The World Gets Smaller With Collaboration

The buzz about remote collaborative work environments has been floating throughout office buildings across the world.  With the cost of travel increasing every year and the continued growth of a global economy, the need to communicate across vast physical distances is becoming mandatory.  This reality has been trickling into offices for years with the adoption of programs like Adobe Connect, Skype, and GoToMeeting.  But these formats are starting to lose a little bit of their luster in the workplace.  While they are fantastic ways to open communication and share information with people remotely, it is still difficult to achieve the same results you might get while all parties were located in the same room.

Audio Visual manufacturers are developing solutions that allow for greater interaction to promote collaboration for both localized and remote solutions. For offices looking for a more advanced localized collaboration solution there are two options that have been growing in popularity. The Barco ‘Clickshare’ solution was demonstrated at Infocomm, the largest A/V show of the year, where small meeting rooms had the solution set up and ready for use during the show.  With the simple insertion of a USB device into a laptop, making it perfect for the new Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) workspaces, wireless integration to the local 42” display was easy and seamless.  Depending on how many USB devices available, even multiple screens could be shared on the same screen.  The InFocus Mondopad is a slightly different option.  While the Barco system connects to any display, the Mondopad is a fully integrated touch panel display with built in PC, webcam, and optional speaker.  This means that through cloud computing, a local PC isn’t even required to access the display in the meeting room. And with a built in webcam built in to the display this system is already capable of utilizing programs like Skype or GoToMeeting.

Those solutions are designed to allow everyone in the room to view and interact with the presentation material with greater ease.  When looking for solutions that incorporate not only a local display but also provide the ability to “push” your presentation materials to any remote viewers that are also participating we start to look to software based options.  Microsoft Lync is one such service that allows an authorized user to log in from any network connected device and participate in a chat session, video conference, or collaborative session where all attendees can see the materials on their own device and even add notes on the materials that can be seen by everyone and then saved.  Blue Jeans is another software based option that provides video conferencing and remote collaboration on materials.  What sets Blue Jeans apart is that not all users need to be on a single service provider.  For example, your company might operate using a Cisco or Polycom video conferencing solution while a potential business partner might be using Google or Skype.  By communicating through the Blue Jeans service, multiple conferencing platforms are able to interact with one another.  This can help avoid a possible issue and offices are no longer standardizing on one particular video conferencing format.

This does leave you with the question of which conferencing solution is going to be best for your business? The answer is going to be entirely based on your current equipment and needs.  


For more information on how each of these solutions could be implemented for your company contact ICS Integrated Communication Systems.

www.ics-integration.com
408-491-6000