New AI-Powered Cisco Collaboration Products And Features Unveiled At WebexOne 2024
Here’s a look at the products updates, hardware and AI-enhanced features that the tech giant launched this week during WebexOne 2024.
Cisco on Wednesday during its annual WebexOne event came armed with a smattering of AI-inspired updates to its Webex portfolio as the pace of AI innovation accelerates, including for Webex Calling and Contact Center. The company also unveiled new collaboration hardware and smart workspace management to delight end users, IT administrators, and channel partners alike. It's safe to say that Cisco wants security and AI to be synonymous with its Webex platform.
"I'm quite proud of the recognition that we're getting for our efforts, as well as all the momentum that we're seeing with our product lines, whether that is 16 million plus users who trust us with Webex calling, or a 75 percent increase in our contact center seats year over year. In fact, our WebEx contact center business is the fastest growing cloud business within Cisco, and I'm talking businesses of large sizes, several hundreds of billions of dollars," Anurag Dhingra, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Collaboration, told reporters and analysts ahead of the show.
CRN rounded up the latest collaboration products and AI features that the tech giant unleashed this week at WebexOne 2024 event. Here’s how Cisco is bolstering the Webex platform.
Webex AI Agent
Cisco executives said that the company is seeing "amazing traction and momentum" in AI adoption, especially with AI Assistant embedded into WebEx meetings. With customer experience in mind, Cisco has rolled out Webex AI Agent.
It's a self-service concierge that can handle customer inquiries with conversational intelligence in that it has been designed to sound like a natural, non-robotic voice that can quickly switch gears or swap in new context and resolve numerous customer inquiries, even if a customer changes their mind or asks a different question. Cisco said this will cut down the complexity and frustration that exists today and will free up contact center agents to focus on higher touch and relationship-based customer service.
"We believe that in the next few years, a large majority of first-time calls will be handled by an AI Agent that will be just as interactive, dynamic, engaging and personable as a human agent," Jeetu Patel, Cisco's executive vice president and chief product officer, said of the Webex AI Agent.
AI Agent Studio
Webex AI Agent will include a design tool on the backend that simplifies the process of training and deploying AI Agents in minutes for users and IT administrators. The AI Agent Studio allows contact centers to quickly deploy a voice or digital AI agent in minutes and select which AI models are used to support specific customer inquiries. It's what Cisco is calling an "AI front door" to reduce calls in the contact center.
Webex AI Agent along with the AI Agent Studio will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premise customers in Q2 2025.
Available right now within the Webex Contact Center are AI-powered analytics to boost agent, supervisor, and business performance for improved customer interactions and contact center operations.
Cisco Spatial Meetings
Distance Zero, a term that Cisco has coined aimed at making all meeting attendees feel like they are in the same room, was the inspiration for Spatial Meetings.
Cisco Spatial Meetings is a feature that lets businesses turn any space with a Cisco Room Bar Pro into a 3D studio with spatial video experiences for Webex for Apple Vision Pro users. With any new or existing Room Bar Pro device and an Apple Vision Pro, users can do things like product demos, remote training, education and more with increased video depth and dimension, Cisco said.
Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro
Meeting attendees joining remotely have a screen to themselves and a dedicated microphone. Cisco has been on a mission to improve the conference room experience so that each in-person attendee can also be featured and easily heard for remote attendees.
The new Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro is equipped with AI-powered adaptive beamforming technology that automatically adjusts to a speaker's position in the room and any changes to room configuration to capture natural conversation wherever it is occurring in the space. Cisco said that the new ceiling microphone also works with existing Cisco cameras and room systems to deliver an integrated and immersive meeting experience.
Smart Workspace Management
Cisco unveiled a handful of new offerings, features, and integrations aimed at facilitating flexible work environments as end users blend in-office and working from home. The first is Workspace Designer, a blueprint-like tool that automates the design and customization of hybrid workspaces by guiding users through furniture, platform, and product choices based on their requirements.
For IT professionals and integrators, Cisco also released Smart Diagnostics in Control Hub, a feature that lets administrators resolve issues on RoomOS and MTR devices in real time with an easy-to-understand explanation of why an issue occurred and actionable suggestions for resolving device issues. Cisco also announced that it was integrating its network intelligence tool ThousandEyes into its Desk Phone 9800 Series and within Webex Calling, which will let administrators monitor and troubleshoot issues within Webex Calling and the Desk Phone 9800 Series in real-time, to identify the exact location of the problem, the company said.