It has been one of the most tumultuous weeks in the recent history of the UC&C space and technology industry, so let’s take stock.
We’ve had the SVB crisis threatening to flip the tech industry by wiping out the account of more than a hundred startups. We have a potential global downturn arriving stealthily in slow-burning fashion with company restructuring and job cuts described now as ‘ongoing’ rather than finalised, where Meta announced it was cutting 10,000 more of its staff this week. It is the year of cost-watching, indeed.
Simultaneously Microsoft kept upping the ante and announced ‘Copilot‘ for Microsoft 365, hot on the heels of OpenAI unveiling ChatGPT-4. Alphabet meanwhile proved how high the stakes were in the race to be first to market when it lost $100 billion in market value after its Bard AI model produced a factual error in its demo for Google.
Across the UC space, we’ve had a flurry of announcements from the likes of Slack, RingCentral, Salesforce, Zoom, GoTo and Vonage, letting be known they have AI in their services, products and operations.
More than this was the culmination and recognition of Azure Cloud’s supercomputing story, a relationship with OpenAI, revealing how Microsoft got here, spearheading the AI race. In what could be the biggest story of the week, apart from being a new age of work for Microsoft 365 and Teams users, we are now in the new era of industrialisation for computer processing. Why is this important?
Well, Azure Cloud supercomputers are not only ready to accommodate the millions upon millions of AI inferences to come, but they will also be able to facilitate companies looking to get a piece of the AI pie.
Let’s look at our usual presentation of the best cuts from unified communications in our UC Big News below.
Microsoft Launches Copilot: ‘The Most Powerful Productivity Tool on the Planet’
Satya Nadella has heralded the dawn of a new era of AI as Microsoft launches Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Copilot builds on the hype of ChatGPT and large language models and is designed to boost the productivity of Microsoft 365 users.
Speaking during a prerecorded virtual event, Nadella and Microsoft execs showed the AI-powered software drafting emails, creating PowerPoint presentations, writing Word documents and analysing sales data in Excel.
Nadella said: We’re at the start of a new era of computing,” he said.
“Over the past few months, powerful new foundation models, together with accessible natural language interface, have ushered in an exciting new phase of AI.
“For the first time, we have access to as empowering as powerful AI.”
Copilot is designed to learn from how users work and take on mundane tasks using natural language. In the example of email creation, the demo showed Copilot writing a first draft before the user tweaked the text.
During the PowerPoint demo, Copilot was shown creating an entire presentation to celebrate a student’s graduation, including graphics, text and images of the student. Later in the event, it transformed a Word document into a full presentation.
In OneNote, Copilot created a plan and checklist for planning a party, while Excel pulled out data-related trends and created graphs to visualise the results.
Microsoft showed other uses spanning the complete Microsoft 365 portfolio, including Dynamics, Outlook, and Power Platform.
- Microsoft Mesh Avatars to Roll Out in May for Teams and Zoom
- Meta to Make 10,000 More Job Cuts in “New Economic Reality.”
- SVB Collapse: HSBC Buys UK Wing After Tech Industry Plea to Government
Zoom Hits Home Run With Major League Baseball Partnership
Zoom has struck a baseball partnership deal with Major League Baseball, becoming MLB’s Official Unified Communications Platform.
Zoom Contact Center and the Zoom platform technology will be implemented for some game and broadcast elements.
The prestigious role means Zoom will also be the Presenting Partner for MLB Replay Review, and MLB will introduce the first league broadcast look-in from the Zoom Replay Operations Center.
Baseball fans will get unprecedented transparency and enhanced communication between front office staff, judges and league officials facilitated by Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Events and Zoom’s all-in-one collaboration platform.
MLB Chief Operations & Strategy Officer Chris Marinak stated: “We are always looking for innovative ways to leverage best-in-class technology to advance the MLB experience and deliver more to our fans.
“Partnering with Zoom, a category leader that reinvented how we connect, was a natural next step for us.”
Marinak added: “We are excited to integrate Zoom Contact Center and other Zoom platform technology into our gameday operations and continue to modernise experiences in a secure, reliable, and innovative way.”
RingCentral Replaces Top HR Firm’s On-Premise Legacy
RingCentral has won the deployment of its UCaaS and CCaaS platform services for human resources firm MMC.
Installing RingCentral’s business cloud system will replace MMC’s on-premise legacy communications.
Established 40 years ago, LA-based MMC is a leading HR outsourcing service provider in the US, with over 8,500 employees nationwide.
The firm covers a range of sectors, providing human resources for organisations and companies in healthcare, education, technology and real estate to financial services, accounting and venture capitalists.
After migrating 3,000 employees to RingCentral MVP, the HR firm realised significant reductions in corporate communications costs. It has now ordered the UCaaS service as a replacement to improve customer experience, streamline employee workflows, and reduce IT costs. The RingCentral MVP platform includes team messaging, video meetings, and a cloud phone system.
Raul Terrazas, Manager of Information Technology at MMC, stated: “What sets us apart from the larger competitors is our white glove service delivery. We care about our customers’ experience and aim to ensure the highest service delivery possible. This means being accessible to clients with questions, concerns, or e assistance.
“With RingCentral, we can now seamlessly communicate with clients from virtually anywhere using our office phone, mobile, or PC.”
Google Launches Generative AI for Workspace
Google provides testers access to its new generative AI writing features for Google Workspace.
The features will help users to draft, summarise, and reply to emails in Gmail, write and proofread in Docs, auto-generate media in Slides, draw insights and analysis in Sheets, create backgrounds and notes in Meet, and enable workflows in Chat.
Google plans to make the AI updates publicly available, following a review phase carried out through its trusted tester programme over the year.
Johanna Voolich Wright, Vice President, Product, Google Workspace, said:
“We’re now making it possible for Workspace users to harness the power of generative AI to create, connect, and collaborate like never before.
“To start, we’re introducing a first set of AI-powered writing features in Docs and Gmail to trusted testers.
“As the world’s most popular and secure cloud-native communication and collaboration suite, getting this right — and at scale — is something we take very seriously.
Generative AI, the breakthrough technology which can create text, images, and audio on request, is now being integrated into Google Docs and Gmail.
Users of both docs and Gmail can use the AI integration to generate instant drafts on any chosen topic. The tool can subsequently be used to make edits and create further suggestions. A rewriting function is also included to help users capture the right tone and include content they would like to be included.
Google says that it recognises artificial intelligence is no replacement for people and, per its AI Principles, ensures that the user retains complete control over the AI software.
Slack Deploys ChatGPT to Give Platform Superpowers
Slack has announced that it will introduce the ChatGPT app for its platform and help increase efficiency for its estimated ten million-plus daily users.
Built by OpenAI, the app integrates ChatGPT’s powerful AI technology to provide instant conversation summaries, research tools, and writing assistance within Slack, powering millions of businesses with their productivity.
“OpenAI has been a great Slack customer, and we’re even more excited for them to be an amazing Slack partner,” stated Noah Desai Weiss, Chief Product Officer at Slack. “The ChatGPT app for Slack deeply integrates the power of OpenAI’s cutting-edge large language models into Slack’s conversational interface.
“This will give customers new superpowers by helping them tap the collective knowledge of their organisation’s channel archives. We’re excited to partner with OpenAI to bring more generative AI powers into Slack to deliver productivity efficiencies for everyone.”
Working with over 2,600 integrations in the app ecosystem, the ChatGPT app will give customers control to manage third-party access to Slack data. However, data that the app can access will not be used to train ChatGPT’s language model.
GoTo Deploys ChatGPT for UC and IT Support
GoTo enhances its UCC, and IT segments by integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its GoTo Customer Engagement and GoTo Resolve products.
The business communications software provider, GoTo, has launched an early availability look at its beta ChatGPT message assistant for its new GoTo Customer Engagement solution. The update will aid message writing and campaign creation to increase the speed of response to customers and save time for employees.
GoTo is also planning to integrate a ChatGPT integration in beta to its IT management and support solution, GoTo Resolve. The company believes this will ease the creation and running of IT automation scripts to increase employee productivity.
Damon Covey, SVP, Head of Product at GoTo, said: “Doing more with less seems to be the phrase of 2023. Businesses face fewer resources to handle more complex challenges and struggle with utilising their most important asset – their people.
“At the same time, you can’t skim through the news without hearing about AI, bots, machine learning, and now ChatGPT, a language model created by OpenAI that can respond to user prompts and answer questions using human language in near real-time.
“While the robots were once seen as a threat to human jobs, this new AI is quickly becoming a massive boon to helping human employees get more done in less time.
