Traditionally when we think of an organization’s conference room, we think of that executive room that can host 20 people, have an elaborate video and collaboration solution at one end, and likely cost an arm and a leg to install. When organizations have one or two of these rooms as their primary conferencing center, I tend to see a select group of users utilize these rooms for big “important” calls, and the room/equipment remains unused 99% of the time. Sometimes the lack of use is due to the solution being built for connecting to specific systems, or more often because the users don’t feel comfortable or confident in their ability to utilize the solution quickly and consistently. This has led to a shift in the conferencing strategy that I’ve noticed across a great deal of my clients.
Where previous organizations had concentrated their conferencing designs around the executive board room, many organizations are moving away from that and designing a higher number of “huddle rooms” that service a smaller amount of people at once, but have significantly simpler and less expensive configurations. Upon seeing this industry shift, Polycom began designing solutions that are more geared towards creating small collaborative meeting rooms at an affordable price point.
That’s where Polycom’s Huddle Room Portfolio comes into play, with its three components: RealPresence Trio, RealPresence Debut, and RealPresence Group Convene.
RealPresence Trio 8800: Polycom’s newest conference phone is the staple of huddle rooms, delivering the best ever audio experience to the boardroom. Built in your traditional “Starfish” design, the 8800 Trio is designed to deliver the best audio experience to both the users in the room as well as the recipiants of the call. The trio is also available in a collaboration kit, which includes the Visual+ accessory and webcam.
RealPresence Debut: The Debut provides an enterprise grade video conferencing to the smaller huddle room at an affordable price. This would be for the smaller rooms that would have a higher level of video use where the webcam doesn’t quite deliver.
RealPresence Group Convene: Convene is a 2-part solution that consists of the RealPresence Group Convene Media Accessory, and either the RealPresence Group 310 or 500 with EagleEye acoustic camera. This flexible solution is geared towards creating a clutter-free workspace, and give the client options on the best design from a camera perspective. It natively integrates with Microsoft Skype for Business, allowing organizations to leverage their conferencing solution provided by Microsoft.
If you would like to design a new conferencing strategy for your organization, please reach out to info@pei.com and we would be happy to discuss the different options available.
https://www.poly.com/us/enhd-video-conferencing/telepresence-room-systems/realpresence-debut.html
Martin Feehan, PEI
