Welcome to this week’s No Jitter Roll, our regular roundup of product news in the communication and collaboration spaces. This week NJR summarizes some of the major announcements of the last weeks of December 2023 and first week of January 2024.

In December, NICE launched its 2023 CXone Fall Release and closed on its acquisition of LiveVox. Additionally, the Logitech Sight tabletop camera was certified for Microsoft Teams and Zoom Rooms; Sennheiser’s TeamConnect Medium ceiling mic was integrated with Crestron Automate VX; the OneDrive app is now in Teams; HGS launched generative AI in its Agent X solution; Balto added screen recording; and NovelVox updated its HubSpot CTI product and added new integrations. In January 2024, Intel and DigitalBridge formed Articul8, an enterprise-focused Gen AI platform.

NICE Advances AI-Driven Customer Experience with 2023 CXone Fall Release

The CX software provider launched its 2023 CXone Fall Release, which includes enhancements to Enlighten AI Routing and Enlighten AutoSummary, allowing CXone to provide fully automated summaries of customer interactions via generative AI.

This release brought other enhancements including:

• Microsoft Azure as a storage option.
• CXone will now work with any ACD, on-premises or in the cloud.
• A workforce engagement management capability called True to Interval (TTI) to account for asynchronous, periodic interactions when forecasting and scheduling.

NICE Closed LiveVox Acquisition

This acquisition brought LiveVox’s AI-powered outreach capabilities into NICE’s CXone platform.

• As analyst and NJ contributor Dave Michels wrote on NJ, “This acquisition further validates a trend of combining inbound and outbound systems for a more comprehensive customer experience.”

Want to know more?

Dave Michels also discussed NICE’s AI and CX efforts back in August 2023 with the company’s CEO Barak Eilam. In October 2023, analyst and NJ contributor Zeus Kerravala wrote about NICE’s take on the shifting nature of customer interactions and how NICE addresses the impact of AI on a contact center agent’s role.

Logitech Sight AI Camera Now Certified for Microsoft Teams and Zoom Rooms

The Logitech Sight is a tabletop camera that was certified for use as a center-of-table companion camera for Microsoft Teams. (A center-of-table camera works in tandem with the front-of-room video bar.) The Logitech Sight was also certified for use as a panoramic camera with Zoom Rooms. The Logitech Sight has dual 4K cameras, 7 beamforming microphones and is capable of multi-participant framing. It is available globally with an MSRP of $1,999.

Crestron Automate VX Now Supports Sennheiser TeamConnect Ceiling Medium

The audio technology provider announced that its TeamConnect Medium (TCC M) ceiling microphone for mid-sized meeting rooms and lecture or collaboration spaces has been integrated into the Crestron Automate VX voice-activated speaker tracking solution. With the Automate VX solution, multiple cameras around the room work together to track active speakers. The integration helps makes the setup of larger systems more efficient.

HGS Next-Gen Accelerator for Contact Centers Integrates Generative AI

A provider of CX solutions, HGS launched HGS Agent X, which provides pre-built and integrated generative AI features including real-time agent assistance, speech and text transcription along with sentiment analysis (positive, neutral, negative) and ChatGPT access. It also provides AI-driven insights to supervisors such as CSAT and agent satisfaction (ASAT) based on customer and agent interactions.

Balto Adds Screen Recording for Contact Centers

The provider of real-time guidance systems added Screen Recording to its Agent App. When enabled, the capability notifies the agents and records all displays on an agent’s machine for the duration of a call. The agent can pause and resume the recording at any time to leave out sensitive information. Recordings are stored in the Balto Cloud.

NovelVox Launches HubSpot CTI Connector 2.0

The developer of contact center applications announced its new HubSpot CTI Connector which provides a revamped user interface, refined computer-telephony integration (CTI) functionality and more integrations with contact center platforms including Cisco Finesse, Cisco Webex, Genesys, Amazon Connect, Dialpad, Zoom, NICE, 8×8, and Avaya.

The OneDrive app is Now Available for Microsoft Teams

The new OneDrive app for Teams will replace the generic Files app in Teams. As with OneDrive Web, employees can now access their Microsoft 365 files, including Loops, dashboards, and design boards, within Teams.

Intel and DigitalBridge Launch Articul8, an Enterprise Generative AI Company

Intel and the investment firm DigitalBridge Group have formed Articul8 AI, Inc. (Articul8) an independent company that offers a turnkey, full-stack, vertically-optimized and secure generative AI software platform. The platform delivers AI capabilities that keep customer data, training and inference within the enterprise security perimeter. The platform also provides customers the choice of cloud, on-prem or hybrid deployment. The platform was launched and optimized on Intel hardware architectures, including Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Gaudi accelerators, but will support a range of hybrid infrastructure alternatives. Other investors in Articul8 include Fin Capital, Mindset Ventures, Communitas Capital, GiantLeap Capital, GS Futures and Zain Group.

Want to know more?

This technology was first deployed in conjunction with Boston Consulting Group (BCG). DigitalBridge invests in companies that provide data center, fiber, edge infrastructure and cellular networks. As discussed here, most generative AI models require access to cloud computing infrastructure.

This Week on No Jitter

In case you missed them, here are some of our top stories:

• 2024 may well be the year when the AI hype meets reality.
• For CX, 2024 is all about accepting AI: Innovation will be swift, but will require some necessary breaks for consumers to catch up.
• In 2024, some tech is poised for success: We’re in the most revolutionary period in technology for decades, maybe for all time, with the reality of the Internet combining with the promise of AI. It’s time to think big – and look for opportunities in everything from networking to collaboration.
• Five Technologies to Watch in 2024: AI, hybrid work, and security are key focus areas for the next year.