On this episode of The Futurum Tech Webcast – Live from the Show Floor, Craig Durr welcomes Sam Kennedy, Senior Director, Product Marketing for Crestron Electronics for a conversation on Crestron’s latest announcements at Zoomtopia 2023.
Their discussion covers:
- The Crestron products that just received Zoom certification
- Crestron’s new product specifically made for the Zoom ecosystem
- An overview of Crestron’s new native Zoom scheduling panel
- A look at other recent portfolio updates.
You can watch the video of our conversation here (and subscribe to our YouTube channel while you’re there):
Or listen to the full audio here:
Disclaimer: The Futurum Tech Webcast is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded, and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors, and we ask that you do not treat us as such.
Transcript:
Craig Durr: Hey everybody, this is Craig Durr, research director with The Futurum Group, and I’m here live at Zoomtopia 2023. It’s a lot going on this show, and I’m excited to share with you some information that my friend Sam Kennedy, senior director of product marketing at Crestron is announcing here at the show. Right, Sam?
Sam Kennedy: Yep. It’s really exciting to be here. We have a lot of big announcements.
Craig Durr: You guys are really busy at this show, and if I look at it, you have three or four key ones, but let’s peel it back. Let’s talk about each one of these a little bit. I want to start with the products that you guys have added to the Zoom certification program. Talk about some of those video products that just came on board.
Sam Kennedy: So we recently announced a new All-in-one video device called the Videobar 70, and we received Zoom certification on it. The Videobar 70 is a large room focused all-in-one video bar running the Zoom room software. It’s really targeted for those large rooms. We have four cameras that are able to get video quality up to 30 feet away, so really amazing new device.
Craig Durr: Wow. Now you also have some of the existing one beyond cameras, the auto tracker and the auto framer that also have certification.
Sam Kennedy: So those received certification earlier about maybe two months ago. So we’re making that announcement that those are now Zoom certified and the Hawk, which is a two optical zoom camera solution that will be certified in calendar Q4.
Craig Durr: What’s amazing is that Crestron, in this last 12 months, you have probably brought like 20 or 30 products into the certification program.
Sam Kennedy: Yeah. We’re really excited about building on our partnership with Zoom and making all these announcements. Again, we’ve certified about 20 to 30 new devices within the last year, so it’s been a lot going on between Crestron and Zoom.
Craig Durr: You know what, you even have some new products coming out at this show, so let’s talk about the Zoom phone appliance.
Sam Kennedy: Yeah, so for us, we thought it would, to bring in that all in one device for someone’s desktop, we brought in a new Zoom phone appliance that includes the microphone, the camera, the speaker, and the screen. So it’s running that Zoom phone, but it’s really targeted for people that want to do that more executive desktop type solution.
Craig Durr: So I can have a personal Zoom experience right there on the desk desk.
Sam Kennedy: On a dedicated device. I use it personally at my desk so that I don’t have to, I can use my laptop to multitask while I’m on a meeting and then I have this dedicated device where I can focus on my call.
Craig Durr: That’s how we work. So we work with combination with a shared desk in the office and even home offices. That’s a perfect solution.
Sam Kennedy: It really has been. I personally love it. I think it’s a great, and I think the price point, the screen size really works well.
Craig Durr: Talking about the office, but people are going back to the office and one of the things I love about Crestron is that you guys have the depth and breadth in a scheduling applications and scheduling devices portfolio, right?
Sam Kennedy: Yeah. Crestron has been one of the leaders in the conference room scheduling space. We pretty much we’re one of the first ones even getting into that space. So we have a really large market share and what we’re, in our relationship and that partnership that we have with Zoom, we’re trying to make it easier for our customers and partners to purchase Crestron solutions. So we now have a single skew for the scheduling panels that are running that Zoom software and it ships with the Zoom software preloaded. So it makes it really easy to purchase and makes it really easy to deploy.
Craig Durr: Well so let’s see. We got from schedulers to video products to audio products, but you also even have some other parts of the portfolio that we’ve talked about in the past in the last year. Let’s get some updates on those. What about the Flex Pods? Tell me what’s going on with those right now.
Sam Kennedy: Flex Pods are, we just started beta. We’re moving and we expect to be shipping them next month, generally available next month. And just as a reminder, the Flex Pods are that multi modular microphone speaker and the ability to raise and lower and control built into a single device. And so it allows us, for those users that want to be able to put microphone and speakers around the room in a very simplified way, we are able to take those pods that include the microphone, speakers and the control. I can have up to four in a room that wirelessly connect back to a hub that connects to your Zoom room. So it’s really easy to deploy very high quality audio.
Craig Durr: That’s amazing. You guys have from the smallest shared desk space all the way up to those flex spaces, you have the technology to help implement that as well. Speaking of the desk spaces, talk about the desk scheduling products that we announced recently.
Sam Kennedy: Yeah, Crestron announced earlier in 2023 a portfolio of desk scheduling devices and we just began shipping the desk touch. So that is now generally available. We’re not there with Zoom. It’s on the roadmap for us to, I know we saw it in the keynotes today. That’s a big part of the workflow for those Zoom users. We’re going to be bringing that to Zoom hopefully early 2024 is what be my expectation is, but the hardware itself is now shipping on the desk touch shipping and the Desk Q will be shipping early in 2024.
Craig Durr: That’s great. So my takeaway is this: Crestron, with its depth and breadth of portfolio, everything, like I said, from the shared desk to the conference room, to the bespoke large boardrooms, I mean, you are such a key integral hardware partner for Zoom.
Sam Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. And so our relationship has been getting tighter and tighter between Crestron and Zoom. Crestron has that complete solution. We think we’re unique in the market in that we can do all the unified communication solutions along with all of those AV, both the AV over IP solutions control. In fact, we’re looking to bring very soon here that Zoom control, or Crestron control inside of a Zoom room. You’re going to see that in 2023 as well.
Craig Durr: Wow, that is exciting. I’m looking forward to that. Sam, this is great. You’re talking about this wonderful portfolio and most of these items, these are available for shipment now, right?
Sam Kennedy: Yeah, I know that there’s, we’ve had some shipping challenges that I think are pretty wildly known, but right now all of the products that I’ve been talking about, they don’t have any lead time. So Crestron Flex, our Zoom Rooms, that complete solution, that has no lead time. The cameras, like I talked about, the video bar 70 will be shipping early in 2024, and that won’t have any lead time. We look to be out of the woods as far as any of these devices that really represent what we’re doing with Zoom. There is no lead time on any of these products.
Craig Durr: That’s fantastic. There is a rich, exciting portfolio coming in the future. I’m looking forward to it. Well, Sam, absolutely. Hey, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I know you’ve got a lot to get back to. Everyone, thank you for visiting with me. This is Craig Durr with The Futurum Group. We’re live at Zoomtopia from the show floor. Take care.
Author Information
As Practice Lead - Workplace Collaboration, Craig focuses on developing research, publications and insights that clarify how the workforce, the workplace, and the workflows enable group collaboration and communication. He provides research and analysis related to market sizing and forecasts, product and service evaluations, market trends, and end-user and buyer expectations. In addition to following the technology, Craig also studies the human elements of work - organizing his findings into the workforce, the workplace, and the workflows – and charting how these variables influence technologies and business strategies.
Prior to joining Wainhouse, now a part of The Futurum Group, Craig brings twenty years of experience in leadership roles related to P&L management, product development, strategic planning, and business development of security, SaaS, and unified communication offerings. Craig's experience includes positions at Poly, Dell, Microsoft, and IBM.
Craig holds a Master of Business Administration from the Texas McCombs School of Business as well as a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Tulane University.
