At Cisco Live Amsterdam 2025, upcoming, beta, and general availability was announced for multiple GenAI features, several of which were first unveiled at the WebexOne event held in October 2024.
Collectively the announcements make employees more productive and allow organisations to raise customer satisfaction by delivering a better customer experience. Cisco continues to aggressively strengthen its hybrid work, contact centre, and device capabilities.
Hybrid work
Cisco has established itself as a premier vendor for enhancing hybrid work with AI-driven tools and has long cultivated an engineering mindset resulting in products that demonstrate real ingenuity. The round of announcements at Cisco Live only serves to further cement that position. Examples emerging from the event include innovations in Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Suite (coming soon), AI-generated Video and Talk Track in Vidcast (in beta), and AI-generated Slido polls (in beta). These are designed to enhance employee experiences and thus increase engagement.
Contact centres have been undergoing a profound transformation with the concept of a ‘contact centre’ yielding to the broader concept of ‘customer experience’ (also referred to as ‘CX’). Contact centres are converting from agent-centric to including self-service, from reactive to proactive, from transaction-oriented to relationship-oriented, and from generic to deeply personalised.
Vendors including Cisco have introduced a range of capabilities to help organisations make the transition. Two prime examples from Cisco Live are Webex AI Agent (coming soon) which closely mimics a live agent in its ability to execute tasks on a customer’s behalf, and the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center (generally available) which addresses needs of both agents and supervisors.
Cisco device experience
The prominence Cisco has placed on the device experience is a key differentiator. The overarching theme of the company’s device strategy is not to merely provide technology, but instead to drive simple, inclusive experiences through technology. Cisco recognises that devices support reimagined office designs that are meeting-oriented and let workers communicate and collaborate from anywhere. This enhances the quality of interactions between employees collaborating in the workplace.
The company’s view of devices and the role they play was especially evident in three announcements: Cisco Room Bar BYOD, the Workspace Designer, and the Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro (all three available now). Taking a step back from ‘bells and whistles’ and viewing the announcements within a broader context yields some additional perspective.
Cisco is riding the winds of change that have swept across team collaboration platforms. The pandemic drove the ascent of these platforms, and competitors responded with successive rounds of feature wars. Cooler heads eventually prevailed, and a ‘truce’ was issued in the form of interoperability between rival platforms. Now, things have come full circle to a degree with competitors reaching deep into the AI ‘treasure trove’ and circulating AI features platform-wide.
Cisco is seeking to separate itself from the pack by touting AI innovations across both Webex software and hardware. Coupled with long-standing expertise in collaboration, networking, and security Cisco enjoys a unique competitive position.
