The partnership will allow the collaboration services of the companies to talk to each other. ?EU?IBM Connections Cloud Social and IBM Verse will both be ?EU?Cisco aware,?EU? giving them a wide range of collaborative enhancements, including better integration with Cisco Spark and WebEx,?EU? Cisco senior vice president Jens Meggers wrote on his blog.
Similarly, Cisco Spark and WebEx will be "IBM aware," he added. "This means that you can host a meeting or call a coworker almost instantaneously from a variety of enterprise applications," Meggers said. "Likewise, collaboration tools will have integrated enterprise cloud features.?EU?
The goal is to build a single, open, integrated platform that can deliver key applications to clients from the cloud while taking advantage of the computing power of IBM?EU?s Watson platform to analyze unstructured data, according to Meggers. That could include conversations, content, or workflow, the company said. Watson will then use any insights gleaned from the analyses to improve the workflows of the teams.
While Watson will provide the analytics capabilities, Cisco brings its collaboration tools to the table, including business messaging, meeting, and calling tools.
To illustrate how the new partnership will combine the business offerings of both companies, Cisco offered this example: A financial advisor might meet with an investor over Cisco video with a Watson service offering real-time advice and handling tasks, while files would be securely stored and available in IBM Connections, shared through WebEx.
Cisco said the partnership could also help improve worker productivity. ?EU?The irony of many workforce tools available today is that...