Egnyte, the secure platform for content collaboration and governance, yesterday announced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries, and today announced enhanced features for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
The new solutions will simplify AI deployment and improve model accuracy for customers in AEC industries, according to Egnyte. Egnyte customers can use the new AI models to label job site photos and documents based on their contents. Users will also be able to tag pictures with labels such as “roofing” or “HVAC” or tag documents with labels like “RFI” or “submittal” and trigger workflows and policies based on those labels.
“The new AI model for AEC is already trained; however, we also offer the ability to train your AI models to suit your own needs,” notes David Spitz, chief strategy officer at Egnyte.
In addition, Spitz says the AI model for AEC builds in security. “Even as data is passed to AI services like Azure OpenAI, the data is confined to stay within each Egnyte customer’s security boundary and encrypted in flight. More importantly, the security boundary for each user is temporarily extended to the service only when needed and then retracted after the transaction occurs. All user data is purged from the AI service between transactions and is never exposed to other users, Egnyte employees, or the AI service provider,” he explains.
The AI model for AEC is part of Egnyte’s confidential and adaptable content intelligence engine. Egnyte’s content intelligence engine is used to power a variety of content management, security, and compliance services delivered natively through the Egnyte platform. In July, the company also introduced a new suite of generative AI-based solutions to help knowledge workers find and summarize information buried in their company’s documents and media files.
In the coming months, Egnyte plans to introduce other vertical-specific AI models into the engine. “In addition to AEC, Egnyte also serves a large number of customers in financial services, life sciences, and advertising and media. More details on vertical models for these industries will be provided at our customer summit in December,” Spitz says.
The company will also be rolling out a next generation of its Trainable Classifier, enabling non-technical business users to train their own classification models, without exposing those models or the underlying data to any third parties. “The vertical AI models and Trainable Classifier both help to improve accuracy,” Spitz says. “Egnyte also provides source citations for AI response traceability.”
Meanwhile, Egnyte’s enhanced relationship with Microsoft, announced today, will provide customers with additional real-time document collaboration and sharing features through Microsoft 365 and a Microsoft Teams integration that makes it easy for customers to share and upload files directly within Teams while also providing the ability to upload directly into Egnyte.
As part of Microsoft’s Cloud Storage Partner Program Plus (CSPP+), Egnyte supports customers with the ability to co-edit documents in real time. An enhancement to the existing Egnyte integration into Microsoft 365, co-editing enables users on the same Egnyte account to collaborate in real-time on Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, whether they are in Office desktop or web.
Customers now can default to Egnyte as their file storage location for all their files uploaded and shared in the Teams app. The integration with Teams allows users to search, browse, upload, and share files.
“The demand for seamless collaboration tools has increased in today’s hybrid work environment,” says Rajesh Ram, co-founder and chief growth officer at Egnyte. “In partnering with Microsoft, our goal was to make it easier for organizations to securely collaborate where they are most comfortable, which provides flexibility and enhances productivity. This also reinforces the evolving needs of MSPs and their customers who seek integrated collaboration solutions in line with work trends.”
