What's Up with Tech?
Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Beyond AV: Building the Intelligent Workplace Ecosystem
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Artificial intelligence isn't just changing how we work—it's fundamentally transforming the workplace itself. In this eye-opening conversation direct from InfoComm, Ryan from Unified Communications takes us inside booth 3817 to explore their groundbreaking approach to creating truly intelligent workspaces.
What makes their vision unique is how they're moving beyond traditional AV integration to develop specialized AI agents addressing real business challenges. Their Company Pulse Agent conducts conversational interviews with employees through Teams, gathering and summarizing valuable feedback for leadership. Their Customer Advocate Agent monitors email communications to detect potential issues before they escalate, while their Teams Room Support Agent provides comprehensive help for meeting technology, grounded in Microsoft documentation and manufacturer specifications.
The most captivating demonstration happens inside their "Whisper Suite," where Ryan showcases how AI integration with hardware platforms creates almost magical workplace experiences. Imagine walking into a meeting room and simply asking how to use it—no manual needed. Or picture a room that automatically adjusts settings when the furniture arrangement changes from boardroom to classroom setup. These aren't futuristic concepts but practical applications UC delivers today.
Beyond the technology itself, Ryan emphasizes the importance of having a holistic partner for implementing AI workplace solutions. Their GlobalView AV portal provides complete visibility from project proposal through ongoing room management, while their e-procurement solutions help manage device standards across global organizations. For organizations feeling overwhelmed by rapid technological change, UC offers both strategy sessions and a learning platform integrated with Microsoft Graph to help teams stay current.
Ready to transform your workplace with intelligent technology that works for you, not the other way around? Visit UC at InfoComm booth 3817 or book a strategy session through the link below to begin your journey toward a truly AI-powered workplace ecosystem.
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Hey everybody. We are live at InfoComm with Unified Communications and I'm excited to chat about their AI-powered workplace. Ryan, how are you?
Speaker 2:I am doing great. Super excited to hear live from InfoComm booth 3817 on day one Evan.
Speaker 1:Well, you've got a major presence at InfoComm this year, as always. What can folks expect to see and hear at your booth 3817? What's on display?
Speaker 2:I think we're trying to show and yeah, it's not a dig at traditional AV integration, but maybe it's a little bit of a dig.
Speaker 2:I think we're kind of saying that look, if you take traditional AV developers and you put them against this kind of I guess I'll say this the track that most AV programmers kind of came through, which came out of sound in that side a little bit different than the traditional software development track. Because part of what we're saying is, if you take significant development skills, you marry that with some superpowers around AV and telephony and AI, you can do some pretty interesting things. So we'll show you in a moment. We got this little whisper suite where we're showing some of the goodness that could happen if we can just connect things, bring them into the meeting room from AI to control, to room systems, to telephony. We're also just telling the overall story that at this moment you need a lot more than an AV integrator. You need a modern work partner that can help kind of end to end on that journey. So fun story here at Infocomm and yeah, I'd love to take you for a little bit of a tour.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's go for a spin of the AI powered workplace. Show us around.
Speaker 2:Awesome, all right. So yeah, here we're showing some of our AI innovations and agents that were built by the UC team, a couple that we're highlighting here co-pilot agents. One of them we call the company Pulse Agent. This is an agent that pops up in teams and essentially interviews leadership or whoever it is in the organization that leadership is trying to get Pulse from. So it'll ask them just conversational questions about what happened with their day, what are you concerned with, how are things going, any challenges? And then it'll kind of dig in a little bit deeper to clarify and then it summarizes, prioritizes and hands it back to leadership in a meaningful way.
Speaker 2:We also have what we call the customer advocate agent. That's going to look at email and try to see if the safe temperature is going up with a customer. It can escalate. That Other thing we have is a Teams Room support agent that's grounded in the Microsoft Learn information on how to operate Teams Rooms and the manufacturer information around how to support Teams Rooms, and then our own learning and ITSM platform comes together to be able to answer almost any questions around Teams Rooms and, if not, it can escalate it to a live agent. So really showing here that Unified Communications has the capability to create custom AI kind of targeted at real business outcomes inside our customers and organizations abroad our customers and organizations abroad You're really offering tools and capabilities that can enhance hybrid work.
Speaker 1:What sort of feedback are you getting from customers so far?
Speaker 2:Man. I will tell you in our little whisper team is here talking about what you can do If you take all these tools. You take Copilot and Places and Rooms and Phone and you weave them together, you get a little bit above that. You try to translate that into actual experiences, work experiences. So we're here showing a couple of personas, relatable personas, a knowledge worker, an HR manager, a facilities manager and how it can work if you bring these tools together and you begin to impact their productivity, their experiences, their day and so kind of follow through at night before what that looks like and then how things work when you get into the office. So yeah, this team is here to do that.
Speaker 2:We're also talking about our new learning platform, where Unified Communications has this direct integration with Microsoft graph and create these customized learning platforms around co-pilot or around 365 in general. We know that things are just changing super, super fast and you know keeping up with it is important and we can't. You know we start projects. We do a lot of kind of hands-on, high touch custom things, but we've got to create some sustainable way for people to keep up with the pace of technology.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Sounds like Teams Phone and Teams Rooms are getting serious AI upgrades. How are customers embracing that in the day-to-day?
Speaker 2:It's huge. I think that, yeah, there's all this value of having all of your data in one cloud on the AI side, and so just very, very natural that it's almost like we're forgetting about the specific products. We're really just talking about how a modern AI powered workplace works, and these are kind of those tools like phone and room and places and co-pilot. That just becomes the plumbing that we need to create an AI powered workplace. So I'll just give you like a sneak little peek into this whisper room and if we just have some folks sitting down, but in here we're just showing people what's possible if we can see and hear from cameras and mics. We're integrated into device manufacturer platforms. In this instance we're integrated with Logitech and Q-SYS. But then we're also connected from an AI perspective to enterprise agents and kind of pick the LLM or AI environment of your choice and we can do some really fun things. The LLM or AI environment of your choice, we can do some really fun things.
Speaker 2:One of the demos we're showing is connecting from the room system to a financial agent where the CFO might want to understand numbers that are happening. We're showing room control where we can from our voice, impact shades and lights. We're showing how you can ask how to use this room system. I walk into this complicated space and instead of reading the five page manual, I just ask them conversational questions and if it can't help me, it sends in meeting room support. Yeah, we're showing how you can open a help desk ticket, you know, directly with your voice, and it's a really forward looking thing.
Speaker 2:I'll just give some examples of the type of thing that's possible to do in the future. So if that camera looked and saw, for example, that the furniture in a room changed from a U-shape to training table, it could automatically adjust settings for that. Or the CEO doesn't like the Brady Bunch view in the rooms, but everybody else does. There's things we could do to make it really easy to impact things with simple either voice commands or based on something that could see, or or even if even the picture of the CEO, for example.
Speaker 1:I love that. So for it leaders, we're kind of walking around infocomm. Maybe they're feeling a little overwhelmed by all the AI buzz. What's your advice? Where should they start with adoption education? And you know how can you help? Yeah, I will One. I would tell them to stop by.
Speaker 2:I think we and you know how can you help. Yeah, I will One. I would tell them to stop by. I think we, you know. I think one of the things that's daunting is if you're having to do this piecemeal. You know, you've got an AV integrator, you've got a partner for co-pilot, you've got a different partner for phone. It gets really the burden is on you to weave all this stuff together. You know, with the right type of partner, this becomes kind of a planned process and one team and none of these things can be left out. You mentioned adoption and change management super important but it is just different pieces of this puzzle and it's almost impossible to build if you're doing it piecemeal.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, and so much of the technology is on display.
Speaker 2:What else should we keep an eye out for at the yeah, let me show you a couple other really cool things that we're showcasing here. So our advanced e-procurement solution, unified Communications, has some real secret sauce around managing device standards and managing choice in the enterprise, and so you get enabled for you go to work for a particular organization and you want something like a headset, or you're in charge of setting standards for rooms globally and you want individual locations to be able to follow a corporate standard, but maybe they can make some decisions on whether they have one large display or two smaller displays. Our technology does that. It's also integrated into their IPSM platforms, integrated into their procurement tools, and so we're here demonstrating the kind of AI-powered help-me-choose, the procurement technology that Unified Communications offers to our customers.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations on bringing the AI-powered workplace to life. What's next? I know you do a lot of workshops, education online, webinars, in-person events. What's on your radar next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a webinar coming up post-InfoComm next week. I actually apologize, I don't know the date and time. I will grab in a second.
Speaker 1:We'll make sure that we get that out. We'll add it to the link here, yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're also offering both attendees at Infocomm and anybody watching this live feed a strategy session around AI-powered workplace, around Teams Phone, around Teams Rooms. We can kind of dig in to something specific or we can talk about it more broadly, but helping kind of let's take you on the right direction, let's get a sense of where you're going and see how we can help. So we'll provide links to that as well. A couple other things I just want to share. So our UC Care Managed Service team is here. This is a team that's helping customers manage Teams rooms at scale. It's a global 24-7 service designed to help avoid issues before they impact meetings. That team is here. Our global team is just talking about the fact that we can land hardware and deliver projects almost anywhere in the world. We've got entities in many, many geographies excited about that and the last thing that I'll just talk about is our new globalView AV portal.
Speaker 2:This was developed by us as AI integrated with device manufacturer platforms and this is a tool that allows kind of end-to-end visibility into meeting room projects and then the rooms that are created afterwards. So it starts with a proposal and it goes all the way through the project and into a view that you can see real-time what's in a room, what changes, what insights and reporting Super exciting, yeah, AI built in and again, kind of all of these tools have the same team behind them. That's creating some really unique and compelling ways to think differently about enterprise, these types of devices and how AI can just change this AV industry.
Speaker 1:Well, it is indeed, and congratulations on bringing all of these product services, solutions to light. Great to see them in action.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much. For anyone who's at Infocomm, come by and see us through 3817. We'd love to give you a demo. We'll take you into the Whisper Suite and, for those that aren't here, book a meeting with us through the strategy session. And for those that aren't here, book a meeting with us through the strategy session and we'll take you through some very unique and different approaches to how to address some of the challenges and what we're all trying to do, which is accelerate this journey into a functional AI-powered workplace and make sure that, yeah, we're not left behind.
Speaker 1:Fantastic Congratulations and you have a busy two days coming up, wonderful Onwards and upwards. Good luck, ryan.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, evan. Appreciate it, as always.
Speaker 1:And thanks everyone for listening, watching, sharing and getting in touch with Unified Communications. Take care, take care.