Wainhouse Senior Analyst Dan Root is joined by Barco’s Oliver Van Camp, Group Product Manager Clickshare, to talk about how Barco provides a consistent, singular meeting experience, regardless of the platform being utilized by hybrid workers, as well as Barco’s comprehensive portfolio of products designed for both personal and group collaboration.
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Transcript:
Dan Root: Good morning. I’m Dan Root with Wainhouse Research, and I’m joined here at ISE Day One with Oliver Van Camp from Barco. It’s a pleasure to see you, Oliver. It’s great to be here. I can’t believe that we’re already back in Barcelona for ISE, but here we are.
Oliver Van Camp: Absolutely.
Dan Root: We are doing fantastic stuff as far as what’s going on down at the floor, and we’ll get into all of that later. But before we dive in on that, I’d really like to hear a little bit about what we’re seeing out in the world. Obviously, it’s great to be back in person and everyone’s back in the office, at least some days of the week, I think. But we’re seeing a lot of challenges coming out of hybrid work. And so, what is Barco specifically doing, as you’re looking at both internal and external, to address the challenges that are coming from this hybrid work?
Oliver Van Camp: So, what we see our customers struggling with is, well, getting people back to the office, right? Because that’s where innovation is happening, that’s where all the great stuff is happening in personal relationship building, as well. So, making sure they get back. To get them back you need to have an environment, a workplace, that really entices them to come back, but also that provides them with the tools necessary to work and do the things that they want to do when they’re back in the office. And why would you go back to the office? It’s to collaborate.
So, we need environments, or our customers need environments, that really are aimed at that, and that’s where they’re struggling. Doing full hybrid meetings, which really meeting rooms focused at hybrid meetings, or more open floor setups, soft seating setups, and anything in between. And well, no one really knows today. So, the key is to have a flexible workplace, to set up a flexible workplace, to be able to measure the efficiency of that workplace. How often are people using each type of meeting room, and then adapting and being able to adapt to that in the future.
Dan Root: Now, as we’re talking about flexibility within the workday, let’s break down a little bit of what that is for folks. Obviously, there is the idea of Microsoft Teams rooms or a Zoom room solution. And those are great, especially if everybody’s on the same platform. But meeting inequity comes from having to find workarounds, find different ways of band-aiding a situation to get to that outcome, and I think we see that pretty common everywhere across the board. How is it that the ClickShare portfolio specifically helps and really alleviates that friction that we see within the conference rooms in the workplace?
Oliver Van Camp: Well, with ClickShare conference that we launched three years ago now at ISE 2020, seems like just yesterday. But it’s been quite a long time. With ClickShare conference, we actually added, apart from the sharing, the wireless sharing, we added the functionality to get the camera and the speaker phone that the meeting room is equipped with onto your laptop as USB devices and use them in the Teams, Zoom, RingCentral, any types of call. And that really makes a meeting room really flexible, right? Because you, in that same meeting room, can use ClickShare button to share your content if you only have people in the meeting room. But as soon as someone is remote, which is happening quite a lot these days, right? As soon as that happens, you just start your Teams call, use that camera and that speakerphone that is there, or your Zoom call or RingCentral call on your laptop just like you do at home, and you go into the call using the best audio and video solution for that and sharing the remote participants to anyone in the room, and you have a good equity experience there.
Dan Root: I think the best thing about what I’m hearing is how it is that it solves for that inequity of – I have a guest coming into a room. I have somebody who is maybe an external team member who is a consultant or something else, but doesn’t use the same platform that I internally use with my organization. And having that struggle of how do I make sure that everyone in the room and out of the room feels like they have that seat at the table.
So, by using that camera at the front of the room or wherever you may have it placed, as well as the display and the speakers and microphone, suddenly we’re bringing that professionalism that we would hope to have in every meeting really to every single type of call. Versus in times gone by being a little bit more locked into a specific system or a specific process to make that happen. Now, as we’re here at ISE, I’ve heard some rumors that you guys have some exciting stuff that you’ve been talking about here. And I believe the CX-50 now has a second generation that you guys have just released over at Barco. Could you tell me a little bit about what’s so exciting around the CX-50 2nd Gen?
Oliver Van Camp: Absolutely. I’m happy to, and that’s what I’ll be doing all week here at ISE. Yes, we’re launching CX-50 2nd Generation, which is taking place at the top of our range of ClickShare conference devices. It’s really aimed at the high impact meeting rooms, giving us a solution range, really, from the small focus rooms up until the high impact, and then boardrooms. And what we’ve added to the CX-50 is actually support for dual screen. So, you can now attach two screens to the ClickShare conference setup. And thanks to our smart meeting flows, which we launched at the last ISE, May of last year, smart meeting flows allowing you to keep the remote participants on screen with the conference view and guiding you to your meeting, your hybrid meeting. We can actually keep the remote participants on one screen and have the content on the other screen. And that’s a really cool setup because, talking about meeting equity, the remote participants being always visible to everyone in the meeting room, even in a discussion, they’re there, they’re present. It really makes a difference in the meeting equity.
Dan Root: Absolutely. I think we’ve all experienced a meeting where you join the meeting, and you can’t really see what’s going on either in a room or with everybody else because as soon as you share the content, the content becomes the main focus.
Oliver Van Camp: Exactly.
Dan Root: But when you’re meeting, non-verbal cues and things are just as important as what you’re looking at for the content and what project you’re actually getting the work done on. So, having that extra digital real estate within the room is becoming more and more popular as hybrid work is becoming more established. So, that makes a lot of sense. Besides the dual screen capabilities, are there anything else as far as new availability on digital real estate for the CX-50 2nd Gen?
Oliver Van Camp: Yep. So, very popular, and a lot of companies are launching them here at ISE, as well, is a 21 by 9, the ultra wide format for the meeting room displays ranging from 85 to 105 or even larger setups. So, that’s something that we’re supporting with the CX-50 very soon, as well. Actually, we’re going to bring that to the whole ClickShare range-
Dan Root: Oh, wow.
Oliver Van Camp: …being able to support those screens because we expect they’ll be popular because it’s a format that adapts really well to different sizes of meeting room. But again, you have the equity to keep in mind when you do a conference, right? So, you want to have your content big on screen, but also keep your remote participants on screen. And you have that one nice ultra wide screen, and that’s where our smart meeting flows shine again. We can share the content full HD, so the full resolution on the 16 by 9, and then you have 5/9ths still left for the remote participants. And that’s where we show the remote participants in a really neat to way, losing as fewer pixels as possible in the process, and really having the content at its top and the remote participants…
Dan Root: That’s fantastic to hear, because I have seen some of these 21 by 9s out here, and they’re beautiful. But a fair amount of the offerings, as far as the devices you would connect to, are still 16 by 9, and it’s kind of like running your standard def on a widescreen TV. You’ve wasted a lot of space at that point in time. So that’s fantastic to hear that you guys are really working to solve for using every pixel, or every part, of that digital real estate. Now, moving on from some of the display layouts, what are some of the other major value props or enhancements on the second gen of the CX-50 that you guys are so excited about?
Oliver Van Camp: Well, we talked about flexibility, right? Flexibility in the meeting room, being able to do every type of call in your meeting room, and that’s exactly what we’re aiming to do with the CX-50 as well. And we have a demo in our booth where we do switching between the room set up that we have set up and the BYOM type of approach, but also adding wireless sharing to that room, wireless sharing into the call that you would do on the room system, and then native interoperability with the ClickShare CX-50 2nd Gen attached to it, being able to do a RingCentral or a Zoom or whatever other platform call on the same hardware setup just by simply adding the CX-50 to it.
Dan Root: Besides the display capabilities of the CX-50 2nd Gen, what are some of the other value propositions that you feel folks should really be aware of as they’re going through and deciding whether or not to adopt a ClickShare portfolio product?
Oliver Van Camp: Well, we talked about flexibility. And the ultimate flexibility is the choice when you do your call in a meeting room to do it on the room system or do it through BYOM, or just share your content into that meeting room. And that’s exactly what we’re bringing with CX-50 2nd Generation. You add that to a room system, and then you can wirelessly share in your room, if you have just an in-room presentation, just easily by plugging in your button and sharing your content. You can wirelessly share into the room system so you don’t have to have an HDMI cable or log into the Teams call for remote participants, for example, which could be a challenge.
You can just plug in the button, plug in the ClickShare button and share that content in the Teams call to everyone in the room and outside of the room. But even better, if you have a Zoom call or a RingCentral call to do, you can just, again, plug in the button, get the camera and the speakerphone that is attached to the room system switched to your laptop, and do your BYOM type of call on your laptop with exactly the same equipment without additional hardware.
Dan Root: That duality sounds like, really, the perfect mix for where we are in the marketplace as the fact of, yes, folks are coming back. We’re dealing with hybrid meetings all the time, but I still need an IT-sanctioned system for recognizing the room, and making sure that I have everything to spec for my overall tech stack. So, to do that, that can limit how much flexibility there is in the room. So, this sort of a solution still provides all that flexibility while still allowing IT to have that sanctioned room device in there that they’re looking for. I mean, that just sounds like a perfect world. I might be speaking a little too quick here.
Oliver Van Camp: We’re not aiming for a perfect world, but we’re aiming for full flexibility and real flexibility in the meeting rooms, and ultimately that people love meeting. That’s really what we’re trying to aim for.
Dan Root: And then, the other thing that I heard in that is also that it’s the same single experience for the end user or the person that’s joining the meeting, regardless of the different type of meeting they’re trying to have. It’s the same-
Oliver Van Camp: Exactly.
Dan Root: …workflow that they can learn. So, you learn it once, and you have that same thing every single room type that you’ve got across the-
Oliver Van Camp: Right.
Dan Root: …workplace, which is a great advantage over a lot of the haphazard or patchwork approaches that we’ve seen over the years. Now, of course, there’s a lot of stuff going on here at ISE. But before we wrap up, is there anything else that you feel is really top of mind on the CX-50 2nd Gen?
Oliver Van Camp: Well, sustainability is a big thing, right? And Barco has always had a very forward-looking view on sustainability. We’ve actually had an internal eco label scoring for quite some time. And with ClickShare, we are actually at an A++ eco scoring label for the whole second generation of our devices now, which fully recycled plastic housing, and things like that, and power optimizations. But with the CX- 50 2nd Gen, we’re actually going one step further, and we really want to make it a completely carbon neutral product.
Dan Root: Wow.
Oliver Van Camp: And carbon neutral means that we’re really looking at the full life cycle of the product from the mining of the products until the recycling and of the whole thing and of setting that to be really carbon neutral. Even the usage is offset in that. So, that’s, I think, one of the industry firsts, and we’re really proud, as Barco, to be there in that spot.
Dan Root: That is a fantastic point to bring up. It’s great if a solution works. But if you’re doing something that’s bad for the environment overall on a macro level to accomplish that, there’s a pretty big trade off there. So, that is a fantastic feat as far as being able to push that forward and get to that carbon neutral status for the life cycle of the products.
Oliver Van Camp: Exactly. With ClickShare, we want to make an impression on the people in the room, not on our planet, right?
Dan Root: That sounds fair. So, what else is going on this week? I know we’re going to get down to your booth, which I believe is 3D400, if I’m not mistaken.
Oliver Van Camp: That is correct. Absolutely.
Dan Root: So, definitely got to get down there and check out some of the demos. What are you guys having going on this week in the booth?
Oliver Van Camp: Well, we have an exciting game going on. You can win a meeting room every day of ISE.
Dan Root: Great.
Oliver Van Camp: So, just come down to our booth, and then you sign up for one of the demos. We give you a demo of all the capabilities our CX-50 2nd Gen has to offer. You can have a piece of chocolate in the meantime, and then you enter the game. And then, if you’re allowed to speak, you can get a full equipped meeting room with thanks to our great partners, Poly, Jabra, Logi, and Bose on the peripheral side, and you can even get a digital signage subscription from Corbit or SignageLive included in that, as well.
Dan Root: Oh, that sounds fantastic. So, it sounds like I’m going to need to be there every day because chocolate and competition, certainly have to line up for that. Well, I look forward to checking everything out down in the booth. Thank you so much for your time today, and have a great ISE. I’m Dan Root with Wainhouse Research. This has been Oliver Van Camp from Barco. We hope you have a great ISE.
Author Information
Daniel Root is a Senior Analyst with Wainhouse – A Futurum Group company. His area of expertise is digital workplace and workforce communications technologies and services.
