IBM And Cisco Tap IBM Watson Power And Cisco Spark To Transform The Way People Work

International Business Machines Corp. IBM and Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO disclosed that would align to integrate the strengths of each company to transform how knowledge-workers collaborate and work. According to the companies, they would create a suite of cloud-based workplace tools, as well as, apps infused with IBM Watson.

IBM said that as part of the transformation, the highly secured Cisco Spark and WebEx collaborative workspace platforms would be aligned with its leading cloud collaboration solutions. That included Verse and Connections, and underpinned by IBM's cognitive computing capacities.

IBM Collaboration Solutions' GM, Inhi Cho, commented, "The irony of many workforce tools available today is that with so many to choose from, they can reduce employee effectiveness. With our combined technology strengths and understanding of how teams get work done, IBM and Cisco can deliver the next generation of collaboration tools 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."

Both the combines indicated that their objective is to provide offerings that integrate to connect seamlessly on behalf of users to complete mundane tasks like scheduling and note-taking, and proactively bring people and content together in the context of specific tasks.

Cisco Cloud Collaboration Technology SVP and GM, Jens Meggers, said, "At Cisco, we are constantly innovating to improve the collaboration experience and there has never been a better time to take our offerings to the next level. That's our goal here—to think exponentially and together with IBM create the next generation of collaboration. Now we can deliver amazing, next-generation "Intelligent Collaboration" that allows enterprises to compete in this fast moving digital world."

The companies also said the joint solutions would use IBM Watson and Connections APIs and Cisco Spark and WebEx APIs. This enables solutions to take action on regular tasks such as prioritizing complex and chaotic collaboration and communication environments.