Patrick is joined by expert guest Stephen Milner, who is CEO of Ammi Systems.
Ammi Systems are an artificial intelligence, AI, consultancy firm who created UMA. UMA, which stands for unify, manage and assist, was designed to enhance the way businesses communicate, collaborate and plan by using AI and machine learning technology within its virtual assistant capacity.
Stephen explains the background behind developing the UMA solution. Ammi wanted businesses to be able to utilise virtual assistant technology that everyone has become familiar with, in consumer environments, in an enterprise setting. Using AI and ML technology UMA was able to initially enhance the booking of meeting rooms and spaces within large enterprises.
The rise in popularity of collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Webex Teams and Slack has created an opportunity for virtual assistant technology within those platforms and users can now leverage of the power of UMA within those. Stephen tells Patrick that UMA integrates into Webex, Slack and Microsoft Teams using a bot. The UMA bot then allows you to chat with UMA from within that chat platform.
Patrick then asks Stephen about how the UMA solution has developed over time. The team at Ammi quickly realised that its capabilities are not restricted to room booking and that it has potentially much wider capability within a businesses to help with other tasks.
“We see the possibilities are endless with AI – Our aim is to bring a true digital assistant into the market.”
Stephen tells Patrick about some of the immediate features that they are developing for the platform. As well as additional functions such as arranging travel, catering or administration requests they are currently developing the capability for users to be able to phone UMA and speak to the system for it to undertake any manner of different tasks. A truly effective digital assistant has a huge number of benefits as Stephen tells Patrick. Removing mundane repetitive tasks from different members of staff could have huge ramifications in terms of efficiency enhancements.
As well as improving efficiency a secure compliant solution would mitigate any ramifications in terms of shadow IT. Stephen tells Patrick that many organisations are unaware that virtual assistant devices, from the consumer world, are already being used internally within their businesses.
“We have spoken to a number of enterprises and we have found that users are bringing their own Alexa’s to work. They are already doing it so why not say to the enterprise, let us help you embrace that.”
Ammi have created UMA with security as one of its fundamental principles. There are several features that set it apart from consumer devices in terms of security and compliance. User authentication functions ensure only relevant users can access the tools and, unlike its consumer counterparts, UMA is not listening to general conversation, but has to be activated, therefore avoiding the inadvertent collection of potentially sensitive data.
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Presenter Patrick Watson and special guest Stephen Milner from Ammi Systems.
