500-325 action - Cisco Collaboration Servers and Appliances Updated: 2023

Cisco (CSCO) unveiled new security suite at its annual partner summit.

Cisco Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins joined Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi to shed more light on Cisco’s big announcement and why investors should keep an eye on the roll out.

Robbins says the company's new AI-powered security offerings will center on “user, cloud, and breach, adding that the company's acquisition of Splunk (SPLK) will be “a big play” for the company in security.

A study from Cisco found that many companies are not ready for AI. Robbins sees this rollout as “an opportunity to help” to help those businesses, noting that customers are still “digesting” this move to generative AI.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Cisco this week introduced a new lineup of security suites for the modern era at its annual partner summit less than two months after announcing it would be acquiring tech firm Splunk in a major $28 billion agreement. The latest deal amplifying Cisco's investment in AI and digital security. I'm here with Cisco chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins. Chuck, always nice to get some time with you here. I know, big event down there, I believe, in Miami. What exactly did you announce, and why is it so important to investors?

CHUCK ROBBINS: Well, first of all, Brian, it's great to see you. And thanks for having me on. We had a-- we've had a great few days with our partners. You know, we have been a partner-led company for a very long time. And this week, we made-- well, last week actually, we made a lot of announcements around AI in our Webex, in our collaboration portfolio.

This week, we talked about a lot of AI announcements in our security portfolio. We announced new security suites that you just pointed out around user cloud and breach. This follows on a lot of announcements earlier this year around an extended detection and response platform that has got great momentum as we've rolled it out, as well as multi-cloud defense. And then, you reference the Splunk acquisition, which we think will be a big play for us in security. So it's been a good few months.

Story continues

BRIAN SOZZI: It's been a busy few months, Chuck. That much is for sure. I think you put out a study ahead of this, or in relation to this-- these new announcements. 70% of companies aren't prepared for the AI revolution. That has to worry, you know.

CHUCK ROBBINS: Well, it's an opportunity to help, honestly. It's-- we did an AI readiness survey. We've done this with cybersecurity for years. And we replicated it around AI. And I think that-- what it just shows is what you would probably expect at this point.

Customers are digesting all the new AI capabilities and the tools. They're trying to build their strategy right now. We happen to be in the technology industry. So we've been using predictive AI for a very long time. So the move to generative AI wasn't as big a jump.

But I think that customers will be looking at how they use AI internally to make themselves more efficient. How they use AI to engage with their customers more effectively. It'll represent an infrastructure opportunity for us as well as just guiding them. And it introduces a lot of security needs and things that they'll need to be thinking about on that front as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: I know, Chuck, Cisco has been, under your leadership, really focused on driving recurring revenue. Do these AI products facilitate that? Do they Boost your margins? And are they all pretty much fee based?

CHUCK ROBBINS: Well, most-- it depends. Some of our technology are simply, like, new capabilities within the security portfolio, or new capabilities within Webex. So if you have an AI assistant in our collaboration portfolio, that is going to supply you a natural language interface to check on what occurred in a meeting that you were 10 minutes late for.

I mean, those are just incremental features that increase the value of the platform. In other cases, we sell a lot of infrastructure that will help our customers build out their own AI capabilities. In many cases, there'll be subscriptions associated with that. So it's going to vary across the portfolio.

Reimagining Communication with Webex's Pervasive AI

News Summary:

• New Real-Time Media Models (RMMs) in Webex harnesses audio and video in powerful new ways.

• Customers benefit from crystal-clear audio and video regardless of bandwidth with the new Webex AI Codec.

• New Webex AI Assistant brings together RMM and Large Language Models (LLMs) to help hybrid workers and contact center agents do their jobs better.

ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- At WebexOne, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced a new AI strategy for Webex that will Boost communication and collaboration. Unlike AI offerings that solely focus on text or documents, Webex will use real-time communications for audio and video to solve everyday challenges, such as ensuring crystal-clear audio and video calls and meetings despite low bandwidth. Today, Cisco also announced the launch of its new Webex AI Assistant with new capabilities that will bolster productivity and accuracy for customers. The Webex AI strategy and Webex AI Assistant will be applied across the full Webex portfolio — The Webex Suite, Cisco Collaboration devices, Webex Contact Center, Webex Connect and Webex Control Hub. Customers like McLaren Racing and Team DSM are testing Webex's new AI capabilities.

"We're at the tipping point of a new era of hybrid work, with AI holding the key to helping us bridge the gap and enable us all to work and communicate to our full potential," said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration. "Our Webex platform has long enabled our rapid pace of innovation. Today's announcement is a monumental step forward, as customers will benefit from AI being pervasive in every aspect of the Webex platform."

Introducing Real-Time Media Models

Visual and audible cues like gestures and walking out of the room during a meeting provide invaluable context about human interactions. Cisco's new Real-Time Media Models (RMMs) in Webex will enhance audio and video quality. The models have the ability to take multiple media streams and produce multiple outputs, such as people and object recognition and action analytics like movement and gestures. RMMs in Webex will also enable audio and video channels to be used as signals of context in traditional text-based capabilities like meeting summaries and highlights. By uniquely fusing together AI for text, audio and video, Webex users will benefit from rich real-time insights. For example, in the future, Webex may be able to recognize that a meeting participant stepped away from a meeting, and capture meeting notes to bring that person up to speed when they return.

Story continues

New Webex AI Codec Helps Customers Achieve New Levels of Audio & Video Quality

People are regularly impacted by network impairments, which may have a direct impact on calls and meetings. For example, a user may experience disruption when connecting from their car, a hotel room, or a rural area with poor connectivity. Choppy audio or video often derails conversations and frustrates people — from meeting participants to customers calling into a business' contact center.

Cisco is unveiling a new AI Codec in Webex, a new generative AI solution that will redefine real-time communication and solve the challenge of audio quality. The audio Codec aims to deliver crystal-clear audio regardless of network conditions, even in areas with spotty connections. Webex's efficiency with its AI Codec allows for massive transmission redundancy to recover from network packet loss. Webex AI Codec also has built-in speech enhancement functions like noise removal, de-reverberation and bandwidth extension, to deliver unprecedented audio clarity.

Webex will similarly apply machine learning techniques to Boost video quality using Super Resolution. It will deliver high-definition meetings with amazing video quality regardless of bandwidth conditions.

Webex AI Assistant Helps Workers and Customers

The newly launched Webex AI Assistant will power a robust set of capabilities that empower people to do their best work. It will also minimize work and costs for IT, ultimately driving business value. Webex AI Assistant will prompt users with questions, like "ask me about the meeting," that users can respond to with typing sentences, such as "catch me up on the 15 minutes I missed in the meeting" or "catch me up on all the meetings I missed on Friday while I was on PTO," to generate answers in real-time. Webex AI Assistant is already natively integrated into Cisco Collaboration devices and will span the Webex portfolio. New Webex AI Assistant capabilities will include:

• Change Message Tone provides recommended changes to tone, format, phrasing in Webex Messaging and Slido. For example, the Webex AI Assistant may suggest changing a blunt response like "this isn't good; rework the summary," to a more professional option of "this is a fantastic document, but the upfront summary could use some improvement."

• Suggested Responses to messages for contact center agents responding to customers on digital channels. Suggestions of text are informed by context history and surrounding intelligence.

• Meeting Summaries will help users catch up on missed portions of meetings or entire meetings in real-time, with an easily digestible summary of what was missed. Meeting Summaries will be organized into chapters and highlights. With chapters, people can skip to various topics. For example, they may prefer to focus in-depth on the written portion of the finance discussion, then watch a brief video that summarizes the focus of the meeting in its entirety.

• Message Summaries help people stay up to date by recapping unread messages or recapping spaces. They are customized, so a user can ask Webex AI Assistant to summarize messages from their boss in a space that contains messages from multiple people, for example.

• Slido subject Summaries generate common subjects shared in interactive Q&A and polling during virtual and hybrid events for participants to easily navigate what's trending.

These new capabilities are in various stages of availability, with shipping planned to begin before the end of 2023.

Harnessing the Best Large Language Model Based on Use Case

Understanding that certain Large Language Models (LLMs) will be better suited than others based on the use case and training, Webex will use a combination of best-of-breed models. Webex's federated approach combines commercial, open source, Cisco-proprietary and select customer models to deliver the best possible experience.

Cisco's Approach to Responsible AI

Cisco has leveraged AI with natural language, audio intelligence, video intelligence and analytics for years—all designed with attention to security, privacy and human rights built in from the start. Realizing AI's significant promise while adhering to standards for transparency, fairness, accountability, privacy, security and reliability is an ongoing mission at Cisco. This is the promise of Cisco's Responsible AI Framework, which applies to our AI offerings. The Webex AI strategy and Webex AI Assistant capabilities are secure and align with Cisco's Responsible AI Framework.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals.  Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

About Webex by Cisco

Webex is a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration solutions which includes video meetings, calling, messaging, events, customer experience solutions like contact center and purpose-built collaboration devices. At Webex, we start with people and their experiences first. This focus on delivering inclusive collaboration experiences fuels our innovation, which leverages AI and Machine Learning, to remove the barriers of geography, language, personality, and familiarity with technology. Our solutions are underpinned with security and privacy by design. We work with the world's leading business and productivity apps – delivered through a single application and interface. Learn more at webex.com.

View original content to obtain multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cisco-unveils-webex-ai-strategy-at-webexone-301967407.html

SOURCE Cisco Systems, Inc.

Cisco introduced several AI-focused tools today at the Webex One customer conference designed to Boost performance and provide a level of automation around meeting-related tasks.

The company has been running a large language model against Webex to provide things like a meeting transcript and translation, but it wanted to develop a model that was specifically designed for Webex use cases, ones where an LLM wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate. Jeetu Patel, EVP & GM for the security and collaboration business units at Cisco, says that every company is taking their own data sets and applying them to some foundational LLMs, but it wanted to create a new model designed to go further than that.

“We’re launching a real time media model, we’re calling an RMM, which sits side by side with a large language model. And it basically uses generative AI for audio and video in new and powerful ways,” Patel told TechCrunch. “This is [designed] for audio and video to add more texture and context to the text that’s there.”

He says that RMM functions involve things like noise removal, gesture recognition, speech and video enhancement, among other things.

In conjunction with the RMM, the company is also announcing an AI-powered audio codec. “We built a brand new audio codec using AI, and it’s going to actually be up to 16 times more efficient in the use of bandwidth [than prior codecs],” he said.

He says that means that instead of using 16 kilobits to send a packet, you could do it with just one kilobit, and even less than that sometimes. And not only does the new codec require a lot less bandwidth to generate higher quality audio, but when you have packet loss, the AI aspect of the codec helps recreate dropped packets to help keep the quality high.

“This AI codec will be able to make sure that you can recreate aspects of the lost packets. And so you will be able to have up to 80 or 90% packet loss at times, and still be able to go out and get crystal clear audio,” Patel said.

Another piece is what the company is calling the Webex AI Assistant, which is designed to pull together all of the AI tooling for users in a coherent way. It will provide an LLM-driven set of functions like helping craft messages, suggesting changing the tone of a message and providing meeting and message summaries in Webex, while working with RMM to provide additional functionality.

For instance, it can also be used to detect when you step away by leaving a placeholder, and then helping you fill in what you missed when you were gone with summaries, action items or a replay of the highlights of the meeting if you missed the entire thing.

Privacy often becomes a concern with AI tools like these, and Patel says the company is trying to respect customer and individual user privacy to the extent possible. “As stated in our Responsible AI Principle on Privacy ‘when AI uses personal data or makes decisions for or about a person, privacy controls must be designed into the supporting technology to assure that personal data usage is permitted, purpose-aligned, proportional and fair,’” he said.

In plain language, that means the company is saying that it puts the customer and user in control of how the data is used. The company says in the context of today’s announcements that employees will be able to turn off the “away from computer feature,” if they are thinking about management surveillance. In addition, they pointed out that the company doesn’t use customer data to train its various models.

The Webex Assistant will start shipping later this year. The assistant with RMM enhancements like the “away from computer” feature will be released in the first part of 2024. The AI audio codec is scheduled to ship in the first half of 2024.

Reimagining Communication with Webex's Pervasive AI

News Summary:

• New Real-Time Media Models (RMMs) in Webex harnesses audio and video in powerful new ways.

• Customers benefit from crystal-clear audio and video regardless of bandwidth with the new Webex AI Codec.

• New Webex AI Assistant brings together RMM and Large Language Models (LLMs) to help hybrid workers and contact center agents do their jobs better.

ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- At WebexOne, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced a new AI strategy for Webex that will Boost communication and collaboration. Unlike AI offerings that solely focus on text or documents, Webex will use real-time communications for audio and video to solve everyday challenges, such as ensuring crystal-clear audio and video calls and meetings despite low bandwidth. Today, Cisco also announced the launch of its new Webex AI Assistant with new capabilities that will bolster productivity and accuracy for customers. The Webex AI strategy and Webex AI Assistant will be applied across the full Webex portfolio — The Webex Suite, Cisco Collaboration devices, Webex Contact Center, Webex Connect and Webex Control Hub. Customers like McLaren Racing and Team DSM are testing Webex's new AI capabilities.

"We're at the tipping point of a new era of hybrid work, with AI holding the key to helping us bridge the gap and enable us all to work and communicate to our full potential," said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration. "Our Webex platform has long enabled our rapid pace of innovation. Today's announcement is a monumental step forward, as customers will benefit from AI being pervasive in every aspect of the Webex platform."

Introducing Real-Time Media Models

Visual and audible cues like gestures and walking out of the room during a meeting provide invaluable context about human interactions. Cisco's new Real-Time Media Models (RMMs) in Webex will enhance audio and video quality. The models have the ability to take multiple media streams and produce multiple outputs, such as people and object recognition and action analytics like movement and gestures. RMMs in Webex will also enable audio and video channels to be used as signals of context in traditional text-based capabilities like meeting summaries and highlights. By uniquely fusing together AI for text, audio and video, Webex users will benefit from rich real-time insights. For example, in the future, Webex may be able to recognize that a meeting participant stepped away from a meeting, and capture meeting notes to bring that person up to speed when they return.

Story continues

New Webex AI Codec Helps Customers Achieve New Levels of Audio & Video Quality

People are regularly impacted by network impairments, which may have a direct impact on calls and meetings. For example, a user may experience disruption when connecting from their car, a hotel room, or a rural area with poor connectivity. Choppy audio or video often derails conversations and frustrates people — from meeting participants to customers calling into a business' contact center.

Cisco is unveiling a new AI Codec in Webex, a new generative AI solution that will redefine real-time communication and solve the challenge of audio quality. The audio Codec aims to deliver crystal-clear audio regardless of network conditions, even in areas with spotty connections. Webex's efficiency with its AI Codec allows for massive transmission redundancy to recover from network packet loss. Webex AI Codec also has built-in speech enhancement functions like noise removal, de-reverberation and bandwidth extension, to deliver unprecedented audio clarity.

Webex will similarly apply machine learning techniques to Boost video quality using Super Resolution. It will deliver high-definition meetings with amazing video quality regardless of bandwidth conditions.

Webex AI Assistant Helps Workers and Customers

The newly launched Webex AI Assistant will power a robust set of capabilities that empower people to do their best work. It will also minimize work and costs for IT, ultimately driving business value. Webex AI Assistant will prompt users with questions, like "ask me about the meeting," that users can respond to with typing sentences, such as "catch me up on the 15 minutes I missed in the meeting" or "catch me up on all the meetings I missed on Friday while I was on PTO," to generate answers in real-time. Webex AI Assistant is already natively integrated into Cisco Collaboration devices and will span the Webex portfolio. New Webex AI Assistant capabilities will include:

• Change Message Tone provides recommended changes to tone, format, phrasing in Webex Messaging and Slido. For example, the Webex AI Assistant may suggest changing a blunt response like "this isn't good; rework the summary," to a more professional option of "this is a fantastic document, but the upfront summary could use some improvement."

• Suggested Responses to messages for contact center agents responding to customers on digital channels. Suggestions of text are informed by context history and surrounding intelligence.

• Meeting Summaries will help users catch up on missed portions of meetings or entire meetings in real-time, with an easily digestible summary of what was missed. Meeting Summaries will be organized into chapters and highlights. With chapters, people can skip to various topics. For example, they may prefer to focus in-depth on the written portion of the finance discussion, then watch a brief video that summarizes the focus of the meeting in its entirety.

• Message Summaries help people stay up to date by recapping unread messages or recapping spaces. They are customized, so a user can ask Webex AI Assistant to summarize messages from their boss in a space that contains messages from multiple people, for example.

• Slido subject Summaries generate common subjects shared in interactive Q&A and polling during virtual and hybrid events for participants to easily navigate what's trending.

These new capabilities are in various stages of availability, with shipping planned to begin before the end of 2023.

Harnessing the Best Large Language Model Based on Use Case

Understanding that certain Large Language Models (LLMs) will be better suited than others based on the use case and training, Webex will use a combination of best-of-breed models. Webex's federated approach combines commercial, open source, Cisco-proprietary and select customer models to deliver the best possible experience.

Cisco's Approach to Responsible AI

Cisco has leveraged AI with natural language, audio intelligence, video intelligence and analytics for years—all designed with attention to security, privacy and human rights built in from the start. Realizing AI's significant promise while adhering to standards for transparency, fairness, accountability, privacy, security and reliability is an ongoing mission at Cisco. This is the promise of Cisco's Responsible AI Framework, which applies to our AI offerings. The Webex AI strategy and Webex AI Assistant capabilities are secure and align with Cisco's Responsible AI Framework.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals.  Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

About Webex by Cisco

Webex is a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration solutions which includes video meetings, calling, messaging, events, customer experience solutions like contact center and purpose-built collaboration devices. At Webex, we start with people and their experiences first. This focus on delivering inclusive collaboration experiences fuels our innovation, which leverages AI and Machine Learning, to remove the barriers of geography, language, personality, and familiarity with technology. Our solutions are underpinned with security and privacy by design. We work with the world's leading business and productivity apps – delivered through a single application and interface. Learn more at webex.com.

View original content to obtain multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cisco-unveils-webex-ai-strategy-at-webexone-301967407.html

SOURCE Cisco Systems, Inc.