Welcome to this week's No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. This week, NJR notes that there's no EU in Teams as Microsoft unbundles it from the Office Suite in Europe.
Additionally, NJR highlights Microsoft's roll out of ChatGPT-powered Bing Chat Enterprise; OpenAI's introduction of ChatGPT Enterprise which the company bills as a more secure, scalable and customizable iteration; the debut of Google's Duet AI for its Workspace portfolio -- which enters the Gen AI-powered stage a bit later than similar collaboration suites.
Also, 8x8 launches customer self-service capabilities with a conversational AI-powered bot, Poly debuts Google-compatible audio-visual devices, and Salesforce brings Einstein GPT features to its Field Service product.
No EU in Teams: Microsoft to unbundle Teams from Office in Europe
Microsoft announced that beginning October 1, 2023, it would unbundle Teams from Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland. For its core enterprise customers, Microsoft 365 and Office 365 will be sold without Teams at a lower price (€2 less per month) and will still be available for new enterprise customers to buy standalone and separately. Existing enterprise customers who already have a suite with Teams can either stay with their current productivity suite or move to a suite without Teams. For small business and frontline workers, Microsoft said it will keep offering suites with Teams, but will also sell a “without-Teams” option at a lower price.
Microsoft will also create new support resources to inform application developers of existing and publicly available application programming interfaces (APIs) and extensibility in Microsoft 365 and Office 365 apps and services that connect with Teams. This includes third-party integrations with solutions from Zoom, Salesforce, etc. Microsoft will also develop a new method for hosting Office web applications within competing apps and services much like Microsoft accomplishes in Teams.
Per this Reuters article, this unbundling is “similar to preliminary concessions that had failed to address regulatory concerns. The EU competition enforcer said it took note of the company's announcement and declined further comment.”
Want to know more?
In April 2023, NJ ran an article discussing what Microsoft’s customers might gain if it does unbundle Teams as a result of the EU’s regulatory investigation. In July 2023, this NJ article detailed how Microsoft’s Copilot integration into Teams might help end users fly through their tasks.
Microsoft Rolling Out Bing Chat Enterprise
Microsoft has begun rolling out Bing Chat Enterprise in the Windows Copilot Preview for eligible commercial customers. Windows Copilot Preview refers to the version of Windows 11 that incorporates Microsoft’s generative AI-powered Copilot at the operating system level: “Windows Copilot is powered by Bing AI, which uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and Microsoft Edge WebView. While Copilot runs inside the browser, it uses Windows 11 APIs to interact with the OS and apps.” (Source: Windows Latest.)
Bing Chat Enterprise is positioned as a standalone generative AI tool that is “grounded in web data and provides complete, verifiable answers with citations, along with visual answers that include graphs and charts….” Microsoft notes that there is a reminder with each prompt that personal and corporate data is protected.
OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT Enterprise
According to OpenAI, the new ChatGPT Enterprise offers various new features including enterprise-grade security and privacy; unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access (which OpenAI says is up to two times faster than, presumably, ChatGPT 3/3.5); 32k token context windows for processing longer inputs, files or follow-ups; advanced data analysis capabilities (which was called Code Interpreter in ChatGPT 3/3.5) and shareable chat templates for users within companies to collaborate and build common workflows.
In its announcement post, OpenAI said users own and control their business data in ChatGPT Enterprise and emphasized that this Enterprise offering of OpenAI’s does not train on its customers' business data or conversations, nor do its models learn from usage.
Duet AI for Google Workspace Now Available
Announced at Google's cloud event this week, the company's new Duet AI for Google Workspace uses generative AI as a “collaboration partner that can act as a coach, source of inspiration, and productivity booster.” Some of Duet AI’s capabilities include the ability to generate presentations based on content in Drive and Gmail and it will assist in composing and/or refining email and documents.
During Google Meetings, Duet AI will capture notes, action items and video snippets, as well as provide after-meeting summaries and in-progress summaries for latecomers. The “attend for me” feature will allow Duet AI to attend meetings on the user’s behalf, deliver the user’s message and get the meeting recap. Google Chat userscan chat directly with Duet AI to ask questions about content, get summaries of documents shared in the space and/or catch up on missed conversations.
The announcement follows similar product announcements made earlier this year from Microsoft, Zoom and Salesforce. One key difference is that Duet AI is generally available now, unlike Microsoft's Copilot.
Duet AI in Google Meet will use AI to improve participants’ look, lighting and audio quality. It also now provides “dynamic tiles and face detection” to provide attendees in a meeting room with their own video tile and name. Google also launched automatically translated captions for 18 languages; Meet will automatically detect when another language is spoken and display the translation in real time.
Duet AI is powered by Google’s Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2).
Want to know more?
This document describes how Google Workspace data is protected in the age of generative AI. Google has also expanded its security to now includes “zero trust” and digital sovereignty controls in Workspace.
8x8 Expands AI Customer Self-Service Capabilities with Voice Interactions
The cloud contact center and unified communications platform provider today announced the availability of voice conversational AI in its 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant. 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant is an add-on to 8x8 Contact Center delivered through 8x8’s eXperience Communications as a Service (XCaaS) platform.
Some of the features of voice self-service include:
“Whether a contact center has thousands of agents or less than 100, organizations are recognizing that conversational AI is a real and cost-effective choice to improve self-service and productivity in contact centers to better support customers,” said Sheila McGee-Smith, founder and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics.
Poly Elevates Workplace Collaboration
Poly has announced that the Poly Lens Web App is now available for Google Cloud and Google ChromeOS users. Via the app, users can manage their headsets, speakerphones, and video conferencing devices (supported devices only).
Poly has also launched the Poly Studio X family of video bars which are Android-based video appliances for Google Meet. These products include the now-available Poly Studio X52 video bar and Poly Video OS 4.1 software.
Salesforce Field Service GPT Brings Gen AI to the Mobile Workforce
The Salesforce Field Service product now incorporates Einstein GPT-capabilities, such as work summarization, knowledge base summaries, and it will surface real-time, relevant information to field service workers while they’re at the job. The product also includes Appointment Assistance, which integrates across all messaging channels and allows customers to book and reschedule appointments, and check when their technician is on the way.
Field Service GPT, currently in pilot, will be included in Field Service Unlimited Edition and includes a limited number of Einstein GPT credits. Initially, only Field Service customers who purchased Unlimited Edition will be eligible to use GPT-powered capabilities.
This Week on No Jitter
In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories:
