Edge terminology reset
December 15, 2021 – Genesys Cloud offers three telephony connection options: Genesys Cloud Voice, BYOC Cloud, and BYOC Premises. We often refer to Genesys Cloud Voice and BYOC Cloud as our Cloud Deployment Model (CDM) and to BYOC Premises as our Local Deployment Model (LDM).
Under LDM, Genesys Cloud supports an on-premises hardware device called an Edge that handles the actual media processing. Under CDM, Genesys Cloud provides a collection of multi-tenanted autoscaling microservices in the cloud that, among other things, handle media processing.
When describing CDM, we previously referred to our cloud technology as cloud-based Edges or Edge devices hosted in the cloud. In the user interface, we identified the cloud technology as a virtual Edge. While using the term Edge to describe our cloud technology helped us to get the idea across in the early days, it is not technically correct. There are no actual Edge devices in the cloud.
To reduce confusion between CDM and LDM as we move forward, Genesys Cloud is resetting some of our terminology in the user interface, in the Resource Center, and in other communications.
User interface
Resetting terminology in the user interface focuses on the Edges page. You’ll see changes for both the CDM and the LDM technologies.
Cloud media
If you use Genesys Cloud Voice or BYOC Cloud and you access the Telephony > Edges page, you’ll see that the Edge Name column now uses the term cloud-media-{instanceID} instead of virtual-edge-{instanceID}.
If you use BYOC Premises and access the Telephony > Edges > Edit Edge page, you’ll see new Model names in the information panel. These new names refer to the various BYOC Premises Edge hardware solutions that Genesys supports. The first two names identify existing hardware solutions while the third name designates a new offering.
Genesys Hardware Solution
A Genesys Hardware Solution Edge is a premises-based device sold by Genesys though our hardware partner, Arrow. For more information, see About BYOC – Genesys Hardware Solution.
Customer VM Solution
A Customer VM Solution Edge is a premises-based device that you configure in your data center on your hardware running Windows Server and Hyper-V to create a virtual machine. For more information, see About BYOC Premises – Customer VM Solution.
Customer Hardware Solution
A Customer Hardware Solution Edge is a premises-based device that you build yourself using hardware that you acquire from your preferred vendor. For more information, see About BYOC Premises – Customer Hardware Solution.
Provision a new edge
When you provision a BYOC Premises Edge hardware device, this new terminology appears on the Provision New Edge screen.
Resource Center
The documentation team made some changes in the Resource Center. To better align the Edge documentation with the BYOC Premises telephony connection options, all Edge documentation now appears under the BYOC Premises name. You’ll also see the addition of the term BYOC Premises to the titles of many of the articles about Edges. For more information, see About BYOC Premises.
These Resource Center changes allow the documentation team to lay the groundwork for documenting a new feature that allows you to combine all three of our telephony connection options in one organization. Currently, you can combine Genesys Cloud Voice with BYOC Cloud. However, if you are using BYOC Premises as your telephony connection, you cannot combine it with either Genesys Cloud Voice or BYOC Cloud. That’s about to change. More details on this new feature coming soon.
Release Notes
Along with these changes, the documentation team renamed and reformatted the Edge and Media Tier release notes. The updates to the media tier apply to all three of Genesys Cloud’s telephony connection options. The only real difference is in how the media tier updates are applied. With CDM, Genesys Cloud applies the media tier updates instantly. With LDM, you must download the media tier updates to your on-premises Edge device.
To better reflect this, we shortened the name to Media Tier release notes and reformatted the layout to focus on the enhancements and fixes. The release notes will reference all three telephony connection options and will differentiate between cloud and premises update availability. See Media Tier release notes.
