Acombination of cognitive computing and collaborative workplace tools is aiming to change the way people work. Cisco and IBM announced a new partnership yesterday that will bring the cloud Relevant Products/Services collaboration abilities of IBM’s Verse and Connections to Cisco's Spark and WebEx platforms.
The partnership will allow the collaboration services of the companies to talk to each other. "IBM Connections Cloud Social and IBM Verse will both be 'Cisco aware,' giving them a wide range of collaborative enhancements, including better integration with Cisco Spark and WebEx," Cisco senior vice president Jens Meggers wrote on his blog.
Similarly, Cisco Spark and WebEx will be "IBM aware," he added. "This means that you can host a meeting or call a coworker almost instantaneously from a variety of enterprise Relevant Products/Services applications," Meggers said. Collaboration tools will also be enabled with integrated enterprise cloud features.
One Platform, All the Solutions
The goal, Meggers explained, is to build a single, open, integrated platform that can deliver key applications to clients from the cloud while taking advantage of the computing power of IBM's Watson platform to analyze unstructured data. That could include conversations, content, or workflow. Watson will then use any insights gleaned from the analyses to improve the workflows of the teams.
While Watson will provide the analytics capabilities, Cisco brings its collaboration tools to the table, including business messaging, meeting, and calling tools.
To illustrate how the new partnership will combine the business offerings of both companies, Cisco offered this example: A financial advisor might meet with an investor over Cisco video with a Watson service offering real-time advice and handling tasks, while files would be securely stored and available in IBM Connections, shared through WebEx.
Increasing Efficiency
Tools from the partnership could also help improve worker productivity. "The irony of many workforce tools available today is that... because there are so many to choose from, they can reduce employee effectiveness," said Inhi Cho, general manager, IBM Collaboration Solutions, in a statement.
With their combined technology strengths and understanding of how teams get work done, Cho said IBM and Cisco can deliver the next generation of collaboration tools that are needed to cultivate innovation and drive productivity. "By incorporating analytics and cognitive technologies into these solutions, we expect them to be able to learn what is important, in context, and take the right actions on behalf of the user," Cho said.
The ultimate goal is to combine the offerings of both companies in such a way that they can connect seamlessly on behalf of users to complete mundane tasks, such as scheduling and note taking, as well as bringing workers and content together in the context of specific tasks.
The new offerings will incorporate structured and unstructured data from on-premises sources, the desktop, and the cloud. The joint solutions will utilize IBM Watson and Connections APIs as well as Cisco Spark and WebEx APIs, which the companies said will make it possible to optimize routine tasks.
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