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Cisco is to acquire US software company Voicea in a bid to add a “game-changing” edge to its Webex collaboration platform.
Founded in 2016, Voicea provides meeting transcripts and highlights, as well as a collaboration platform powered by an Enterprise Voice Assistant (EVA).
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Cisco said it intends to complete the acquisition by the end of October this year. Voicea will then be integrated with Cisco’s Webex unit under the leadership of Sri Srinivasan.
“We are excited to welcome the Voicea team into the Cisco Webex family and to get to work introducing EVA across our portfolio of collaboration applications and devices,” Srinivasan wrote on a company blog.
“The possibilities are powerful through combining transcription (EVA) and conversational AI (Webex Assistant) engines. When you combine these two powerful engines you have an intelligent meeting assistant for every one of your meetings.”
Cisco, alongside other backers like Google Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, were investors in Voicea.
Together, the two platforms will allow customers to push workflows automatically through voice commands into systems of record like Salesforce, Trello, Teams, Jira and Asana.
As well as Cisco, Voicea had existing technology integrations with Zoom, Slack, ZenDesk, BlueJeans, Office365 and Skype for Business, among others.
"Voicea's true market-leading technology will be a game-changer for our Webex customers to experience more productive and actionable meetings," said Amy Chang, SVP and GM of Cisco Collaboration. "The acquisition of Voicea allows us to leap past basic transcription services and instead, continue delivering on our vision of AI-driven, cognitive collaboration across our entire portfolio."
