ORLANDO, Fla., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Imagine
you're walking into a conference room for a big meeting.
The screen on the wall wakes up as you enter. "Hi," it says.
It calls you by name. "I see in your calendar that you have a
meeting that starts in five minutes—want to join now?"
"Not yet," you say. You need to talk to someone first. "OK,
Webex, call Susan."
There are 199 "Susan's" in your company directory, but the
system seems to know which one you mean. "Susan Lee?" It asks. "Yep!" you say. It connects
you. You talk with Susan and say goodbye.
"Your meeting starts in two minutes—want to join now?" the
screen asks. "Sure!" you say. "Let's do it." Three people you've
never met are in the meeting when you join. Each person's name and
title appear on the screen just below her face. You glance at your
laptop just as the system serves up a profile for each of
them.
If you're one of the 300 million people who use the Cisco Webex®
platform every month, you won't have to imagine this. You will
experience it soon. We call it Cognitive Collaboration, and our new
research indicates nine out of ten people are pounding the table to
use it. See it in action here.
Bringing Context and Intelligence to Meetings
On the
Webex design team we're always thinking of how we can make meetings
better. Sure, you need great sound and video and screen sharing.
But technology can do so much more. It can be like that great
assistant who not only takes care of the technical stuff but also
slips you useful notes in the middle of the conversation. This
context and intelligence helps you build stronger
relationships, have better conversations with customers and make
smarter, faster decisions.
For us, this isn't about bolting on a few gimmicky AI-powered
features. It's a mindset. We know Webex can remove tedious
tasks, help you get and stay engaged and make life at work easier.
Just imagine how these new features could improve your work
day.
- People Insights gives you professional
profiles about the people you're meeting—in real time. Keep in mind
we use context and intelligence to serve these up—so even if you're
meeting someone with a common name like John Smith we will give you the right
John Smith. (Try looking him up with
a simple web search and you'll get lots of useless information on
lots of wrong John Smiths! And if you happen to be meeting with a
different John Smith later in
the day, Webex will know that too.)
And these aren't static, one-dimensional profiles. We scour the
Web for publicly available information to create a living,
breathing profile of the people and companies you care about, and
we keep these up to date with the latest news. (You also get to see
your profile that is visible to others, and if something shows up
that you don't like, you can always edit it.) This is available as
a trial now, with general availability slated for June.
- Webex Assistant is what is behind two of the
new features in the example above. The assistant's new Proactive
Join lets you walk into the room and be asked if you want to
join your meeting. To accomplish this, we first needed to know who
you are (which we do thanks to an innovation called intelligent
proximity). Then we needed to be able to peek into the calendar to
see what's next. And Webex Assistant's new First Match let
Webex know you probably were trying to call Susan Lee. It feels a lot like magic—it looks at
the people in your own organization (via the company directory) and
scans your Webex Teams spaces to see who you talk to most to make
its best guess. In early field trials, Webex gave customers its top
three guesses. But its top pick proved right so often that
customers asked us to just serve up the first match. You can even
use it to add someone to a call already underway.
Webex Assistant, along with First Match technology, is generally
available now across the entire Webex Room Series. Proactive Join
is available on a limited basis now and will be generally available
in June.
- Facial recognition is what is attaches those
name/title labels to the three people you never met before in our
example. We've said before that video is "better than being there,"
and that certainly holds true here. Remote people need not
guess who's who in that big conference room filled with new faces.
This will be available in June.
"Cognitive Collaboration is a game changer for Cisco customers
across all industries," said Amy
Chang, SVP and GM, Collaboration Technology Group, Cisco.
"When we enable people to collaborate from wherever they are in a
way that's intuitive, easy and smart, we make their work and life
experiences better and more productive."
Additional Resources
- Watch Amy Chang's Enterprise Connect keynote tomorrow
(March 20) live streamed on Cisco.com
at 10 am eastern. Sign up here for a
reminder.
- Did you know that Webex is home base for more than 125Bn
meeting minutes each year? Take 60 seconds to learn more about the
reach of Cisco Collaboration by watching this video.
Customer and Partner Quotes
Jeff Lemmer, VP and CIO, Ford
Motor Company
"At Ford, we're always looking for new ways to
support our vision of frictionless collaboration and building
stronger teams. Tools and solutions that speed decision-making help
employees deliver value for our business and customers, and we're
excited to explore how cognitive collaboration could help us
accelerate."
Nemo Verbist, Group Executive
for Customer Experience and Digital Workplace, Dimension
Data
"Cisco's Cognitive Collaboration will enable our
customers and their teams to simplify the meeting experience. As a
global Cisco partner and leading provider of modern collaboration
services, we're excited to see how new capabilities like People
Insights and facial recognition will improve the collaborative
experience for our customers and ultimately support great customer
experience."
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that has
been making the Internet work since 1984. Our people, products, and
partners help society securely connect and seize tomorrow's digital
opportunity today. Discover more at newsroom.cisco.com and follow
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www.cisco.com/go/trademarks.
Availability Disclaimer: Many of the products and features
described herein remain in varying stages of development and will
be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. These products and
features are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and
Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure
to deliver any of the products or features set forth in this
document.
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