Rapid Changes Ahead for the Modern Workplace
Patel began by noting that the workplace continues to evolve. “If you think about the workplace of tomorrow, it’s going to be very different from the workplace of today, because we’re going to have many, many, many agents that are working on our behalf. We’re going to have robots, we’re going to have humanoids, we’re going to have IoT devices, we’re going to have collaboration capabilities.”
All of these new forms and uses of technology will necessitate evolving security strategies, Patel said. “There’s going to be threats from a cybersecurity perspective that we haven’t even started to imagine yet, because all of those threat actors have the same tools that we do to get productive.”
Patel explained that not only will the workplace itself be changing, the workforce will also be fundamentally different, largely because of agentic artificial intelligence. “If you think about the workforce today, it's largely people communicating with people. As you move forward, we’re going to have people communicating with AI. Each one of us will be a manager of agents. Each one of us is going to have multiple sidekicks, multiple companions that are going to help us get our work done in a more productive way. And then, AI agents are going to talk to each other and actually start to get jobs done.”
"The reality of modern business is that you win or lose your customers every single day through the quality of the customer experiences you deliver,” Patel said in a Sept. 30 press release. “AI is the key to delivering amazing customer experiences at scale. And, as AI and human agents increasingly collaborate to drive interactions, businesses will need platforms and tools designed to deliver quality experiences while moving faster than ever.”
DIVE DEEPER: Find out how to reduce friction in the customer experience.
Cisco Announces New Capabilities Embedded in Webex
Patel brought on Anurag Dhingra, Cisco’s senior vice president and general manager of enterprise connectivity and collaboration, to highlight enhancements Cisco has made to leverage agentic AI. “Today I want to talk to you about even better capabilities that we’re bringing into our portfolio, starting with the Cisco AI Assistant integrated in Webex,” Dhingra said.
Dhingra stated that Cisco’s AI Assistant, which was introduced two years ago, “has become a core tool for our users to do their daily work, summarizing meetings, creating highlights out of your recordings, being able to quickly catch up on part or all of a meeting that you. All of that has become essential to how we work, and now it’s time to upgrade the Cisco AI Assistant experience with brand-new capabilities.”
At the event, Dhingra announced that Cisco AI assistant now can provide “access to all of your interactions across all of your meetings, and all of the recordings and messages and calls — even content like summaries and transcripts.” In addition, the enhancements allow users to search across all enterprise content courtesy of its integration with Amazon Q index. Patel talked about the next phase of AI, and how, to truly realize the potential of this connected intelligence, we need to leverage identity AI capabilities. “So, we’re excited to announce that we’re bringing AI agents to the Webex suite, five new agents to bring advanced capabilities to automate routine tasks that all of us do as part of our daily life,” Dhingra said.
