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Cortex vs Espressive Barista comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Espressive Barista
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (15th), AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilSharma1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides comprehensive network visibility and helps us identify threats efficiently
The product could be improved in several areas. The complexity and confusion regarding product variants, such as XDR, Forexiant, and Forexon, must be addressed. There is also a need for clearer differentiation between features and capabilities within Cortex's suite, as the overlap between XDR and XIM can be confusing. Improvements in the user interface and more intuitive KQL query handling could also enhance usability. Additionally, better support for various deployment scenarios and cost management options would be beneficial.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It was easy to integrate Cortex with existing infrastructure and other tech tools."
"The solution's stability is generally good."
"The solution's most valuable feature is writing playbooks."
"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"We have the ability to alter phrases, create new phrases, or enhance phrases, or change paths. From the dashboard, we are able to get a lot of information we need about what people are asking, where they are dropping off from conversations, and where they do not get the information they need."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"Our developers have used the Barista Control Center to extend the platform by adding content, and they've found it fairly easy to do and manage"
"The bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."
 

Cons

"The complexity and confusion regarding product variants, such as XDR, Forexiant, and Forexon, must be addressed."
"It would be more beneficial to integrate threat intelligence in Cortex."
"It's quite lagging and not very fast."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"What would make things easier is more detail, out of the box, about what is helping out of the box. We're struggling a little bit to get that data. We want more information about what Barista has brought in that the employees are using, out of the box. We want more visibility into the things that we ourselves haven't done the interaction for."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"Although they've done some work on their metrics dashboard, there is some fine-tuning to do for people that just want to go in there at a glance and see their metrics."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"My only comment would be if they wanted to use this as an IT service management tool, maybe they could think about Barista making tickets and having change management and problem management capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR is a costly solution."
"Cortex is an expensive solution."
"It's cheaper compared to its competitors."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."
"The solution is affordable."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cortex?
It would be more beneficial to integrate threat intelligence in Cortex.
What is your primary use case for Cortex?
With Cortex, we can automate the analysis of all the alerts. We use it to automate any kind of activity.
What do you like most about Espressive?
The most valuable feature is its scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Espressive?
Espressive has been very accommodating in trying to meet our needs and adapt to our current situation. User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant ...
What needs improvement with Espressive?
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex vs. Espressive Barista and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.