G Suite — the cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools from Google LLC — is familiar to workers everywhere. Likewise, Cisco Systems Inc.’s portfolio of technologies for meetings and collaboration has picked up lots of enterprise fans. Fittingly, the two companies have teamed up to usher in the cloud-and-AI-enabled future of work.

Google Cloud Platform officially announced its partnership with Cisco at the Google Cloud Next 2018 conference last week. However, its powwowing began a year earlier.

“Different groups started engaging, because it was actually customer demand from our corporate enterprise customers wanting better integration of our collaboration portfolio into various aspects of G Suite,” said Connie Tang (pictured, right), director of product management at Cisco.

Tang and Ben Evans (pictured, left), director of strategic alliances at Cisco, spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco. They discussed Google and Cisco’s partnership and how cloud and artificial intelligence could transform the workday for many. (* Disclosure below.)

Browsing through meetings-data bonanza with AI

The two companies have blended services and features of G Suite — like Calendar — with Cisco’s collaboration tools — like Webex — for online meeting, web conferencing and videoconferencing. A major benefit for users is that none of this requires deployment, installation, test, etc.; it is all enabled through the web browser.

The companies’ integrations include WebEx scheduling directly into Calendar; WebEx meetings on Chromebook; and the leveraging of webRTC within Chrome, so people can join WebEx meetings through the Chrome web browser.

“What I’ve seen companies most concerned about is applications affecting other applications on the desktop, and hence breaking some of their services,” Tang said. That these services are available through the Chrome web browser removes that fear, she added.

Amassed WebEx data could provide arable soil for Google’s AI and machine learning tools going forward, according to Evans.

“To really get the benefit from AI, you need some pretty big data sets,” Evans said. “Just thinking about WebEx for a second — 6 billion minutes a month of meetings — I’m not saying we’re going to go push all of that straight into Google, but just when you think about what’s tied up in those 6 billion minutes … ”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Google Cloud Next event. (* Disclosure: Cisco Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Cisco nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE