Over the past few years, Cyara, like so many other software companies, has moved to a cloud-first delivery model. With the Cyara Platform Cloud, you get an evergreen environment that is constantly on the current release, and has quick access to bug fixes and enhancements, as well as easy access to new product trials. And, with two completely redundant sites per region, our investments in hosting enable us to sustainably deliver less than 0.1% unplanned downtime.
It’s a topic I’m so passionate about that I am taking the opportunity to write my first post on the Cyara Blog to share with you the top reasons our clients are making the move to the Cyara Cloud.
#1: True Outside-In Testing
From a functional perspective, the Cyara Cloud is ideal for outside-in telephony testing because it most closely mimics the way your customers actually connect with you, allowing you to find issues anywhere along the communication path, including at the carrier level. I can’t begin to count how many previously undiscovered carrier reliability and functionality issues Cyara has identified for clients who are using large, seemingly reputable telecommunications carriers.
We are making additional investments that will underscore the need for true outside-in testing from the Cyara Cloud. In the coming quarter, we will be adding in-country dialing capabilities, to help our multinational clients accurately replicate customer dialing scenarios across the globe. And, we are developing mobile-dialing capabilities to mimic the increasingly common scenario of customers calling from their mobile device.
#2: Always on Current Version, with Rapid Access to New Features
We’ve already increased the frequency of our releases, and delivered 5 releases in 2017. And, we’re planning to accelerate the frequency of our releases even more in 2018. To make that possible, we’ve been investing in underlying architectural improvements to streamline the upgrade process.
And, with each release, we are delivering substantive new features. Let’s just take a look at what we delivered in 2017:
New Products
- New mobile application for production monitoring
- New product – Velocity – for Design-Driven Assurance
- Call Recording Validation for NICE and Verint
Enhancements to existing products
- New Visualizations – Executive Dashboard add-on for Pulse
- Better alerting – Improved alert management in Pulse
- More channel support – email channel supported in Cruncher and Pulse, and SMS channel supported for Replay, Velocity, and Pulse
- Automatic test case generation in Velocity (formerly in Crawler), plus the ability to create test cases from branches of an IVR, enhanced editing, and the ability to export Crawler IVR models to Microsoft Visio
- Improved agent testing – CVA can automatically re-login agents after an AGD is disconnected
- Better Integrations – enhanced HP Quality Center / ALM support, and an updated API
- Miscellaneous
- OAuth security
- Historical usage reports
- New user roles in the Cyara Portal
- Wide array of usability and performance enhancements.
With the pace of innovation that we are delivering while still maintaining stability through full regression test passes, you simply can’t afford to not be on the current release. And, it is not practical or economical for our clients to manage upgrades monthly or every other month.
#3: Eliminates Expenses Associated with Hardware
With the Cyara Cloud, Cyara is responsible for all hardware, removing these as separate costs you have to carry in your budget. Not only do you eliminate the need to purchase physical hardware to support Cyara on your premises, but you also save on the labor costs associated with installation, upgrades, and refreshes of the hardware. Today, clients who need to upgrade their on-premises system also need to budget for services either from Cyara or a partner to assist in the upgrade. When you move to the Cyara Cloud, we manage all this for you.
#4: Shifts Responsibility for Security Audits and Patches
Since Cyara manages the hardware, OS, databases, and many other software dependencies, the responsibility for security audits and patches will fall to us. Not only do you save time and resources, but we’re better equipped to manage this process, because we staff a team of professionals whose sole job it is to manage hardware used for the Cyara Platform. These professionals are certified Cyara Gurus, steeped in Cyara technology, have tons of experience troubleshooting the technology, and share expertise with each other. In short, they have an advantage in skills and experience because it’s all they do, every day. For an on-premises client to effectively manage the upgrades, audits, and patches would require significant training, and Guru Certification. Even then, the expertise would not rival what Cyara offers to clients on the Cyara Cloud.
#5 Improves Troubleshooting
It is also easier for our support team to troubleshoot issues in the Cyara Cloud. Identifying issues with an on-premises instance that are caused by network or server management practices Cyara doesn’t know about (and possibly are in conflict with our Deployment Guide) make it very challenging for us to effectively troubleshoot. This slows down issue resolution. Our Customer Delivery Team can help troubleshoot these issues, but that requires additional expenses for PS hours. And, our on-premises clients frequently experience issues granting us access to their on-premises platform for support. With the Cyara Cloud we have complete visibility and control, and our Customer Support Team can more quickly and effectively troubleshoot and resolve issues. Even better, access to our Customer Support Team is included in your subscription.
What about Security?
For many clients, security is the biggest concern with moving to SaaS. Let me first say that we’ve been listening and are investing in many popular security features in the product such as firewall upgrades, encrypting all data at rest, and using an Identity Service providing OAuth token-based security for both internal and external API use. And whereas we already encrypt at the storage level, later this calendar year we will be going further and offering encryption at the application level for clients who treat their test interaction data as sensitive. And of course, monthly security patches on our servers are standard at Cyara.
It is also important to note that industry best practices for test automation are to utilize test data associated with records designated for testing purposes, and never real customer data, to conduct testing. When using test data, the Cyara Platform would never encounter or need to store any confidential data, such as PII, associated with a genuine end customer.
Take Action Today
The world is changing and technology is increasingly being delivered through a SaaS model. More and more organizations are changing their policies to take advantage of the benefits of SaaS from a broad range of vendors. Aligning with that trend, we have been seeing increasing adoption of SaaS, even amongst our largest clients. If you are a current Cyara client with an on-premises instance, and have not yet started the dialog with us on moving to SaaS, now is the time. Please chat with your Account Executive today to find out how you can benefit from the Cyara Cloud.