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Cisco has announced that it is taking over Voicea. This specialist offers real-time transcripts of meetings, speech search and highlights. The tools must be added to the WebEx platform.

WebEx is currently used by more than 130 million people per month. With the acquisition of Voicea, Cisco says that it is continuously working on the development of this UC platform, according to ZDNet.

By adding Voicea’s meeting annotation and analytics technology to WebEx, the American tech giants ultimately want to turn conversations into action.

Here, WebEx can distinguish itself even more from the many competitors that the platform has. Meetings often need someone who only takes notes. Transcriptions make that person superfluous. In addition, companies will be better able to use analytics to find influences and increase employee participation.

Other addition

Voicea will provide WebEx not only with transcription technology, but also with an artificial intelligence (AI) and an automated speech recognition engine. The acquisition also responds to Cisco’s strategy of setting up a cognitive collaboration, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve video and voice conferencing.

Both parties have been working together for a long time. Cisco was already an investor in the now acquired Voicea. Google Ventures and Workday also invested in the company.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in the first fiscal quarter of Cisco. Voicea then becomes part of the WebEx department, with Sri Srinivasan in the lead.

Advantage

The acquisition can therefore give WebEx the distinctive elements it needs to compete with, for example, Slack and Microsoft Teams. In June, we noted that competition has a head start, particularly in the area of cooperation. Cisco still missed the unique proposition a little.

However, WebEx is ahead on certain points. For example, the software can use face recognition for video calls and there is noise cancellation. With People Insights – a function that is truly distinctive – you can also see a profile of an interlocutor.

With the addition of Voicea technology, the WebEx platform will be able to become even more competitive and offer more unique features.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.