Enterprise technology vendors are rushing to get on the chatbot bandwagon. Last week saw IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. add their names to the list by announcing a partnership to deliver artifical intelligence services for the latter’s collaboration software. According to the companies, the development effort will focus primarily on providing “real-time advice and handling tasks”.

They didn’t go into more detail, but offered a few examples of how the upcoming chatbot functionality might come handy. Financial advisors, for instance, could have certain investment recommendations generated automatically when talking with clients via Cisco WebEx. And they’ll also gain the ability to share related documents more easily thanks to integration with IBM’s Verse email client that the vendors plan to add in conjunction. But Big Blue veep Ed Brill said that development will only complete by 2017, which provides a valuable time window for competitors.

The chat market market has dozens if not hundreds of players and is adding more on a regular basis. Swiss media company Tamedia AG became the latest company to join the fray last week by acquiring Meekan Ltd, an Israeli startup that has developed a scheduling bot for Slack and HipChat. The software can automatically identify the most convenient time for two people to meet, check if an appointment might conflict with a user’s prior commitments and quickly change the agenda if needed. Tamedia plans to integrate Meekan with its popular Doodle scheduling service to increase its appeal.

The acquisition was announced shortly after sales analytics startup LeadiD Inc. rebranded to Jornaya Inc. and closed a $10 million funding round led by growth equity firm Edison Partners. The capital will be used to finance the development of new features for the outfit’s namesake service, which provides visibility into customer sentiment and buying patterns. Marketers can use the information to increase the effectiveness of their promotional campaigns.

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