The Collaboration Platform for the Agentic Workforce

On By Snorre Kjesbu7 Min Read

Most collaboration platforms were upgraded for AI. Ours was built for it.

That distinction matters more than it might sound. And if you have been watching what is happening inside organizations right now, you already feel why.

The Agentic Era is Already Here 

AI agents are already answering customers, summarizing decisions, and moving work forward. Collaboration is mission-critical infrastructure: the place where decisions get made, where customers get served, where trust gets built or broken.

The agentic era is accelerating the shift.

And it surfaces as two distinct problems depending on where you sit.

If you are running the system, the problem is visibility and control. Can you see what is happening across your entire environment in real time, and can you trust what you see? That is the operator’s problem.

If you are using the system, the problem is distance. The gap between a decision and the action that should follow it. The gap between languages that separates people mid-conversation. The gap between one customer service interaction and the next, forcing a customer to start over. That is the user’s problem.

Both problems share the same root. Work has outpaced the infrastructure built to support it. The operator needs complete assurance. The user needs the friction gone and the distance closed. Cisco built an architecture that solves for both: an agentic workforce governed to the same standard as your best employees, a physical workplace that closes the distance between people, and resilient systems that hold under pressure.

At Cisco Live AMER 2026, we are introducing a new generation of collaboration infrastructure built for the agentic era across all three. We call it Connected Intelligence. Here is what that looks like.

Intelligent Operations: Cisco Cloud Control

Resilient systems do not announce themselves. Their value shows when pressure hits and your business stays operational, your teams stay confident, and your customers never feel a thing.

That is the problem most enterprise IT environments face today. When something goes wrong, the answer must be assembled manually — across siloed consoles, under pressure, usually after the damage is already done. IT leaders have the intelligence and the effort. What they need is a unified picture. And that model does not hold under an agentic workload, where you are no longer just managing infrastructure. You are managing a workforce running inside that infrastructure, one that needs to be governed with the same rigor you apply to your people.

Cisco Cloud Control gives IT one destination for every domain: network, devices, calling, meetings, and AI. For a Collaboration admin, this matters more than most. Troubleshooting has always required seeing across multiple domains, and that visibility has rarely existed in one place. Cloud Control changes that. Not just a view into collaboration, but the whole picture, in real time, so teams can see issues forming and act before they become outages. Entering controlled availability now.

AI Canvas is part of that picture. Built into Cloud Control, it surfaces cross-platform insights across calls, meetings, and devices. Issues are identified and resolved faster, with the full picture already assembled and ready to act on. Generally available today.

AI Defense applies governance and guardrails across every AI interaction, protecting against harmful content, prompt manipulation, and data exposure. Governance belongs at the architecture level, built in from the start. Generally available in Q3 CY26.

This is resilience in practice. One system that shows you what is happening, performs under pressure, and lets you act with confidence when it matters most. Cisco is uniquely positioned with the network, the devices, the platform, and the intelligence running as a single architecture capable of backing that claim. Trust is architectural and that is what sets us apart.

Intelligent Workspaces: The Next Generation of Cisco Collaboration Devices

Distance is a physical opportunity just as much as a software one. When the meeting starts and people join from multiple locations, the system must keep up without friction. That is where the physical environment becomes the deciding factor. The hardware, the acoustics, the intelligence built into the space; these must hold up their end of the equation, every time.

Cisco Board Pro G3 brings intelligence directly into the spaces — where teams meet, think, and make decisions together. 

Powered by RoomOS and NVIDIA, processing happens locally on the device for low latency and strong data privacy. Advanced AI perception combined with a powerful interactive surface enables real-time whiteboarding, annotation, and collaboration without friction. It integrates seamlessly across Webex, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, so the room works regardless of how your teams connect. Orderable now.

Cisco Desk Pro G2 uses a dual-lens camera to widen the field of view, so everyone in the space feels fully present and part of the conversation. Generally available today.

Cisco Room Kit Pro G2 delivers high-performance hardware for large-scale meetings where the stakes are high, and the technology simply must hold. Generally available today.

All three new devices run on up to 25x better processing power of their predecessors through the Cisco and NVIDIA compute module, with AI agents embedded directly in the hardware through RoomOS 26, and AVoIP-first architecture with single cable PoE deployment. 

Workspace Advisor gives admins real, actionable data about how physical environments are performing and part of Cisco Cloud Control. The real question becomes whether the space is actually working for the people in it. Generally available today.

When the room works, the moment holds — the connection happens, the decision moves forward, and distance closes. That is an engineering outcome.

Intelligent Work: AI Agents for Collaboration

Knowledge workers spend hours preparing for meetings that demand far less. That time adds up. The real productivity drain is everything surrounding the work—the preparation, the context switching, the language barriers, the decisions that slip between meetings. Cisco saw that opportunity and built something better.

The Webex AI agents were built on a simple premise: every agent operates inside the same governed environment as the rest of your infrastructure, working together, passing context, preserving intent, and driving decisions toward resolution. This is the agentic workforce in practice.

This week, AI Agent Studio extends across the entire Collaboration portfolio. The premise is straightforward: building, deploying, and managing AI agents should not require multiple tools, disconnected environments, or compromises on security. Everything happens in one place. 

Voice or digital. Internal or external. Pre-configured self-service workflows ready out of the box, or fully customized agents that reach across collaboration and third-party channels. IT and admins work from a single, governed environment, and consistency is never a trade-off.

Prep Agent closes the distance between preparation and the meeting. It surfaces everything relevant before a meeting begins, drawing from CRM data, prior conversation history, and open action items. The person walking in is ready before the first word is spoken. Generally available in Q3 CY26.

Notetaker Agent captures decisions and in person conversations, so nothing gets lost between conversations. Entering beta Q3 CY26.

Translator Agent closes the distance between languages in real time, so two people in different markets can move through a conversation without stopping to interpret. Distance disappears mid-sentence. Generally available in Q3 CY26.

AI Receptionist connects the right person to the right conversation at the right moment. Generally available today.

For organizations building their own workflows, AI integrations with Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, and Amazon Q give teams flexibility without lock-in. Generally available in Q3 CY26.

PII Redaction and AI Guardrails are designed to assist customers in detecting and blocking private data exposure across every interaction. These guardrails are essential because autonomy without accountability is a liability. They apply consistent rules, accountability, and standards aligned with your best people, helping to make the system trustworthy. These solutions support customers’ efforts to maintain data privacy and security. Generally available in Q3 CY26.

Intelligent Customer Experience: Webex Contact Center

If you want to know whether your architecture performs, look at the contact center. Real time. Real customers. Real pressure. This is where operators carry the heaviest load, maintaining visibility across every interaction, managing a blended workforce of humans and AI agents, and ensuring every conversation meets the standard your brand demands. And it is where users feel the difference most directly, context intact, conversations that carry forward, and resolutions that arrive without friction. Legacy systems were never built for that responsibility. Cisco rebuilt the model from the ground up for the operators and the workforce that exists today.

AI Concierge for customers, a pre-configured, extensible AI agent in the Webex AI Agent platform, closes the distance between one interaction and the next. It delivers personalized conversations using context, AI memory, and multi-agent orchestration. One continuous conversation that carries forward, every time, across every channel. Generally available in Q4CY26.

AI Agent 360, enhanced by AI Defense and Splunk, provides secure governance and real-time visibility into AI agent performance and behavior across the full lifecycle. Operators see what their agents are doing, how they are performing, and where they need correction. Assurance, at the customer experience layer. Entering beta in Q3 CY26.

Webex AI Workforce Engagement Management brings forecasting, scheduling, intraday management, AI quality management, and performance analytics into one native suite — built for a workforce that is part human and part AI, from the ground up. Entering beta Q2 CY26.

Connected Intelligence 

Everything we have built, the resilient systems, the physical workplace, the agentic workforce, was always moving toward this. 

The meeting starts with context already there, the operator confident and the user walking in ready to contribute. As the issue forms, the operator sees it first and acts with precision and speed. When the customer reaches out, the conversation carries forward and the agent, fully in context, resolves it with confidence. 

The operator stays ahead. The user stays focused. The customer stays served. That is Connected Intelligence, delivered. 

Decades of Cisco innovation converging into a single architecture that erases distance, earns trust, and performs when it matters most. It is something we built. And today, we are handing it to you. 

Explore everything we announced at Cisco Live AMER 2026.

Learn More:

The Agentic Workplace Runs On Cisco

The Last Mile of AI Infrastructure Has Been Missing. Not Anymore

Cisco Live US 2026: The System Everything Runs On – Security, AI, and Connected Intelligence at Work

Smarter Operations, Stronger Engagement: Announcing AI-Native Innovations in Webex Contact Center

About The Author

Snorre Kjesbu
Snorre Kjesbu Senior Vice President & General Manager of Collaboration Cisco
Snorre Kjesbu leads an integrated multi-billion-dollar business encompassing Customer Experience, Devices, and the entire Webex Suite.
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