AV Magazine
Video conferencing is becoming as utilitarian as Wi-Fi as new technologies extend collaboration across the hybrid workspace.
p50-54 July AV https://www.avinteractive.com/digital-edition/#digital-edition-1
“The workspace hasn’t changed – yet – but the demand has
absolutely changed for the workspace,” says Craig Storey, Sales Director,
Lightware Visual Engineering. “As more companies inherit the flexible working
model, meeting room technology has to change to enable remote collaboration
that doesn’t penalise the remote worker.”
After the initial rush to work from home using any available technology, employers must now
address the “digital workflow” and how that transition between people working from
office and home environments and, increasingly, on the road. Simply offering a
laptop with built-in webcam won’t suffice anymore.
“Ideally there are no disruptions to working patterns and that wherever staff are, they have access to the right data and the right tech for them to continue seamlessly working,” says Jon Sidwick, President, Collabtech Group. “Devices that aren’t part of a complete digital ecosystem will soon become obsolete in favour of those that are.”
Digital platforms and software should be “as intuitive easy
as using a mobile phone,” agrees Oscar Lin, Head of the Monitor Business Unit
at ViewSonic. ““Where lighting at home is often insufficient, light bar
installations solve this. Other technologies improve the anti-noise or volume
function. In the past, peripherals and accessories had to be purchased
separately; in the future, meeting rooms are more likely to be fully equipped.”
“By giving remote users access to the same level of
technology as they would have at the office, you are not keeping them at home,
you are keeping them connected,” says Stijn Ooms, Director Product Strategy AV
& Digital Workplace at Crestron.
Management at scale
‘Activity-based work’, where the employee decides their
workplace based on the type of activity they have planned, has long been
embraced by Silicon Valley companies.
Extending this to the wider corporate world presents new challenges. The
number of rooms with VC capabilities may be skyrocketing but the number of IT
professionals to manage the technology, is not.
“Scalability is a game changer,” Ooms says. “It’s crucial to
find a way to support the variety of meeting rooms. In the past it was
acceptable to use a collection of vendors and limit the numbers of rooms with VC
capabilities. That’s no longer an option. The IT team doesn’t have the time to
manually update every device after a software update.”
He says certified devices that can be deployed, managed and
maintained remotely are the solution and points to Crestron’s cloud-based
management platform. “Having a hybrid
workforce means that you don’t know in advance where people will be (remote, in
the office, traveling). You need an intelligent way to manage rooms in your
office, for instance to enable you to release rooms when nobody enters.”
Sidwick also stresses the importance of being able to
configure and maintain solutions remotely; “IT teams should look after their
whole network from a centralised location, saving valuable time by not having
to visit every site to fix and issues.”
AV-over-IP and software-defined services need to be
incorporated across the board, according to NewTek. Its NDI networking protocol
can support phone displays, video walls, projectors and other devices over
distances. This includes personal laptops where Microsoft have integrated NDI
directly into Teams and Skype.
“AV-over-IP doesn’t have to be this complex dark art,” says Liam
Hayter, Senior Solutions Architect. “IT and networking departments need to be
more open and trusting in a managed way of how employees share and distribute
content within an estate.”
Meeting room evolution
Before COVID-19, only 20% of meeting rooms were video
enabled. Adding VC and collaboration technology to every space, large or small,
is now a requirement.
“Every space should include great audio quality, cameras
that capture everyone in the room, and an easy way to control the technology
and start a meeting,” Ooms says.
In response, there’s a huge growth in smaller huddle rooms,
reports Wayne Mason, UK & Ireland B2B Lead, Logitech. “Requirements include
cameras with a wide angled field of view, and excellent audio and optics to
ensure every participant is both seen and heard clearly.”
Sidwick warns that meeting room technology needs to be
deployed into “wider platform ecosystems” and employees trained on how to use
it, “otherwise adoption rates will suffer and the benefits these professional
spaces bring will not be realised.”
A remote worker for example just wants simple plug-and-play
USB hardware which is compatible with lots of different software variants.
“When they return to the office they need the same
flexibility just on a bigger scale,” says Jeff May, UK Sales Director, Konftel.
“They don’t want to be confused by a big screen with a separate audio device
and lots of unfamiliar audio and video units plus associated cabling.”
Konftel’s One Cable Connection hub for example ensures a
single USB cable is all users need to connect a camera, speakerphone and the
room’s screen to the collaboration app on their laptop.
Storey says the video switchers in meeting rooms should now
incorporating USB technology. He explains, “Until now video has sat in the AV
world and USB in the IT world. Both need to truly converge to work seamlessly
as we see more meeting rooms wanting a truly agnostic BYOD setup. This requires
user’s laptops to be able to access in room USB peripherals such as cameras and
microphone systems.”
The ability to integrate APIs from various collaboration
software solutions with AV hardware used in-office and remote management tools with
IT service management platforms, means there’s no limit to where UC systems are
deployed.
“The ability to remotely manage VC technology allows
companies to employ people from all around the globe to help support their AV
and UC estate virtually,” says Nicole Corbin, Director of Product and User
Experience, Utelogy. “There’s no need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to
outfit a conferencing room that limits innovations when there’s new technology
that supports virtual and in-person collaboration to boost productivity and
employee satisfaction.”
Full screen immersion
More immersive options for collaboration with life-size and
increasingly life-like experiences are beginning to emerge.
“We are starting to see the development of more sophisticated
solutions, particularly around immersive virtual meetings including Google 3D
meeting solutions and the future of Microsoft Teams Rooms,” Sidwick says.
“These create more natural experiences to connect in person and remote
attendees with life size representations, cameras placed at eye level to
improve eye contact and spatial audio, so you hear people’s voices from where
they are sat in the virtual space.”
For Mason the future of work will entail “intelligent” VC
systems that remove the bugbears that plagued older versions. This means AI to
detect meeting participants, and smart technologies to auto correct colour and
exposure, ensuring an optimal meeting experience.
Installers are being challenged to get analogue
collaboration tools such as whiteboards to work within the hybrid working
model. Fortunately, tech can help bridge this gap.
“AI-powered whiteboard cameras can now broadcast whiteboard
content into video meetings with perfect clarity, and use AI to ‘ghost’ the
writer’s hand, so no content is obstructed,” Mason says. “All these tools need
to be simple and user-friendly to reduce barriers to adoption. One-touch call
solutions will be especially valuable.”
For installers, new networked device management systems can
provide a view on a whole video estate, “sharing insights on errors to fix and
pushing updates when needed all helping to ensure a consistent user
experience.”
As utilitarian as Wi-Fi
The pandemic catapulted VC to the forefront of the working
culture to such an extent that “it will soon become as normal and as expected
as having a Wi-Fi connection,” says Sidwick.
“VC will remain the conduit between remote and office-based
working,” says May. “It will continue to penetrate the market - wherever people
are working.”
Ultimately, it is VC fatigue that renders communication less
effective. Crestron says meeting time has more than doubled for Teams users to
148% in the past year and continues to rise.
“Using the right technology helps battle the meeting-fatigue
that everyone experienced these past months,” Ooms contends. For ultimate
flexibility and productivity he argues for dedicated devices. that provide
better AV quality, enable users to multi-task and ensure reliability of
connection.
“Long term there are still some things that are simply more
efficient and productive in person,” says Hayter. “Workshopping, for example. You
cannot completely replace that as it is human nature.”
Although NewTek is trying. “We are seeing a big demand in our media
production systems being deployed to create flexible studio and meeting spaces,
to create visually engaging live content not unlike what we’ve seen from
broadcast markets at one end to live streaming at the other for years,” he
says.
The future of video collaboration will blend the best of
broadcast with the best of AV allowing anyone to communicate in a visually exciting,
and effective manner.
ends
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