Welcome to this week’s No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. Leading off this week, we highlight: Verint’s expanded integration with Webex Contact Center, CallTower’s new SMS/MMS capabilities for Webex Calling, Salesforce adding Einstein to MuleSoft, and VirtualPBX’s debut of its Contact Center solution.
In addition: Brightspeed debuts an offering that leverages RingCentral and Waterfield Tech includes generative AI capabilities in its contact center solution. We conclude with a roundup of Microsoft's now global unbundling of Teams.
The customer engagement platform provider expanded its partnership with Webex by Cisco by integrating the Verint Open Platform’s unified data hub into the Webex App Hub for Webex Contact Center. Verint Open Platform is built around a unified data hub, which aggregates all of a brand’s behavioral data – often siloed in different systems – into a single repository. Thus, the Hub allows that data to be accessed by Webex Contact Center and those using that solution.
The UC&C and contact center solutions provider launched CT Text with MMS and SMS texting capabilities in Cisco Webex, enabling users to send SMS and MMS communication directly from within the Webex Calling platform. The same number used for voice calls is also used for SMS/MMS and allows users within Webex to text directly from their voice number or a group shared phone number. Additional features include group texting and text translation for over 60 languages.
The CRM provider announced AI-powered enhancements to its MuleSoft automation, integration, and API management solutions. MuleSoft’s Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solution will now feature an embedded Einstein assistant. This refers to Salesforce’s generative AI-powered Einstein Copilot (a conversational AI assistant), launched last year, which is also part of the Einstein 1 Platform launched at Dreamforce 2023. The Einstein Copilot is built into Salesforce applications.
MuleSoft IDP with Einstein enables the use of natural language prompts to extract data from unstructured sources and data fields, format responses into JSON outputs, classify and summarize documents, and trigger subsequent tasks. IDP is currently in pilot and will be generally available at the end of April 2024; Einstein for IDP will be generally available in the third quarter of 2024.
Another new feature, Einstein for Flow, allows Salesforce admins to create workflows using natural language prompts. This solution will be generally available in June 2024.
MuleSoft’s Anypoint Code Builder, generally available now, is an integrated development environment (IDE) for designing, developing, and deploying APIs, integrations, and automations from a single environment. Einstein for Anypoint Code Builder, currently in beta, will feature an embedded Einstein assistant which will enable users to generate workflows that integrate different data sources using natural language prompts. For example, a developer could ask Einstein to create an integration that synchronizes data between Salesforce and NetSuite or SAP.
MuleSoft also has Accelerators for Industries such as retail, financial services, and healthcare. Available in May 2024, the MuleSoft Accelerator for Healthcare can be used to remove identifiable patient information to enable medical research and train AI models to power healthcare initiatives. For example, a healthcare organization could use this accelerator to securely access their EHR systems, remove patients’ personally identifiable information (PII).
Finally, Observability with Anypoint Monitoring enables developers to monitor API workloads that embed AI into their application ecosystems. For example, developers can trace requests across application networks and LLM APIs to build models of an AI ecosystem and identify performance bottlenecks. This solution is generally available.
The cloud-based communication solutions provided announced its VirtualPBX Contact Center solution. Some of the features include:
VirtualPBX Contact Center is available now and customers receive “white glove configuration and ongoing 24/7 support.”
The fiber broadband builder, announced the launch of its Brightspeed Voice+ product powered by RingCentral’s enterprise cloud communications solution. In addition to telephony, messaging, and video, RingCentral provides Brightspeed Voice+ customers with deep analytics, transcription, and meeting summaries.
The customer engagement solutions provider launched a GPT suite of generative AI-based solutions which include:
As reported by Reuters and many other outlets, Microsoft will sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office product globally. This move comes after Microsoft unbundled Teams from Office in Europe (See NJ’s “No EU in Teams” write-up). The revised worldwide licensing became effective April 1, 2024.
Back in late April 2023, regular No Jitter contributor Kevin Kieller opined on what Microsoft’s customers would gain if it unbundled Teams. Subsequent to Microsoft’s Ignite 2023 show, Kieller provided his thoughts on three directions in which Teams might evolve. In February 2024, frequent No Jitter contributor Dave Michels discussed the potential impact of the EU’s Digital Markets Act on enterprise communications – which includes Teams. Finally, Kieller wrote on April 3, 2024, that he expects the global unbundling to have “no impact to Teams trajectory.”
In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories:
Check out the new Enterprise Connect AI 2-day summit which offers a unique opportunity to reach technology decision makers actively seeking insights to help lead their enterprise’s implementation of AI for communications/CX tech and business productivity. EC AI 2024 will be held October 1-2, 2024 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA.
