On this episode of the Wainhouse Live! From the Show Floor video series, Wainhouse Research Senior Analyst Craig Durr is joined by Simen Teigre, CEO and Co-Founder of Neat, a leading provider of video collaboration solutions.
The Neat App Hub and the Neat Board 50 are two powerful new products recently announced to enhance hybrid collaboration. In their discussion, Craig and Simen explore:
- The Neat App Hub, a software platform that allows users to add third-party applications like Slack, Miro, Robin, and more to their Neat devices. Neat’s App Hub provides the freedom to choose the apps that meet a team’s needs, ease of use, and security.
- The Neat Board 50, an all-in-one collaboration board that offers a variety of features and benefits for hybrid teams, including a large, 50-inch display, high-quality built-in camera, microphone, and advanced audio capabilities with built-in speakers.
Learn more at https://neat.no/.
Watch and listen to the full conversation to hear about the new Neat App Hub and Neat Board 50 and how these solutions are improving collaboration.
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: Hi everyone, this is Craig Durr, senior analyst with Wainhouse Research part of the Futurum Group. We are here live from the showroom floor from InfoComm. This is North America’s largest trade show for AV professionals. And I’m really fortunate to be here speaking with Simen Teigre, CEO of Neat. Simon, you’ve had a very busy week, so I really appreciate you taking time to come here.
Simen Teigre: Well, thanks for having me.
Craig Durr: Now, the reason you’ve been so busy is that you’ve actually announced several products in this last week and a half, including the Neat App Hub and the Neat Board 50. But before we dive into products, there was something else I wanted to talk about. You were really getting down to basics, you kept talking about how Neat is changing the game again, with emphasis on that word again. Tell me what do you mean by that?
Simen Teigre: Well, when we launched the company in 2019 at Zoomtopia, we came in with a fresh new approach. We had simple, elegant devices, software defined, and we brought some significant innovations to the industry, things like our audio capabilities, it’s built from scratch. But I think the most important one is probably symmetry, the people focused framing, which really has set a standard for the industry. So I’m super excited about what we’re doing this time around because I think this is the most significant launch that we’ve had or we’re going to have since we launched the company.
Craig Durr: I totally agree with you. I think what you guys did that first time around in terms of the elegant design, the way that you went to market even, and the way that you’ve helped people use video in totally different ways, I really do think that was game changing. But let’s talk about these new products. So the first one I want to talk about is Neat App Hub. What exactly is this?
Simen Teigre: So Neat App Hub has been in the works, I would say, from day one. This has always been a part of the Neat vision to give our customers choice and flexibility and really make our devices valuable for all sorts of collaboration. So App Hub is simply an ability for customers to choose what collaboration apps they want to deploy on the devices.
Craig Durr: Interesting.
Simen Teigre: So it goes beyond what we already have with Zoom and Teams and opens up for what you can call third party apps, collaboration apps, room reservation apps, wayfinding apps, fun apps, but really opening it up.
Craig Durr: So these are all kind of apps. You mentioned some really interesting ones there, social apps, entertainment apps, as well as other collaboration apps?
Simen Teigre: Absolutely. So I think the most exciting one in my view is Miro. So we partner with Miro, a very, very exciting partnership. And the idea here is that a lot of customers are using these… And I wouldn’t call it a whiteboard application. I mean Miro, it goes way beyond whiteboarding, but it really is a collaboration, content creation, ideation type of application, and bringing that into the meeting space is what we’re doing with Miro.
Craig Durr: Okay, that’s great. So help me understand though, how do these applications… What are the benefits for people? How would they use this in this environment?
Simen Teigre: So it’s a couple of different things. So obviously one piece is that today you can deploy Zoom as a complete solution across all of our devices, whether it’s the pad for scheduling control, the video systems, the board, the bars, and you can do the same with Teams, but step one is you can open up and use different applications in those, like Miro.
Another example is, you can use Appspace or Robin for room booking. And the interesting thing is this also cuts across devices. So if you think about a room or a meeting space, typically you have multiple devices in that space. And you can imagine a room where a customer may be using Robin for room reservations, so they put that on the Neat pad outside the room, maybe they want to use Teams for their Bar Pro as the main video device, and then they have a Neat Board 50 that they roll in or use when they want to have a collaboration session where that Neat Board 50 is running Miro. So you’d have this meeting space that really has multiple devices running multiple different apps working together to create a great collaboration experience.
Craig Durr: Yeah, that’s really great. Now all this is actually integrated into your forthcoming cloud-based management solution Pulse, tell me about that.
Simen Teigre: So Pulse is our cloud-based subscription offer and it consists of basically three elements. It gives you the choice, so that’s the App Hub, it gives you control, so that’s the management and monitoring part, and it also gives you care, so technical support whenever you need that, help from the Neat support team to get you through your challenges. So that’s really the package of Pulse. And obviously our customers really are asked to do more with less resources, and the world is really complicated. So Pulse is that solution that enables you to control these experiences and control these apps across these devices. So that’s where you deploy the apps, that’s where you control what kind of apps you want to deploy on what devices, all the settings, the configurations, et cetera.
Craig Durr: I love it. So choice, control, care.
Simen Teigre: And care.
Craig Durr: And you know what, it really actually brings to life this whole name of Pulse, it really does make this the epicenter, the heartbeat of what that IT administrator is doing around those devices, right?
Simen Teigre: Yes, yes.
Craig Durr: That’s incredible. Now speaking of devices, let’s talk about this new one. I’m really excited about this, the Neat Board 50. Tell me about this.
Simen Teigre: Absolutely. So on the surface of it, Neat Board 50 is an all-in-one super capable video device, but it goes way beyond that. It has a high quality camera and our advanced audio capabilities and an active screen touch display with an active marker. So the responsiveness when you run these whiteboarding applications like Miro is amazing. But I think the really new cool thing about it is its adaptability and flexibility.
Craig Durr: That’s interesting. The term adaptability, because that’s what you named the stand that came with it. And I really love this, the adaptive stand. Tell me about this part.
Simen Teigre: Yeah, so basically we’re hearing our customers tell us that they’re being asked to accommodate a more flexible office. Employees come in to collaborate. If you want work heads down, you can work from home. So when people come in, they want to collaborate. And how they use the office space is really changing. They need a more dynamic, more flexible space, and there’s a talk about market architecture and changing the meeting space for the moment of the day, whatever the needs are. And when that happens, you need new technology, you need more flexible, more adaptive technology.
What’s cool about the adaptive stand is not only can you roll this system around, which obviously when you’re in a meeting, just adjusting the system, pulling it towards you when you are fewer people, putting it away if you’re more people makes a big difference. But we also allow you to adjust the screen up and down. And that may sound like a simple thing, but it is significant because you may be sitting down like we are having a video meeting and then you want the screen to be in the down position so you have the right camera angle and the right interaction. If you want to go up to the board and interact with the content, annotate on it or do whiteboarding, stuff like that, you want to adjust it up so that the ergonomics are right. So I think the whole package here of then a high quality video device, an amazing screen with the active marker, the App Hub and the flexibility that gives you, as well as the adaptive stand, you have a package that really can support our customers in this new dynamic world. I
Craig Durr: I really love this. The reason why I was focusing on this stand, it actually aligns with some research that I’ve done. A lot of people know about the office doing this activity base orientation around spaces. The next level of that is this cognitive base. It’s the idea that the space changes to your needs that you need, and the adaptive stand totally does that. I love seeing the images I saw of people sitting down and then having it raised for when it was in an interactive whiteboarding session, that’s really great. So these are really great products. Now people are going to be able to see these at the booth here at InfoComm, right?
Simen Teigre: Absolutely. So we have the Neat Board 50 on the show here, and one of the really cool things we’re actually showing at the booth is the ability to then have, let’s say Miro running on this Neat Board 50 and we have a new capability where you can share that screen into a Zoom or a Teams call, in a very, very simple and neat manner.
Craig Durr: That’s right.
Simen Teigre: So that’s something we’re showing at the booth. We’re obviously also showing our Neat Board, our Neat Bar, Bar Pro and our pads. We’re running Zoom and Teams to the whole portfolio. We also have Neat Center.
Craig Durr: That’s what I’m excited about also. Yes, that’s right.
Simen Teigre: So we’ll be showing Neat Center and I’m super excited about Neat Center. It’s been an exciting journey for the team. Very proud to be showing it off. So we have a meeting space where you can experience Neat Center. And the best way I found to describe the Center is that it really extends that symmetry experience into the room.
Craig Durr: Right. With the intelligence that you guys have built in this AI capability and having actually two camera opportunities to capture that right angle-
Simen Teigre: Absolutely.
Craig Durr: That’s a fantastic experience.
Simen Teigre: And actually if you combine the Neat Center with a Bar Pro, you in fact have five different cameras together. There are three cameras in the Center, there are two cameras in the Bar Pro, there are 16 microphones in the Center, I don’t know, I guess in a Bar Pro it’s 16 microphones too. So you got a lot of microphones and a lot of camera technology, but the important thing is how you put that together to provide that very simple and intuitive symmetry experience.
Craig Durr: That’s great. Now, a lot of people might be hearing this online and are not going to be here at the show. How can they find out more about all these great new products that you’re talking about?
Simen Teigre: Well, we have everything on our website, neat.no. But we also have a web seminar coming up on June 22nd. So you can go to our website and sign up for that, super excited about that.
Craig Durr: A new workflow in a new era of work.
Simen Teigre: Correct. Got it. So we’ll go through all the new products, the new features, the capabilities, so everybody’s welcome to join that.
Craig Durr: That’s great. Well, Simen, thank you so much for joining us. I’m really excited to get some time down there to see some more of these products here. Thank you. Everyone, thank you again. This is live from the Showroom Floor with Wainhouse and Neat. 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.
