EVENTS Integrated Systems Europe
“Just dialling in is good if you’re a single user at home but when you are in the huddle room, that means that
there’s a reason why there’s four or more people in the meeting.”
Rene Buhay, VP of Sales & Marketing, Europe - AVer
All things considered
Just before the Coronavirus took over the world, Integrated Systems Europe, the biggest AV exhibition in
Europe, showed off the latest and greatest in display, audio and collaboration technology.
It will not come as a surprise
to you if I say that video
collaboration may see a
surge during the current
climate. With more companies
grounding sta and cancelling
external meetings, we’re needing
new ways to get work done.
One exhibition that was not
cancelled due to Covid-19 was
Integrated Systems Europe in
Amsterdam which saw over
50,000 exhibitors, journalists
and attendees pour through the
doors of the RAI Amsterdam
Conference Centre towards the
start of the year.
Described by some as the
‘MWC of the AV industry’ this
is obviously a big meeting point
for companies in the AV market,
with the show moving ever closer
to Mobile World Congress by
moving to Barcelona next year.
On the oors, before a
focus on the necessity of video
conferencing had gained
momentum, room management
was a big talking point. Talking
through Sony’s TEOS workplace
management system, co-founder
and European corporate and
education solutions manager,
omas Issa said that room
management falls under more
than just collaboration spaces.
“We divide analytics into
four dierent categories. One
is the device path, providing
information about the device,
the type of devices in the
company, the number of device,
usage time per device and
everything related to energy
consumption, the price they pay
for the energy cost per device.
Number two is meeting room
analytics, how many meeting
rooms and number of meetings,
when people book the room but
never show up to optimise the
space.
Reception, so the number
of guests and visitors to the
company. Finally, signage
analytics which is more about
the content analytics, how much
content they have, how they use
it per site, per timeframe, per
building, per country.”
“A lot of people are talking
about service visualisation but
what that really means is that
they want to buy an experience,
rather than a product” said
Simon Jackson, Senior Vice
President, EMEA Sales at NEC
Display Solutions.
“If you’re going to buy
experience, you have to be
able to manage assets very
tightly. You have to get a lot
of data metrics to be able to
maximise the meeting space
more eciently and track if it is
working.
But then you can start putting
sensors on the technology and
sense how many people are
in the room, is this meeting
room in good health, is it
underutilized, overutilized?
Have you got too many big
meeting rooms and not enough
huddle rooms?
Particularly when you’re
looking at the scale these
companies are rolling out. ese
are very important metrics for
them to be able to understand:
how are people using these
meeting rooms and what kind
of buildings they should be
designing, or redesigning, in the
future.”
We go together
One word on the oor aside
from the big ‘C’ (Coronavirus
for the elimination of doubt)
was ‘agnostic’. e idea of
being able to use any piece of
hardware with any software or
conferencing solution was one
of, if not the, main theme of the
show.
Since Zoom shook up the
conferencing market with
it’s free to use, high quality
video calling capability, the
idea of hardware and software
exclusivity has become less
appealing to manufacturers.
Zoom DACH head of sales
Peer Stemmler said “Our
customers obviously have a
have an intent to keep video
conferencing very easy.
Your very rst zoom meeting
experience, coming into that
meeting is hassle free and fast.
Especially if you are speaking to
someone outside your business,
you don’t have to worry about
which end point I am using,
where I am. is ease of kind
of ease of use, in fact, is what
makes us so successful at the
moment.”
However, with the increase
in remote working and the ever
increasing and fully justied
consciousness when it comes
to the environment, meetings
taking place in person are
decreasing in frequency.
After the cost of kitting out
codec systems, chief technology
ocers and building managers
may be hesitant to invest in
various forms of huddle rooms
but Display Note’s Chief
Operation Ocer Ed Morgan
said that such rooms have not
had their day already.
“What I am seeing is that
companies that are doing it right
are striking a balance between
distributed workforce, you can
do a lot of things on Slack if you
just want to, chat, work from
home, access all your team, swap
36 | Comms Business Magazine | April 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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