In pic: Calum MacDougall, President, Enterprise Division at Jabra
Speaking to The Times of India at InfoComm 2026, Calum MacDougall, President of Jabra’s Enterprise Division, explained where the company believes it fits as voice becomes a more important interface for enterprise AI. MacDougall joined Jabra-parent GN in 2015 and took over leadership of Jabra’s Enterprise Division in 2023, following senior marketing and commercial roles at Sony Mobile Communications. So imagine I’m a company and I have 5000 headsets out there. And for me as an individual, perhaps there are 3 or 4 agents I would like to use.
Jabra sees AI changing how people interact with workplace technology. But the company does not see itself competing with companies building large language models (LLMs) or AI agents. We have our own application software called Jabra Plus. You can use it as an individual to optimise your headset settings. And as an enterprise, you can use it to manage your headset portfolio. I may want to update the firmware or manage the security. I can manage that through Jabra Plus. In the future, we believe Jabra Plus has a role in this AI world. Enterprises can monitor and manage which AI agents people use. If I could integrate them into Jabra Plus, then I would have this seamless experience that people talk about. For example, a red light comes on so you know that you’re being recorded. One use case we’re working on is in the medical sector, where AI can support doctor-patient consultations and note-taking. For example, in a consultation, I’m the doctor; I don’t have to take notes anymore. I can talk to you. Then I will take the notes and maybe do the referral. But you would like to know that it’s being recorded in some way. So we have a ‘Speak’ device with a red light on it, and we’re looking at portable microphones in a similar way.
His focus today includes enterprise collaboration, Voice AI, hybrid work and how professional audio and video are evolving for AI-enabled workplaces.
I think that’s up to other companies and people,” MacDougall said. But as we said, I think there are still opportunities to deliver value, not just at the hardware layer, but at the software layer as well. “We are not the right people to do LLMs. We are not the right people to create agents. Instead, Jabra wants to focus on making the interaction between people and AI accurate, seamless and secure, from the microphone and headset to the software managing those devices. The other part is data security. The company wants to keep their data secure, so we help enterprises make sure employees use only the right agents and access only the right information. That’s one part of security. The other thing we’re working on for the future is how we can combat deepfakes. For example, you take a phone call, and someone asks you to transfer money, but it’s an AI fake. We’re looking at technology we can integrate into our products that can identify whether it’s a real person. A: “I think, first, hardware will still matter to deliver the right experience. And also, we talked about security; trust will matter- the ability to be able to trust the brand on the edge. For example, imagine you want to talk to multiple agents; wouldn’t it be nice and easy if you could say, “Hey, Jabra, can I talk to ex-agent or Y agent? So I think we can deliver some value there at the software layer. So I think the notion of data and privacy is important for individual company policies, software policies. I think we can help on the edge by showing that you’re being recorded and included in the value chain that way.”