Virtual Assistants have emerged as an almost natural part of our everyday life today. Spend enough time with a Google Home, Amazon Echo, or Microsoft Cortana product in your home, and speaking to a digital helper will quickly become something that you take for granted.
These easy-to-use, yet highly advanced pieces of technology have changed the way we interact with technology on a fundamental level. We use them to check the weather forecast, order food, and even play music. So, what happens if you bring that level of convenient functionality with you into the workplace? That's a question that Cisco could be answering soon, with the delivery of their new "Cisco Spark Assistant".
Your New Virtual Office Assistant
Imagine a world where you don't have to worry about writing down notes during a meeting so that you can type up a report a couple of hours later, or finding a room to hold a conference with a huge, important client. A virtual assistant, such as the new solution offered by Cisco, could simplify the meeting process for you, all the way from arranging the call, to ensuring that you have the right data compiled in your files by the time you sign off for the day.
Cisco Spark Assistant is the only enterprise-ready voice assistant to hit the market up to now, and it's already making some waves in the business space. Designed specifically to simplify your meetings, the Spark Assistant comes from Cisco's recent acquisition of the AI company MindMeld, which allowed them to develop a new deep-domain conversational machine learning algorithm.
Using MindMeld's expertise, Cisco could enable cognitive solutions in the existing Cisco Spark platform, to make it an all-around AI-powered strategy for collaboration. According to the brand, the solution will help you to focus before, during, and after a meeting, so you can start meetings, call co-workers, navigate Spark devices and more within seconds.
Addressing the Future of Virtual Assistants with Cisco
The Cisco Spark Assistant will be rolled out in phases, to help the company continuously make improvements based on customer feedback. The idea, as with any AI strategy, is to allow the program to learn and become more intuitive with time so that it gradually grows more intuitive, and accurate.
