Latest news with #Cisco
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Spatial Meetings Go Beyond Remote Learning With 'Distance Zero'
Inside the Spatial Meeting environment, students have an immersive experience of being in the ... More classroom while also being able to engage with renderings of objects, achieving an experience Cisco calls "Distance Zero." Cisco Systems has partnered with Apple and H-Farm, an Italian educational institution and technology incubator, to launch an innovative educational initiative called 'Spatial Meetings.' This collaboration leverages Apple's Vision Pro headset and Cisco's immersive meeting infrastructure to achieve 'Distance Zero,' a term coined by Cisco to refer to the ability of technology to replicate the immediacy and interpersonal dynamics of face-to-face meetings, even when participants are geographically distant. Cisco's Spatial Meetings utilize high-resolution, stereoscopic 3D video combined with true-to-color rendering, delivered through Apple's Vision Pro headset. This combination allows participants to see detailed facial expressions and body language and even interact with objects in a virtual yet realistic environment. As Snorre Kjesbu, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Collaboration Devices at Cisco explains, 'Good technology should always be the supporting actor. It should never get in the way—it should support what you're doing.' The goal, after all, is not to have the most realistic virtual environment possible; the goal is to have highly effective meetings in which the focus is on the content of the meeting and not the experience of the conference room. The site for this experiment has been the campus of H-Farm. Located near Venice, Italy, H-Farm began as a startup incubator and has evolved into an educational hub, serving over 3,000 students across high school and university levels. The institution prioritizes digital innovation and, as such, was a natural early adopter of Cisco's Spatial Meetings. Diego Pizzocaro, Director at H-Farm College, recalled their initial experience of seeing the Spatial Meetings technology: 'When we tried it, it was basically a lightbulb moment.' Describing the Spatial Meetings is challenging, as it is very much the type of thing one needs to experience for oneself. What is remarkable about the environment is the fact that it easily achieves many of the benchmarks essential for an immersive conference experience. To begin with, the head sizes and positions of the other participants are effectively the same as your own. This gives the sense of people actually being in a common space rather than being technologically mediated. The other key element is the ability to readily convey non-verbal information. Depending on the context, non-verbal communication can account for anywhere from 60% to 90% of what is communicated. Anyone who has been in a seminar where two people arguing have gone off the rails has had the experience of turning to a classmate and both rolling your eyes. This is an essential experience of a rich environment and one that is typically lacking in standard video conferencing. In Spatial Meetings these types of interactions occur naturally. Educational applications at H-Farm using Spatial Meetings focus heavily on hybrid learning environments, significantly enhancing student engagement and concentration. 'Our students reported increased immersion and focus,' Pizzocaro noted. 'They can attend a math lecture from literally anywhere and feel like they're in the front row.' Another significant advantage is that, unlike in typical video conferencing environments, they are fully immersed in the experience, free from the distraction of competing apps or objects in their surroundings. Cisco's Spatial Meetings allow educators and students to interact with physical objects alongside virtual renderings, facilitating interactive and comparative analysis in fields such as design, architecture, and engineering. Cisco's technology includes specialized hardware already installed in thousands of locations globally, facilitating seamless integration of this immersive meeting experience. Standing in front of a properly equipped conference room, a professor can demonstrate the properties of a physical object and then send a digital copy to a remote participant who can explore just as if she were in the classroom. In addition to bringing remote participants into the classroom and classroom objects to remote participants, the space created by the Spatial Meetings can also facilitate interaction between students and AI. Since the meeting space is virtual, remote students and generated participants are joining the same virtual space in the same way, providing a type of ontological parity between the attendees. The fact that only one exists elsewhere in physical space ceases to be a point of significance. Moving forward, Cisco and Apple plan to deepen their collaboration, enhancing the capabilities of the Spatial Meetings platform. H-Farm continues to develop educational content and tools to take advantage of the environment, enabling educators to integrate immersive experiences into their teaching more easily. Demonstrations and further integrations of this technology are planned to showcase its broader applicability and effectiveness. For now, the biggest challenge is the limited availability of the headsets, but this should change as newer models are released and prices come down. At the end of the day, the collaboration among Cisco, Apple, and H-Farm provides a striking illustration of how technology can not only bridge physical distances but also fundamentally enhance the educational experience.
Business Insider
5 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
2 'grossly underestimated' skills that will be valuable in the next era of engineering, according to Cisco's CPO
It's no secret that the role of engineers is changing — and in some cases, shrinking. That's not the case at Cisco, though, the company's president and chief product officer, Jeetu Patel, told Business Insider in an interview — at least, not yet. The company has 27,000 engineers and is "unapologetically hiring" more, he said. "We feel more constrained now than ever before on not having enough engineers to get prosecuted all the ideas that we've got going internally," Patel said. Patel isn't denying that AI advancements will redefine the role of engineers, though. Cisco recently partnered with OpenAI for design testing on its new Codex AI coding assistant, which offloads repetitive tasks and performs tasks like writing code, fixing bugs, and running tests. Patel said Codex will allow companies to pair human software engineers with an AI counterpart. Understanding the nuanced details of syntax in coding language will still be important, Patel said, but there will be less emphasis on it in the future. He said that skill won't be "consequential" in the next five years. Two other skills, which are "grossly underestimated," will take precedent, the CPO told BI. Patel said one of those will be "orchestrating agent workflow." That will involve overseeing a whole family of agents who talk to each other to ensure they solve problems. Salesforce EVP of talent growth and development, Lori Castillo Martinez, similarly said in an earlier interview with BI that it's more important than ever to know which tasks are best suited for agents and humans. She said the best managers are those who can analyze teams and maximize productivity. "That will be super important," Patel said about orchestrating agent workflow. Patel said the second skill that will become valuable is "quality of ideas." It appears that engineers will need to have a lot of them. Patel said tools like Codex "unlock" human imagination so that the "scarcity of developers" doesn't constrain companies from innovating. The CPO said that AI augmentation will make engineers 10 to 50 times as productive, with engineers spending more time thinking and less time fixing bugs. Patel said the speed at which an idea becomes a product will go from months to minutes. Dropbox VP of product and growth, Morgan Brown, previously shared similar advice with BI. In the age of AI, he said product managers should focus more on what he referred to as the "deep work," adding that companies are eager to have more great ideas. Patel said that this evolution will improve "output capacity, but also the satisfaction that someone gets from a job." "The only constraint becomes their imagination," Patel said.
Forbes
a day ago
- Business
- Forbes
Building An ‘AI-First' Culture: What Does That Even Mean?
AI-first means people-first Lately, there's been no shortage of talk of managing organizations around 'AI-first' approaches, meaning managers would consider whether AI could do a job, or set of tasks, before humans are brought in. But AI-first goes deeper than that, suggesting an organization's entire culture can be redesigned to incorporate the broad intelligence solutions that AI platforms and tools can offer. How would such an organization look, and is this something a decades-old company could pull off? Cisco Systems, which was founded more than 40 years ago, has been undertaking such a transformation over the past three years across all aspects of its business. This includes transforming 'the way that we build product, the way that our products get used by customers, the way that we actually get jobs done within the company,' said Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer for Cisco. Even in what is one of the most technology-savvy companies in the world, such an effort will meet resistance, Patel recently explained on a recent episode of Michael Krigsman's CXOTalk. 'It's a cultural shift. It's actually fraught with a level of skepticism." Still, 'If you looked at us a year and a half, two years ago, no one would have really said that Cisco is AI first,' he said. An issue being encountered is 'people have actually been afraid of AI, saying, 'Hey, AI's going to take my job, so I'm not going to go out and use it,' Patel added. 'I actually find that it's less about AI taking your job, it's more about someone that uses AI better than you in their jobs is probably the one who's going to take your job.' Ultimately, 'the dexterity that you need to show in the way in which you do everything with AI is going to be pretty important,' he said. 'We've always felt like there's only going to be two kinds of companies in the world. Ones that are dexterous with the use of AI, and others who really struggle for relevance.' There are three key considerations in building an AI-first culture, Patel explained: Customers are also part of the transformation to an AI-first culture. 'One area that we struggle with is that the pace and rate of change is so fast that communicating that to our customers and having them digest that change is a challenge,' said Patel. 'I don't think we've cracked the code on that.' Customers have a view of Cisco from more than three years back, 'and frankly, it's an entirely different company than what it used to be three years ago,' he added. 'I feel like there's so much coming at people all the time that you have to make sure that you distill it down to a few things that make sense.' For example, AI is accelerating the company's responses to support tickets. It also is helping to reduce overhead costs. On the sales side, AI will help accelerate sales meetings, as well as legal and accounting processes involved with the sale. 'All of those things will have AI as a pretty critical component of it, and I do feel like the sales process is going to change quite materially over the course of the next few years. And you will never be in this position where you go completely blind and unprepared into a conversation because AI can get you prepared within a very, very compressed amount of time on what needs to happen.' What's important now for the new generation that's entering the workforce – as well as existing workers – is not to operate out of fear of AI, Patel advised. 'You have to operate from a place of looking at the possibilities and looking at the opportunities that actually can be unlocked. I would urge people to just have a very different kind of mental model, which is, there's nothing that should stop us from actually being curious about how we might be able to use AI, and this technology is going to get easier and easier and easier, where no longer is technical dexterity going to be an impediment.'
Globe and Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Zoom Rises 8% in 3 Months: Here's Why You Should Buy the Stock Now
Zoom Communications, Inc. ZM shares have gained 7.6% in the trailing three months, outperforming the Zacks Computer and Technology sector and the S&P 500 index's return of 4.8% and 0.9%, respectively. The stock has also outperformed the Zacks Internet – Software industry's growth of 1.1% in the same time frame. The outperformance can be attributed to the company's accelerating AI-driven innovation, which is reshaping productivity workflows across enterprises. From the rapid adoption of Zoom AI Companion to multi-product deals with Global 2000 firms, Zoom's platform expansion and improved churn rates have reaffirmed investor confidence in its near-term growth trajectory. The share price rise does not tell the whole story. Let's delve deeper into two factors driving ZM's growth to understand why the stock is a buy now. Zoom Leverages AI to Stay Ahead of the Competition Zoom faces competition from legacy platforms like Cisco Systems ' CSCO Webex and bundled productivity suites, such as Microsoft 's MSFT Teams and Alphabet 's GOOGL Google Workspace. While Cisco Systems' Webex and Microsoft Teams offer video meetings, messaging and file sharing, Alphabet's Google Workspace integrates Meet with email, calendar, chat, and collaboration tools in a unified platform. To differentiate itself, Zoom is doubling down on AI innovation to enhance productivity and customer value. One of its key growth drivers in the fiscal first quarter was its expanding portfolio of AI-powered tools. Adoption of Zoom AI Companion grew nearly 40% quarter over quarter, with usage expanding beyond meeting summaries to include answering questions, scheduling, content creation and more. Raymond James, a U.S.-based financial services firm, recently announced that it is rolling out AI Companion meeting summaries firm-wide, highlighting the product's enterprise utility. Zoom also began monetizing its AI offerings through Custom AI Companion, launched in the fiscal first quarter. Early feedback from Global 2000 trial customers has been positive, with particular interest in features like 'Bring Your Own Dictionary,' meeting summary templates, and Jira integration. Zoom Expands Platform Adoption Across Large Enterprises Zoom's enterprise segment showed solid momentum in the fiscal first quarter, with enterprise revenues growing approximately 6% year over year and accounting for 60% of total revenues, up two percentage points from the prior year. The number of customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing 12-month revenues rose 8% year over year, representing 32% of total revenues in the fiscal first quarter. New wins underscore this momentum. The Boston Celtics upgraded to Zoom Workplace Enterprise Plus and adopted Zoom Phone and Workvivo. A leading financial institution signed a deal exceeding $1 million in ARR, consolidating its tech stack by replacing Microsoft Teams and other tools with Zoom's AI-first platform. Zoom Provides Positive Fiscal Q2 Guidance For the second quarter of fiscal 2026, Zoom expects total revenues between $1.195 billion and $1.2 billion. Revenues in constant currency are expected to be between $1.196 billion and $1.201 billion. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share are anticipated to be between $1.36 and $1.37. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal second-quarter revenues is pegged at $1.2 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 2.96%. The consensus mark for earnings is pegged at $1.37 per share, suggesting a year-over-year decline of 1.44%. ZM beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in each of the trailing four quarters, with the average surprise being 9.46%. What Should Investors Do With ZM Stock? Zoom has strengthened itself in a competitive market as an AI-first platform. Additionally, its solid momentum across the enterprise segment in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, driven by continuous platform expansion, signals strong upside potential. ZM currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), suggesting a compelling entry point in the stock for investors now. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. 5 Stocks Set to Double Each was handpicked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2024. While not all picks can be winners, previous recommendations have soared +143.0%, +175.9%, +498.3% and +673.0%. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO): Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report Zoom Communications, Inc. (ZM): Free Stock Analysis Report
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Business leaders expect agentic AI to take over customer service
This story was originally published on CX Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CX Dive newsletter. Agentic AI is expected to handle more than two-thirds of all customer service interactions with technology vendors by 2028, Cisco projected in a report released Tuesday. Cisco surveyed nearly 8,000 business and technical decision-makers across 30 countries. A vast majority of respondents — 93% — believe agentic AI will make customer service more personalized, proactive and predictive. Nearly 9 in 10 say agentic AI-led experiences will help their organizations reach their goals. 'With agentic AI reaching a new level of maturity, we're closer than ever to solving some of the most persistent customer pain points in enterprise environments,' Liz Centoni, EVP and chief customer experience officer at Cisco, said in a prepared statement. Business leaders are bullish on the potential of AI, but they aren't losing sight of the importance of human connection. Nearly 9 in 10 respondents believe that agentic AI needs to be combined with human empathy and connection to optimize the experience for customers. Three-quarters believe agentic AI as it now stands is unable to recreate human empathy. Businesses have very high hopes for AI, but there's also low trust, according to Jean-Francois Damais, global chief research officer at Ipsos. Business and tech decision-makers expect agentic AI to handle more than half — 56% — of customer interactions within the next year. But customers are skeptical and concerned about the impact AI will have on their experiences. Three-quarters of customers globally think that customer service is becoming too impersonal and too automated, according to a 2024 Ipsos global trends study. Another Ipsos survey released earlier this month found that 2 in 5 global consumers think companies will be the biggest benefactor of AI. Only 14% think customers will benefit the most. Transparency and putting the customer first is key to deploying AI, according to Damais. 'An implication for companies will be that they really need to be clear on the benefits that AI will provide, and they need to think about what AI will bring in terms of benefits to customers,' Damais said. 'Will AI really improve the experience, or is it just a way of cutting costs, or appearing to be modern in their delivery, because everyone is talking about AI and everyone wants to implement AI-driven processes?'
