Cisco welcomed over two thousand attendees to the fifth annual WebexOne in Florida last week, with over 15,000 virtual attendees.
The event did not disappoint, eclipsing the size of the inaugural in-person WebexOne hosted in California a year ago.
With the dust now settled, here are UC Today‘s top takeaways from the event.
AI Takes Centre Stage
Cisco revealed its Webex AI Assistant at WebexOne last year but went a step further this time by launching AI Agent.
AI Agent harnesses conversational intelligence and generative AI to automate contact centre inquiries, resulting in rapid and effective issue resolution, Cisco said.
Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, said: “At Cisco, we’re building AI solutions natively.
“We start product design with the assumption that AI is going to be in the core fabric of the product and an essential ingredient in how we reimagine customer experiences.
“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.”
AI Agent is complemented by AI Agent Studio, which simplifies the training and deployment of AI agents for business users and IT administrators, offering “unmatched” scalability and ease of use, Cisco said.
Cisco will make AI Agent and AI Agent Studio generally in Q1 next year. On-prem customer trials launch in Q2.
Cisco also revealed that Webex AI Assistant will be generally available across its cloud contact centre in Q1 2025.
AI Isn’t Just for CX
Cisco didn’t restrict the AI news to customer experience; a raft of updates also came from Webex’s collaboration side.
An AI-powered evolution of Vidcast will soon allow users to upload a PDF or PPT file and automatically generate a script and voice-overs in their preferred language and tone, saving time and enhancing the user experience.
Other new Vidcast features include improvements such as highlights, chapters, and transcripts, which aim to boost asynchronous communication in enterprises.
Slido has also been given an AI makeover, with the ability to recommend AI-generated polls in meetings or presentations.
“I think all of these announcements are going to be critical for employee engagement without having to lock employees up in meetings and calls,” said Amit Barave, Vice President of Product Management, Webex Suite & AI.
Distance Zero Meetings
AI is undoubtedly the hot topic at the moment, but several other big announcements were rivalling it from the limelight at WebexOne.
Cisco announced a deepening of its blossoming relationship with Apple that transforms any Cisco Room Bar Pro into a spatial video device via a software upgrade. These devices can then be used for spatial meetings on Apple Vision Pro headsets.
“We have been focused for a long time on what we call Distance Zero,” Snorre Kjesbu, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Cisco Collaboration Devices, said.
“Distance Zero is trying to really remove the barrier between people, try to make it zero distance between people, even when there are thousands and thousands of miles away.
“What we’ve done is take that to the next level with the Apple Vision Pro and spatial meetings.
“All of a sudden, you also have zero distance to objects because you can hold up an object, look at it true-to-colour, and really make it a design interaction.
“It’s useful for a lot more things, like an inspection of the factory floor, training sessions and a number of other use cases.”
Meeting Rooms are Still a Priority
No Webex event will be complete without a shiny new device, and this time, meeting room audio took centre stage.
Keeping with the Distance Zero theme, the Ceiling Microphone Pro was announced to huge applause during the keynote – with Cisco promising “truly immersive” audio in meeting rooms.
The device is powered by AI, making it an “industry-first adaptive microphone that automatically adjusts to speaker position and new room configurations.
“It really is the first AI-enabled microphone,” Kjesbu said.
“It has 64 microphones in a very intricate pattern that beamforms and picks up any person in a meeting room.
“More importantly, installing a ceiling microphone used to take days; now you just hang it there, and you have the AI do all the calibration in a minute or two. Then you get an optimal voice experience.”
Find out more about the later Webex announcements here.
