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Core Communications It is undoubtedly very early in the game for the technology, but it’s worth thinking about how AI can be used to make collaboration better – thus open- ing up new conversations for channel partners to have with their customers and potential end users. Zoom.ai, for one, is integrating with Micro- soft collaboration platforms. It’s a chat-based productivity solution that helps employees to offload and automate everyday tasks including searching for files, scheduling meetings, gener- ating documents and much more within Microsoft Teams, and it provides enterprise users of Mi- crosoft Office 365 with a secure and seamless AI solution to effectively streamline the daily work- flows of their employees. The result is that Teams and Office 365 be- come the singular interface for employees to offload tasks and access their tech stack. The Zoom.ai assistant acts as an intelligent middleware that rests between a company’s Teams chat ap- plication and the Microsoft suite. Using enterprise- grade security, employees can access their data and tools through Teams as a single access point. “This integration of Zoom.ai with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office 365 is an ideal syn- ergy and exactly the type of collaboration that is helping to drive the future of the workplace,” said Roy Pereira, CEO and founder of Zoom. ai. “With intuitive automated skills that make day-to-day tasks easier, we make the workday better for everyone. Zoom.ai is committed to improving the employee experience and build- ing the future of work.” IBM, meanwhile, recently unveiled Cloud Pri- vate for Data, which is essentially an AI-driven app-building platform designed to help companies uncover previously unobtainable insights from their data. Using both AI and machine learning, the platform enables users to build and exploit event-driven applications capable of analyzing the torrents of data from things such as IoT sensors, online commerce, mobile devices and more. “Whether they are aware of it or not, every company is on a journey to AI as the ultimate driver of business transformation,” said Rob Thomas, general manager at IBM Analytics. “But for them to get there, they need to put in place an information architecture for collect- ing, managing and analyzing their data. We are By Tara Seals The SmartTouch A rtificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to be deployed in unified communications (UC) environments, in the form of intelligent platforms and virtual assistants – and by heavy hitters such as Microsoft. Artificial intelligence moves to UC “Whether they are aware of it or not, every company is on a journey to AI as the ultimate driver of business transformation.” (Continued on page 20) 18 Channel Vision | May - June, 2018