Teamwork on steroids!
Collaboration is clearly the white-hot term of the IT/AV industry this year! As businesses realize the benefits of securing the necessary tools for teams to meet and coordinate, more and more products compete for attention. Collaboration happens nowadays in any setting and takes advantage of the abundant networking options to allow remote team members to join sessions and contribute productively.
From instant messaging and document sharing to videoconferencing and telepresence systems, the industry is aiming at the removal of all barriers to efficient and trouble free collaboration. Are you away from the office? Don’t have access to a PC? Are your files stored somewhere remotely? There is still no excuse for not taking part actively in a company meeting!
One range of products that deserves some serious consideration in the collaboration space is the integrated, large format, touchscreen display targeted at meeting rooms and huddle spaces. This is new range of products positioned as a hybrid between smartboard, messaging system, web conferencing endpoint and even wireless presentation sharing appliance.
In ISE 2017, the Cisco Spark Board was presented with great enthusiasm and a vivid campaign, capturing the attention of much of the event’s audience. It features all the functionality mentioned above through connecting to Cisco’s Spark collaboration system. In a similar fashion, in ISE 2015 we witnessed the launch of the Microsoft Surface Hub, a pioneering device integrating with Microsoft Office apps and, of course, Skype for Business. And yet another contestant in the collaboration board market is the newly introduced, Google Jamboard!
We can anticipate with enough certainty that devices with similar features and functionality will be gradually introduced by more suppliers, some are already on the way. The expectations with respect to meeting spaces are bound to increase and enforce a much smarter infrastructure than the plain old meeting room projector.
One word of caution though, at this early stage, vendors seem to require the adoption, not just of a meeting room device, but of the entire collaboration infrastructure that works behind it. So, for the full functionality of existing collaboration boards to unfold, one needs to adopt the same vendor’s e-mail, instant messaging system, videoconferencing client, etc. We expect this trend to be less evident with time and products to open up to support interoperability across platforms!
At CyberStream, we are dedicated to bringing to our customers the right solutions that match their needs and avoid conflicts with their established systems. We also take pride in the fact that we have integrated best of breed products to deliver the bulk of collaboration board functionality to customer meeting rooms at a time when the term had not even been invented!
Contact us, for an assessment of your collaboration needs or if you need a proposal that combines industry expertise with innovation and creativity!