Integrated Systems Europe EVENTS
documents. We do that, we have
a distributed working policy, we
can work from home for three
days of the week and I can do
everything I need to do on a
laptop.
But companies who are
doing it right are striking the
balance between that distributed
workforce and bringing teams
in to actually meet on a more
personal level. Tuesday and
Wednesdays we get together as a
team, we sit down together, we’re
in a room together, we’re actually
conversing one to one with three
or four of us around the table.
ese meeting spaces are
becoming almost like the living
room of the of the company
where people gather, have
conversations, talk to each other
and work together on content.
at’s what we see, we don’t
see a slowdown in the number
of meetings that companies
are having so when people are
coming together we want to
make that experience as good as
possible.”
AVer European sales and
marketing VP Rene Buhay
added there is often a reason why
there is more than one person in
a huddle room.
“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.
Otherwise everybody will always
just do remote.
ere’s reasons, for
collaboration purposes whether
it be working on a strategy, an
idea, R&D, software, blog, or
something else, that will need
more than two people in a room
and a laptop isn’t going to cut it.”
Shout, Shout, Let it all out
With all talk on the show room
oors of cameras, conferencing
systems and displays, video was
well and truly on everyone’s
mind. However, the importance
of great audio was an area that
Konftel sales director Je May
in particular wanted to hammer
home.
“Everybody talks about video,
it’s sexy, it’s on their horizon now
because people are using video
from their smartphones and the
tablets, people are used to that in
a personal environment and it’s
the same in business.
Businesses are always talking
about having video solutions but
for every video meeting you need
to have the best quality audio,
you don’t need video for every
meeting, you always need the
audio. But it’s being passed over
because people prefer to talk
about what they can see.
We are the same, but we
always bring it back to the point
that you can have a really good
video, or you can have adequate
video, and you can still continue,
if you don’t have anything but
really great audio, the meeting
is dead.
You can’t tolerate anything less
than really good audio, if you
can’t hear what people are saying
clearly, or if there is a lot of a
distortion you can’t continue,
the audio always has to be the
best it can be for every meeting.”
Paul Clark, senior vice
president and EMEA managing
director at Poly added “One
of the big dynamics that we’re
seeing is the rise of informal
meeting rooms, formal meeting
rooms, so called huddle rooms,
in open plan oces or in a
formal meeting room space.
Historically those were voice
enabled and the largest rooms
were video enabled very formal,
full immersion. But you had
smaller rooms that weren’t video
enabled, that we are starting to
see video enabled. In the recent
past, we’ve seen an acceleration
of video adoption in meeting
rooms and there’s a good reason
for why that’s happening.
If I talk to you on the
telephone, about 13% of
the eectiveness of that
communication is the words
that I use and 87% is tone of
voice and how I emphasise
things. If we see each other,
55% of the eectiveness of
the communication is body
language, that’s incredibly
powerful.”
Clark added that consumer
apps like FaceTime, Messenger
and WhatsApp have lead to this
uptake in video conferencing,
with EMEA VP of Sales, Jeremy
Keefe adding there is a huge
opportunity with “only 2% of
meeting rooms today are t for
purpose.”
“We expect a lot of innovation
from our competitors, some of
whom are also our partners. Just
like everyone in the IT industry,
we compete on some things
and we cooperate on others”
said Logitech Head of Analyst
Relations & Sales Enablement,
Simon Dudley.
“But what we really see is not
us taking market share from
other people, we just see the
market blowing up. Today, 3%
of meeting rooms have got video
collaboration in them. I’ve been
selling video collaboration for 28
years, and only 3% of meeting
rooms have got video.
e opportunity to get into
one room in ten is a market
three or four times the size of
it now. at’s pretty impressive
and that’s what we want to see in
the next few years.”
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