On this episode of the Wainhouse Live! From the Show Floor video series, Wainhouse Research Senior Analyst Craig Durr is joined by Josh Blalock, Chief Video Evangelist at Jabra. Their discussion covers Jabra’s new video conferencing device, the PanaCast 50, that helps teams collaborate more effectively and efficiently. Highlights include:
- One of the most impressive features of the PanaCast 50 is its 180-degree field of view, which means that it can capture everyone in the room, even if they are sitting on opposite sides of the table. This is great for ensuring that everyone is included in the conversation and that no one is left out.
- Intelligent audio technology adjusts the volume of participants’ voices so that everyone can be heard clearly.
- Onboard AI can automatically track speakers, zoom in on important moments, and adjust the lighting to ensure that everyone looks their best. This frees up IT administrators from having to manage the video conferencing system manually.
- An integrated whiteboard camera can be used to share whiteboard content with remote participants. This is great for collaboration and brainstorming sessions.
- The multi-stream video capability of the device allows it to output multiple streams of video, which can be used to create different viewing experiences for remote participants. For example, one stream could show the entire room, while another stream could focus on the speaker.
- The PanaCast 50 does not require any special software and can be connected to a computer via USB or HDMI.
Learn more at https://www.jabra.com/c/us/infocomm-2023.
Watch and listen to the full conversation here:
Disclaimer: The Wainhouse Research 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, everyone, this is Craig Durr, senior analyst with Wainhouse Research, part of the Futurum Group, and we are live at the showroom floor at INFOCOM. This is North America’s largest audiovisual professional trade show, and we are excited to be here. And joining me today is Josh Blalock. Josh is with Jabra, and he’s got one of the coolest titles I know of Chief Video Evangelist.
Josh Blalock: It’s a fun one, but thanks for having me on Craig. It’s awesome to be here talking about what’s going on at the show, what’s going on with Jabra, some big news to talk about today as well.
Craig Durr: There is. But one of the things I really want to dive into is you and I have been talking about this story about future proofing with the Jabra portfolio, and it’s a really great concept, and I want to talk more about that. But before we jump into it, let’s talk about some of the basics. Core to this is the PanaCast 50. Tell me about that, this video solution, and some of the key benefits.
Josh Blalock: Yeah. The PanaCast 50 is that central solution that Jabra has brought to the video conferencing space, and in truly unique form, it brings 180-degree field of view, which is, I don’t like getting too deep into technical weeds, but that’s an important one to underscore, that field of view, because 180 degrees essentially means it doesn’t matter where you are at in a conference room. You could be to the exact sides of the camera. You’re still going to be seen and included in that meeting.
So as we talk about meeting equity, that’s front and center. And there are a couple other things that underscore what an amazing product of PanaCast 50 is. It’s got the onboard 4K video functionality, but we’ve also got an onboard mic array of eight microphones, onboard speakers, premium audio filling that room, and then you’ve got other advanced AI video functionalities like virtual director that follows the active speaker in the room. You’ve got the intelligent Zoom, which does the keeping track of how many people are in the room. And let’s make sure we cut out unused space. So there’s a lot packed in to the PanaCast 50 to start with, and then we build from there.
Craig Durr: Don’t forget about the integrated whiteboard camera.
Josh Blalock: Yes.
Craig Durr: That is one of my favorite features.
Josh Blalock: And that is, again, a very unique item to us in terms of the fact that it’s built into the front of room device. There are whiteboard content cameras out there and they do a good job, but they are separate devices, separate investments, separate installation costs. PanaCast 50, at no additional charge and no additional installation, already contains this functionality. And you can share that whiteboard in the room without sacrificing the in-room video feed.
Craig Durr: That’s great. That’s great. Now we wanted to talk about future proofing. So let’s get back to that topic. Now, IT administrators, when they’re investing in Jabra, what is their proof points that they have some element of future proofing with this portfolio?
Josh Blalock: The portfolio has been very purposefully designed with that exact concern in mind. There’s a lot of organizations that they don’t want to just make the here and now investment to get over the technology struggle in front of them. They want to know that they’re protected into the future. And so we have designed these products to include, on the PanaCast 50, for example, there are nine separate Edge AI processors. Which is a lot of processing power onboard one device. What that allows us to do is to continue to innovate over time, bringing new feature sets to the market rather than having to come out with new devices to keep up with what the latest is in the market. One good example of that that we released last year would be what we call dynamic composition, but what the market knows as meeting room equity, everybody gets their Brady Bunch Square, right?
That’s dynamic composition for us. That was an update through one of our value packs and actually here at INFOCOM, we have just announced today that we are releasing a couple more value packs the next couple quarters here that are bringing some really awesome new features, including intelligent meeting space, which lets you define the size of the room. Let’s say you’ve got glass walls. You don’t want people walking behind you in the hallway to be brought into the meeting. You can define that boundary. That’s a really big important one that comes out. We talk about Microsoft and TeleFrame. That’s a big buzzword right now. We are going to be one of the first partners to enable that with multi-stream video capabilities. So we’ll bring in that 180-degree field of view as a stream with two additional individual most active speaker streams into that TeleFrame experience.
Craig Durr: That’s amazing. You’re actually going to bring in that lower 180 degree as well-
Josh Blalock: Exactly.
Craig Durr: … as active speaker and last speaker.
Josh Blalock: You don’t want to lose context of the whole room, right?
Craig Durr: Right. That is fantastic. No, but that’s not all you’re also doing now. I think you’re also participating within the intelligent voice solutions. Tell me about that.
Josh Blalock: Yeah, so it’s two things, but you’ve got what Microsoft is called intelligent speaker as a category, and we are introducing voice recognition technology. So what this is going to do is essentially what you have those separate in-room intelligence speakers doing now through separate devices, through other offers on the market. That same functionality is going to be baked like dynamic composition right into the PanaCast 50. Again, no separate device, no separate purchase, automatically made available by an upgrade in the software.
Craig Durr: I think of that in terms of the whiteboard camera. There is another integrated feature that’s in a single device that still has more headroom, more opportunity. There’s nine processors that is a lot of on edge processing.
Josh Blalock: It gives you a lot of runway to keep iterating and to keep building on that without having to add new devices. Building on the intelligent voice aspect is going to be facial identity capabilities. So this will also play into Microsoft’s vision about being able to identify people via their face or their voice as long as they participate in an opt-in styled program through Microsoft’s own technologies. And if they have opted in, then our device with one of these future updates not too far in the future here, organizations will be able to identify those users by either face or voice.
Craig Durr: Really? So that sound source localization as well as what’s taking place within that face identity comes together to get a high certainty in terms of identifying who’s speaking and that becomes-
Josh Blalock: Either, or.
Craig Durr: Yeah, and that becomes really important now as we start thinking about these intelligent meeting notes and things like that. You’re asking to identify people in the process, right?
Josh Blalock: Exactly. That whole intelligent meeting recap, as they’re calling it, that whole idea is built upon the fact that you’re attributing spoken words in a meeting to individuals, and without those technologies, those spoken words get attributed to the room, which may have 10 people in the room, five, whatever. Now you get to be able to break that down, whether it’s by voice, whether it’s by face. You can identify each of those people, and you get the most value. If you are a Microsoft customer using these intelligent meeting recaps, you get the most possible value out of that service.
Craig Durr: This is Josh saying that. This is Craig saying that, but let’s not forget that your other key ecosystem partner is Zoom, and one of the facts that I love calling out is I think you guys have the highest number of certified devices within that Zoom ecosystems. If you go through all the headsets, the personal devices, as well as the PanaCast 50 as well too, right?
Josh Blalock: Yeah.
Craig Durr: Zoom is an important part as well of this story going forward
Josh Blalock: Very much so, especially when you count in the headsets and all those peripherals out there. I can see how that would definitely be the statistic. And then, of course, we’ve got the PanaCast 50 VBS, which is our video bar system that’s coming out in a couple of months here. It’s out to early release programs now, but that is our Android-based video bar, and that is a really big deal in the Zoom space. So I think that partnership with Zoom is only going to strengthen and become a lot more of a pride point for us as we move forward.
Craig Durr: I’m glad you brought that up because that’s always been a proof point for me. If you look at the idea, the Jabra PanaCast 50 going first from a USB peripheral solution to a PC solution to an Android solution, to me, that’s just genius. That is the form factor and the foresight to think about this working in all those different types of solutions going forward. So it’s a great example of future-proofing for me.
Josh Blalock: You start with the USB capability that makes it versatile in all kinds of situations, but then you get to build on that, and you get to grow with that. And that’s exactly what’s happened is this portfolio has unfolded in front of us with not just our own capabilities but those of our partners as well, that we work with.
Craig Durr: There’s one more thing I want to bring up, talking about edge computing, because I personally use this feature a lot. This is the PanaCast 20, which is the personal videocam, the webcam, but it has built-in on Edge video blur. Now, a lot of times I find myself doing webinars or other series where it doesn’t have integrated video blur, but I still have that capability within that again.
Josh Blalock: They do. And so the Edge processor onboard the PanaCast 20, which is 4K camera, built-in privacy, great device. That processor has other features and functions prior to us coming out. Background blur is relatively new for us. It has been doing picture and picture capabilities, which is a really big deal for people needing to do, maybe you’re educating, maybe you’re showing off content as an influencer or creator. There’s lots of different use cases for that. It also does intelligent Zoom capabilities. So you’ve got all that that’s already there and now background blur. And some people might wonder, well, that’s nice, but Teams does background blur. Zoom does background blur. Why do I need you to do background blur as the hardware provider? And the key there is that all the processing happens on the device at the edge, not on the PC that’s already, I know none of us multitask during meetings, but our PCs are very busy doing all kinds of things during meetings, doing background blur is one more thing that it has to focus on and use up resources on it.
Craig Durr: It’s overhead.
Josh Blalock: It is.
Craig Durr: And can be taxing.
Josh Blalock: So it not just unloads that process from the PC, but it’s also a security angle because, when you think about it, you are sending an image from your device to the PC to the platform that you’re using that contains your background. What if you’ve got really highly sensitive stuff in your background that people shouldn’t be seeing?
Craig Durr: Interesting.
Josh Blalock: You work in a government facility or some sort of research facility, and really, none of that should be observed at all behind you. Before it ever gets to another system, before it ever leaves the hardware. The stream that is being sent already has the background blurred out. So from a security perspective, you’re not worried about what’s being seen. By the time that image gets to the software, the device is taking care of it.
Craig Durr: That’s great. We are talking about a lot of stuff. I’m excited about these new announcements and seeing this, but if someone comes by the booth, they’re not just going to see that there’s a lot of other products that you guys have brought out here in the last six months. Some of my favorites are the Speak2 speakerphones and then the Evolve2 65 Flexes, right?
Josh Blalock: Right. We have evolved the affectionately dubbed Pucks to the Speak2 series, and so we have a few different models there. They are on display at the booth, so come by and see those. The Evolve2 line has grown quite a bit in the last couple of months to include earbuds form factor. The Evolve2 65 Flex is really, you’ve got to get your hands on that one. You’ve got to sit there and play with the flexibility, feel how incredibly light it is, how comfortable it is. It’s a game-changer of a headset.
Craig Durr: It’s important. All right, so people here at INFOCOM, they have a chance to visit the booth. They have the opportunity to sign up for a 360 tour?
Josh Blalock: Yes. So there are going to be 360 tours happening twice per day. For Wednesday and Thursday, they will be 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM. The second one on Friday will be 2:00 PM just because the show floor starts to wind down. As the attendees are in the booth, they’ll get to stay put as we take them on a tour that spins around the booth and showcase all these different stations that cover the various ways that a hybrid worker engages and works throughout the day. But one of the fun aspects of this is that everyone who attends these tours will be eligible for a drawing that we’ll be doing twice per day, once for each of those tours, and that includes five different devices.
Craig Durr: I love that. That’s incredible. We just hit on some of those there.
Josh Blalock: Yes.
Craig Durr: But everything from the PanaCast 20 is part of that.
Josh Blalock: PanaCast 20
Craig Durr: To probably one of the Speak2 phone.
Josh Blalock: You’ve got the Speak2 75, the Evolve2 65 Flex in there, the Engage 55 for contact center use cases.
Craig Durr: That’s Great. That’s great.
Josh Blalock: And while I’m going to draw a blank on that fifth one, right, as we’re talking about it, but there is a fifth one in there. I mean, even just those four, that’s a pretty incredible giveaway. And then there’s another device in the mix.
Craig Durr: It’s great. Well, that’s fantastic. So call to action for these people is, if they’re here on site, come and see the booth. Register for the 360 tour now. In fact, if they’re not, there’s also some information that we have listed as a URL where they can go to the Jabra website, register, and get some more information from the INFOCOM show delivered to them, and they can find what it’s going for.
Josh Blalock: Unfortunately, not everyone’s here, but if you are here, look for these shirts on the show floor. Really hard to miss. And then, yeah, we’d be happy to give you a tour of the booth if you don’t show up for one of the tours. But as I just mentioned, you do not want to miss those 360-booth tours for whatever your reason is.
Craig Durr: That’s great. Josh, thank you so much for spending some time with us, and thank you so much for visiting with us with this live from the showroom floor from INFOCOM. We hope to see you on that expo floor. Take care, everybody.
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.
