IBM and Cisco are partnering to form a suite of cloud-based workplace tools and applications infused with IBM Watson. As part of the transformation, the Cisco Spark and WebEx collaborative workspace platforms will be integrated with IBM’s cloud collaboration solutions, including Verse and Connections, and underpinned by IBM’s cognitive computing capabilities.
The companies are combining IBM’s advanced analytics, Watson, and email and social offerings with Cisco’s collaboration solutions, including business messaging, meeting and calling offerings.
With Watson powering a joint IBM-Cisco solution, backed by IBM’s partner ecosystem, new classes of solutions will emerge, IBM predicted. “The irony of many workforce tools available today is that with because there are so many to choose from, they can reduce employee effectiveness,” said Inhi Cho, general manager for IBM Collaboration Solutions. “With our combined technology strengths and understanding of how teams get work done, IBM and Cisco can deliver the next generation of collaboration tools needed to cultivate innovation and drive productivity. By incorporating analytics and cognitive technologies into these solutions, we expect them to be able to learn what is important, in context, and take the right actions on behalf of the user.”
The goal is for the combined IBM and Cisco offerings to be integrated to connect on behalf of users to complete mundane tasks such as scheduling and note-taking, and proactively bring people and content together in the context of specific tasks.
The new solutions will incorporate structured and unstructured data in any form, whether from on-premises, the desktop, or the cloud. With applications to handle hundreds of work-related tasks, they are built to seek, consume and analyze all types of data, uncover meaningful workflow patterns, and provide actionable insights through the course of daily activities and interactions.
The joint solutions will employ IBM Watson and Connections APIs as well as Cisco Spark and WebEx APIs. This enables solutions to take action on routine tasks like prioritizing complex and chaotic collaboration and communication environments and connecting users to cognitive sources of expertise in the moment they need them.
For more information, visit www.ibm.com/social-business/us-en/announce/ibm-cisco.
For more about IBM Collaboration Solutions, visit https://ibm.biz/BdrcCY.
For more about Cisco Collaboration Solutions, visit www.cisco.com/go/collab.