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RingCentral: Cloud Contact Center Product Review Series

In the first post of this series, we unpack the power of RingCentral’s Cloud Contact Center offering.

By Scott Petersen
|
January 3, 2020
Digital Workspace, Software

[sayit] As more companies look to migrate services to the cloud and embrace OPEX subscription billing, how does this relate to the contact center? As the contact center technical architect of CDW’s research and development group, I spend all my time looking at products and where they fit. Cloud contact center has been at the…

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How to Configure NTP — Part 3

The right NTP resource can make the difference between success and failure.

By Scott Petersen
|
August 6, 2019
Networking

In my first blog in this series about Network Time Protocol (NTP), I defined the relevant terms of this often-overlooked networking function. My second blog walked through the various NTP configurations options. This final blog will help you get started on the right foot by sharing both good and bad sources for NTP servers so…

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How to Configure NTP — Part 2

Knowing which configuration is right for you is key to NTP success.

By Scott Petersen
|
July 23, 2019
Networking

In my previous blog post in this series on Networking Time Protocol (NTP), I provided the definitions of terms that I’ll be using in this post to discuss the different configurations that are in use. When working with NTP, the guiding principle is known as Segal’s law. Segal’s law states, "A man with a watch…

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How to Configure NTP — Part 1

Synchronization of servers is an important networking task. Explore basic Network Time Protocol terms in this blog post, and then dive deeper into the topic in later posts.

By Scott Petersen
|
July 16, 2019
Networking

In this fast-paced world we work in, one of the things that is often overlooked on the network is, oddly enough, time. Time is critical in the function of all things on the network and, with the addition of services, it becomes even more critical. Inaccurate time on the network means inaccurate time on devices…

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Cloud Contact Centers Make a Splash at Enterprise Connect 2019

Speakers at this year’s convention focused on expanding cloud contact center capabilities.

By Scott Petersen
|
May 14, 2019
Software, Digital Workspace

Enterprise Connect 2019 recently concluded, and what was the big theme this year? Cloud Contact Center was front and center. Everyone from the up-and-comers to the big boys had announcements in this space. It was by far the largest Enterprise Connect so far, and there was great participation from all the vendors. So, without further…

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Great Expectations for v.12 of Cisco’s Contact Center Enterprise and Express

Improvements to both product lines bring them closer to consolidation, but they still remain unique.

By Scott Petersen
|
January 10, 2019
Software, Digital Workspace

Cisco Systems flagship Contact Center products, Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) and Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) have not had a major release for a while now. That is about to change in 2019: Due out mid-January, these products will release v.12. As the consolidation happens and the two products move closer together in features…

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Introducing Cisco’s New Speech Recognition Partner: LumenVox

The partnership brings LumenVox’s automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities to Cisco’s contact center solutions.

By Scott Petersen
|
October 30, 2018
Digital Workspace, Software

Cisco Systems’s flagship Contact Center solution, including both Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) and Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX), has had but one certified solution for its product on the automatic speech recognition/text-to-speech and voice biometrics front. That is now changing with the introduction of another option from LumenVox. Learning about LumenVox LumenVox’s offering has…

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Cisco’s Contact Center Is Now the Customer Journey Experience

Cisco Live showcases numerous ways to consume the company’s rebranded cloud contact center platform.

By Scott Petersen
|
July 27, 2018
Software, Cloud

With the acquisition of Broadsoft, Cisco is getting a true cloud contact center platform. The company announced the rebranding at Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando, ushering in the Cisco Customer Journey Experience. Broadsoft’s contact center product — now known as the Cisco Customer Journey Platform — is the first to adopt this new name. Customer…

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Cisco’s Cloud Contact Center Strategy: Now Less of a Haze, More of a Cloud

The company’s recent acquisition of BroadSoft is paying dividends in the contact center market.

By Scott Petersen
|
April 12, 2018
Cloud

[sayit]Cloud has been on many minds when it comes to contact centers. Cisco has its Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) platform, which is a part of its on-premises software to run in partner data centers and function as if it were a cloud. Many have considered this more of a haze than a cloud. But it…

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Cisco Smart Licensing Demystified

Get up to speed on a licensing development that is only going to grow.

By Scott Petersen
|
January 19, 2018
Software, Digital Workspace

For those who have not heard, Cisco Systems is shifting its licensing strategies. Gone — well, almost gone — are the days of PAK keys and questions on when to use it or not. The company has moved to a new licensing model, referred to as smart licensing. I say almost gone because not every…

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Cisco UCCE 11.6: Improving the Outbound Dialer

The core Cisco contact center solution gets a much-needed fix.

By Scott Petersen
|
October 6, 2017
Digital Workspace, Software

Cisco Systems flagship contact center, Unified Contact Center Enterprise or UCCE, has long been heralded as one of the best in its class for resiliency and redundancy. The system has been fully fault tolerant with the capability of being geographically dispersed between two data centers. Well, for the most part that is, because there has…

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New Contact Center Solutions Require Strategic Partnerships

Field Services will enhance your customer engagement using Cisco Contact Center

By Scott Petersen
|
July 12, 2017
Digital Workspace

CDW has long been associated with IT infrastructure and hardware; however, the professional services provided by CDW are not widely exposed. I’m the technical architect for our Professional Services on the Contact Center side, and after having several conversations with companies at Cisco Live, I thought it might be prudent to write this blog to…

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Cisco Contact Center Is Going Virtual

Two new products showcase Cisco’s growing commitment to virtualization in its collaboration line.

By Scott Petersen
|
April 24, 2017
Digital Workspace

Virtualization is here and more applications are becoming virtualized in the Cisco contact center space. This is a bold new world for Cisco as it leaves the hardware/IOS arena and moves to virtual appliance models. There are two specific devices that we are going to talk about here and what this means for customers. First,…

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How to Make the Move to Cloud for Contact Center Services

By Scott Petersen
|
November 18, 2016
Digital Workspace

Contact centers are morphing into customer care centers — the heartbeat for many organizations’ interactions with customers or constituents. “Customer care” means different things to different companies. But typically, a customer care center lets people communicate with an organization by phone, email, or web-based chat and instant messaging. A looming question for many companies in…

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Choosing the Best Customer Engagement Platform for You

By Scott Petersen
|
May 31, 2016
Digital Workspace

Today, every company needs some sort of customer engagement — whether they know it or not.  Customer engagement has metamorphosed to include not only external customers but internal customers as well.  There are many options out there for companies to choose from, but which is the best for you? This post focuses on Cisco products…

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Cisco Contact Center 11.Next

Are Revolutionary Upgrades on the Horizon?

By Scott Petersen
|
November 10, 2015
Digital Workspace

Cisco recently released its 11.0 software platform for both Enterprise and Express. They’ve added more features and functionality, reduced some complexities and overall delivered a newer product. But is this release truly revolutionary? Let’s begin by breaking down the Enterprise features added to the platform. Cisco changed the operating system to Windows Server 2012R2 and…

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The Customer Journey: A Look at Cisco’s Newly-Announced Cloud Context Service (Part 2)

By Scott Petersen
|
May 28, 2015
Cloud, Digital Workspace

Last quarter, we looked at the shift from multichannel to omnichannel, as well as the rich content that can be integrated into a Cisco Enterprise Contact Center. Cisco has a rich partner ecosystem which enables their software to do some extraordinary things, and that laid the foundation for moving them into this omnichannel world and…

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The Customer Journey: A Look at Cisco’s Revolutionary Contact Center (Part 1)

By Scott Petersen
|
February 27, 2015
Digital Workspace

Contact centers are now increasingly becoming more complex and complicated. With various avenues and roadways to communicate, we must adapt and conform to meet customer expectations.  Multichannel is so two years ago; now it’s omnichannel, which is essentially multichannel, but with one point of aggregation and a system framework. At the heart of it all…

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