Cisco is proposing new AI capabilities for several of its collaboration solutions. However, the framework of the announcement outlasted the announcement itself with a clear message: “Don’t forget us in the AI ​​hype.”

Cisco wants you to remember the company when it comes to AI. The company is therefore making some announcements on Cisco Live. What is most striking about a preview, however, is the scope of these announcements. Gordon Thomas, VP Technology Acceleration EMEA, spends almost more time representing Cisco as a historic AI specialist than the announcements themselves.

We hear at great length how Cisco has been collecting data and deriving insights from it for years. Especially with regard to collaboration tools, Cisco would like to make it clear that data analysis was already being dealt with before the AI ​​hype. We won’t dispute that, but the fact is that Cisco missed the train here, at least in terms of communication.

Generative AI and Cisco

When thinking about generative AI today, Microsoft, OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Google (Bard) are in the spotlight. That’s painful for Cisco, which hasn’t been successful with WebEx during the pandemic. Microsoft fared better with the new Teams and Google Meet also reaped the benefits, not to mention Zoom.

Cisco seems concerned that it will appear that these tools will also become more advanced than WebEx as AI is introduced. Thomas therefore emphasizes the large amounts of data and the smart functions that have historically existed in WebEx. Then it’s time for the announcements and we’re hungry.

AI Summaries

Soon you’ll be able to get recaps of Webex meetings you missed, with an added option to highlight key action points from the missed meeting. Beautiful and practical, and exactly the same thing Microsoft wants to build into Teams. The future will show who can bring the feature to market first.

The second feature is summaries of conversations. There, Cisco focuses on organizations that use bots in customer service, for example. If such a bot proves insufficient, a conversation can be escalated to a human along with the summary of the bot conversation. That way, the employee doesn’t have to go through the entire log. Beautiful and practical, and exactly the same as what Salesforce previously announced with Einstein GPT.

Wait

Cisco has a lot of data and expertise on collaboration tools, no one disputes that. The announced tools also look interesting. However, the company has already been searched by other players. In our opinion, First is certainly no better, and besides, an announcement is not the same as a wide availability release.

So who can get started with which tool and how well everything will work remains open. Cisco specifically wants you to know that it’s on the generative AI train, although we don’t feel the company has a place on the locomotive right now.