The Evolution of Microsoft Teams Rooms and Devices with Craig Durr

Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of The Collab Collective explores the evolution of meeting room technology, AI's impact and multi-camera solutions.

• Craig's launch of The Collab Collective
• The evolution of Microsoft Teams rooms and devices
• Benefits and challenges of AI agents in meetings
• Multi-camera solutions in high-impact rooms
• The proliferation of video bars in the market, is it sustainable?

Thanks to Neat, this episode's sponsor, for supporting the Empowering.Cloud community.

Transcript

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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:08
Tom
Hi. Welcome back to the Teams Insider podcast. This week I've got my friend Craig Durr. we talk about his new venture, the Collab Collective. Really excited for him launching his own thing. We also get into Teams devices and the Teams devices ecosystem. We talk about the plethora of Teams bars out there and how that came to be. We also talk about AI in Teams and we talk about multi-camera rooms.

00:00:29:10 - 00:00:47:20
Tom
Craig gives us thoughts on what he's seeing in the industry and what he thinks the key trends are. I hope you find this great show. And also many thanks to Neat who are the sponsor of this podcast. Really appreciate their support. On with the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the pod. this exciting, breaking news podcast.

00:00:48:00 - 00:00:59:21
Tom
although it'll be a few weeks, I guess, after this comes out. got my friend Craig. He's, got something to announce. And then we're going to get into, thoughts on the Microsoft Teams room world and devices. Craig. Hey, nice to see you.

00:00:59:21 - 00:01:01:07
Craig
How's it going?

00:01:01:09 - 00:01:08:06
Tom
Yeah. Really good. Thanks. Pretty good. busy as ever. I'm you too. So, tell us. Tell us what's going on.

00:01:08:07 - 00:01:29:19
Craig
I have him. Well, I've been kind of quiet in that. I've been what I call my shadows stealth mode since about April. but I'm excited to share with you and your audience that I'm coming out and sharing with the world that I am launching a new analyst firm. It's one that's going to go by the name of the Collab Collective, and the name is very specific for a reason.

00:01:29:21 - 00:01:38:15
Craig
it leans in on a couple of things, but I'm really happy to share this with you, audience, and thank you for the chance to, help help explain to them what I'm doing.

00:01:38:17 - 00:01:51:23
Tom
Yeah, yeah. And we we obviously talk a lot behind the scenes, and, you know, it'd be good to go through kind of some of your previous life for our community. Who may not know it. The whole analyst thing. but yeah, I'm really excited to see you. you kick off your own thing. Well, thank.

00:01:51:23 - 00:02:18:07
Craig
You. So I'll share with you what I do. So if I haven't had a chance to meet you. My name is Craig Durr. for the last five years, I've worked as an industry analyst in the unified communications space I like, I call it workplace collaboration and enterprise communications. So you can think about the devices, the services or the technologies that enable the communications that we we care all about, not only between business to business, but employee to employee and customer to employee, customer as well.

00:02:18:12 - 00:02:45:18
Craig
There's so many circles of use cases there. prior to that, I actually worked within the vendor community for, almost nine years. I managed the group video team at Polycom, and I was there from the point that it went from Polycom to Poly with Plantronics to then being, coming out as well to prior to that, I had a stint where I worked at Dell helping to manage their unified communications efforts, and before that, I did my tenure at Microsoft.

00:02:45:18 - 00:02:55:06
Craig
So I can speak to you about my life working on exchange. It was back at the time that we were taking exchange online that kind of help state myself there, but as when?

00:02:55:08 - 00:02:58:19
Tom
Yeah, but that when servers still matter that we were just coming to the cloud.

00:02:59:00 - 00:03:19:06
Craig
Office communicator and everything. It was at that point in time, though, that they were bringing together all the communication technologies into a single business unit, which is kind of the future of what we see right now taking place, which is that multimodal communication taking place under Teams. So that's, that's, that's that's my, my, my, my war wounds that got me to where I am now.

00:03:19:09 - 00:03:44:12
Craig
But I tell you what. So as of just, a couple of days ago, I've officially launched the Collab Collective. this is an analyst firm that is, again, focusing on enterprise communications. same area devices, experiences, technology that help people communicate and collaborate. and the Teams community winds up being a really important part of that. And I'm excited to share this with your group.

00:03:44:14 - 00:03:59:18
Tom
Yeah, it's it's interesting isn't it? Teams I mean, I come from the the Teams background and the voice background and the whole meeting space has just been kind of taken by storm, by Teams. It's pretty interesting in a relatively short period of time in the grand scheme of things as well.

00:03:59:21 - 00:04:25:04
Craig
It has. And actually I can think through all those transitions. I mean, some of your audience is going to know everything from linked room systems. I remember helping the launch one of the first ones at poly, to the different iterations of what was taking place in those devices till we finally got to Teams and to the point in time, I feel like that Microsoft really leaned in and said, this is going to be our epicenter of how we're going to have people communicate, chat.

00:04:25:06 - 00:04:42:19
Craig
You know, you have, you know, SharePoint integrated into this for file share. You've got meetings, you've got voice as it expanded its voice ecosystem to all these, operator connect and all these other things. It's really helped drive this into a single point of focus, which I think is a really powerful story.

00:04:42:21 - 00:05:02:00
Tom
And I think what's interesting at the moment, in kind of in the last 12, 18 months, is we're starting to see things being done with room technology that never could have been done with the kind of traditional approach of edge codecs. All the cloud stuff, all the AI, stuff like that could only be done on a, a cloud first kind of approach.

00:05:02:00 - 00:05:02:17
Tom
I think it.

00:05:02:17 - 00:05:22:04
Craig
Is. You know, it is an interesting tussle, though. I mean, if you think about it, people are trying to figure out where should that point a decision be made. Is it cloud based is on the edge base. And, you know, we've got some some mutual friends. I got some wonderful devices out there that have some really powerful AI technology on the edge, and they want to pass it on.

00:05:22:06 - 00:05:32:09
Craig
And then we've got some friends out there who are saying, you know what, just to make sure everyone has an equal experience. I'm going to do this in the cloud. IntelliFrame is a great example of that. Right? And,

00:05:32:11 - 00:05:50:18
Tom
Yeah, it's an interesting it's an interesting tension, isn't it? Because I'm excited when the OEMs get to do their own thing and innovate. And, particularly with things like center room cam, we're going to talk later on about multicam, like that's a chance for the OEMs to bring their own unique thing to the story. But by the same token, you're right.

00:05:50:18 - 00:05:54:22
Tom
If I could mix and match vendors and have the same experience, is that better for me as an enterprise?

00:05:55:03 - 00:06:12:05
Craig
It is. You know, it's, it's what I've said for a long time. I think you guys see this to it. Really. There's a, there's a technology curve and then there's an adoption curve. And we're at this really interesting point that the technology's got a lot of richness and a lot of, a lot of feature sets out there.

00:06:12:07 - 00:06:29:16
Craig
And the adoption curve is still below it. It's always below it a little bit and are starting to catch up. But strategies like IntelliFrame actually help democratize that. In some ways it takes the equivalent. I'm using hand quotes of dumb cameras and giving them some in-room intelligence in a way that it might help alleviate some of those tensions.

00:06:29:16 - 00:06:54:06
Craig
Now, is it going to be perfect? I don't think so. I think if you really have a refined group of end users that want to be closer to the technology curve, the devices on the edge that can really do some of that great, manipulation of the audio and video really suit that better. so it's almost like, it's serving a broader swath of the end users in that way.

00:06:54:07 - 00:07:15:12
Tom
Yeah. And I think I'm with you on that. There's there's some things you can still do on the edge that you just can't quite do on the cloud. Yeah. I mean, you can have really capable, you know, 4K multi 4K sensors. Then you can punch in on the edge and you can send just what you need to the cloud versus the kind of IntelliFrame approach at the moment is take a single large frame and have the the cloud punch in.

00:07:15:12 - 00:07:27:15
Tom
It's not quite the same, but it's it'll be interesting to see those two approaches compete, because then you've got the cloud processing where you can do some clever stuff to optimize it there. Maybe you could do that, that you can't do on on an edge device.

00:07:27:17 - 00:07:43:07
Craig
It really it's going to be a really interesting scenario. I'm thinking out loud right now and I'm trying to think if there is the same type of opportunity in the voice space, where there's cloud capable technology that would be competing with on edge technology as well.

00:07:43:09 - 00:08:05:07
Tom
The first thing I've seen in the voice space that's genuinely only cloud is the Copilot stuff. So if you've got Teams Phone, you can do Copilot again. You never would have been able to do that on the on the edge. Well, I mean, I guess technically you could build small models and things, but like in a practical scale, that's one of the first things in phone technology that's been like a cloud only thing.

00:08:05:09 - 00:08:14:18
Craig
For the way. Kudos to you. I saw the highlights of your presentations of trying to map out all the different Copilots and giving them names and and what have you.

00:08:14:18 - 00:08:21:21
Tom
Yeah, we've got we've got a piece of research coming where I try to put it all together. Every time I touch it, I'm like, oh, there's something new to put into it.

00:08:21:23 - 00:08:22:18
Craig
Yeah. Between.

00:08:22:19 - 00:08:30:12
Tom
Yeah, yeah, it's it's constantly me and Kevin. They're constantly in a back and forth over who's got the right number as well which is fun.

00:08:30:14 - 00:08:52:11
Craig
It's a really interesting challenge. I mean and we're probably pivoting a little bit. I love the Copilot technology and oh my they're just really something really new which I was excited about. I kind of knew it was going on. But the Teams Copilot and I yeah, I am really excited about that one. But to finish my thought, my concern is there's a lot of Copilots out there and the pricing models and the licensing.

00:08:52:13 - 00:08:58:03
Craig
I want them to keep it clean and concise so that people can consume this and know when and where to use.

00:08:58:06 - 00:09:16:17
Tom
So, so the opposite of what it is now basically. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean at the at the moment it's very much like the product Teams I think would be given free rein to be like see what works. So there's a lot of, you know, things going on at once. It will settle down. It always does. But but at the moment it is a a nightmare to keep up with.

00:09:16:17 - 00:09:25:01
Tom
And the fact we've got Copilot for Teams and Teams, singular Copilot, and they're two different products. To do things right is great. But the problem.

00:09:25:04 - 00:09:36:14
Craig
Here I'm putting my hand to my for you. Here's my prediction. The next release is going to be a Copilot for Copilot, it's going to be the Copilot that tells you which Copilot you need to use when and where. How are you're going to use it?

00:09:36:16 - 00:09:45:10
Tom
Yeah, I think Microsoft are hoping they'll, you know, morph into a singular Copilot. They can do all these things, but, we're away from that yet I think.

00:09:45:10 - 00:10:08:14
Craig
I think they will, but but to go back to that opening, conversation, bit team Copilot, this is what I'm really excited about. I think your community thinks about this, but I hope this is one of those perspectives that I share to your community. As an outside analyst, I want to hopefully share some tidbits that these guys and women can use, in their conversations with their clients, with their customers, even with their management when they're trying to figure this out.

00:10:08:14 - 00:10:15:10
Craig
So hopefully I dropped some pearls of wisdom and if not, please forgive me. I'm trying.

00:10:15:12 - 00:10:16:07
Tom
the.

00:10:16:09 - 00:10:36:10
Craig
the the get the team Copilot scenario leading up to this, we had AI agents that were people able to bring into the meetings. That's a you think about it. It's a great experience. But, Tom, let's say if I had a meeting with you and I was double booked and I sent my AI agent to your meeting, what does that tell you?

00:10:36:10 - 00:10:57:11
Craig
From our human level? Our cultural level, it says you're second important to me out of another meeting, and I'm going to send a virtual agent to sit in and take notes for you. And whether you give it permission or not to do that, it kind of sets this kind of tiered level of importance. Out front you know, in the conversation, which I think is really culturally a bad idea.

00:10:57:13 - 00:11:19:12
Tom
Is really interesting, isn't it? Because actually, if so, previously I have three back to back meetings and I declined to is sending my AI better than declining or worse? Exactly. But I was just I was just going to decline you before. but it yeah, it does kind of send a message of whatever you're going to say for half an hour can be summarized by an AI, and I can get the summary.

00:11:19:12 - 00:11:21:04
Tom
I don't need the meeting effectively.

00:11:21:07 - 00:11:36:16
Craig
That's right. And I mean, not only that, it's it's that that relationship and taking place as well to between that and then I think that people made this joke, what happens if I send my agent and you send your AI agent? Yeah, I think they'd be talking to each other.

00:11:36:18 - 00:11:58:12
Tom
Probably a better outcome, I imagine. I don't I don't really buy into that. The send AI thing is fun because people hate meeting clashes. And the idea that I could be in three places exciting that the team Copilot scenario that I like is there's an AI in the meeting, right? Taking notes, prompting, like like the the the the virtual PM.

00:11:58:14 - 00:12:03:20
Tom
I think that's way more credible ways because that's the whole purpose for all of us.

00:12:03:22 - 00:12:25:21
Craig
That's exactly what I think about. So, it plays to this. It's a shared asset. You called it a p m whatever. Whatever title you want to use for it. It's something that we have equal access to, equal control over, and we can equally help ask it for information that's equally shared. So all of a sudden you have your, your your Empowering Cloud group getting together.

00:12:25:21 - 00:12:38:18
Craig
You can launch that agent. Everyone has equal access to what's taking place there. And I think that democratizes it well. And so I think it's a brilliant play on how you want to have an AI agent come into a meeting experience. It's a good idea.

00:12:38:22 - 00:13:00:10
Tom
It's interesting from Microsoft though from positioning point of view, because very early on they were very gently, gently they this like Copilot is your personal assistant. You're in charge. You use it individually and now they're crossing the line where it's like, oh, hang on, it's a virtual project manager. It's a it's a virtual assistant. You can get an agent right.

00:13:00:10 - 00:13:12:19
Tom
And they haven't really been called out on this very much. But they're and it's the way the whole industry is going. It's not just them, but now we're crossing the line into agents and proactivity. how are people going to react to that is to your point is a really good question.

00:13:12:21 - 00:13:26:16
Craig
I you know, I think it's the right one. And now their risk is to what you talked about the licensing model, when and where do I have Teams Copilot available to me? if I'm a guest joining, do I have access to that shared Copilot?

00:13:26:16 - 00:13:41:13
Tom
Yeah, that's a real that's a real friction point at the moment. It's a nightmare that only one, the tenant that hosts the meeting gets the Copilot capability. And we're seeing this for real now with our customers that we work with is I want the meeting on our tenant because I want to grab the notes. They want the meeting on their tenant because

00:13:41:13 - 00:13:45:18
Tom
They want to grab the notes. So somebody somebody miss out right now.

00:13:45:20 - 00:13:50:02
Craig
All of a sudden it's like, no, no, no, I've got the conk I want to host the meeting. Give it to me.

00:13:50:03 - 00:13:52:02
Tom
Yeah that's funny isn't it.

00:13:52:05 - 00:14:14:18
Craig
But but I but I do think it's, it's known. It's understood. And I think they're proactively addressing it that, that product management team. So I'm excited about that. and one of the great things is that they're open to feedback and there's great customer feedback loops. And this whole process which which will help out. So, that's a great move forward in terms of what I see in that Microsoft ecosystem of how these Copilots are being managed.

00:14:14:18 - 00:14:20:09
Craig
And again, your idea of leveraging some cloud based technology that's available to all.

00:14:20:11 - 00:14:40:12
Tom
So let's put it like you're one of the people I always go to when I'm talking about kind of what's going on with the OEMs and devices. The thing that's puzzling me at the moment is if everybody's got a video bar, like like you like it was it was kind of ISE, We saw everybody as we record. We're just going into InfoComm like, what's going on there?

00:14:40:12 - 00:14:43:15
Tom
Is it sustainable for every vendor to have a video bar?

00:14:43:17 - 00:15:07:15
Craig
It's interesting. It's it's a really interesting space. Right. so this is the way I think about it. You know, the bars in my mind first were really launched about 2019. that's when Yealink first came out. Poly had one. There were some other ones in market, but this is the first one. They initially came out focused on, the Zoom ecosystem and then very quickly rolled into the Team certification process.

00:15:07:17 - 00:15:35:13
Craig
they started a great need at that point in time. They helped take something that might have needed a little bit more AV knowledge and brought it into an IT mindset, something that was easy to deploy, easy to manage, easy to put up. And I think that's when one of those interesting challenges of trying to get some audio video technology into more mainstream is making it accessible to the IT generalists or the IT.

00:15:35:15 - 00:15:41:10
Craig
you know, the person doesn't have a full portfolio of, IT resources available to them as well too.

00:15:41:10 - 00:15:51:21
Tom
Yeah. And also, you don't need, an AV specialist doing a multi-day deployment of it like it's kind of an in the box rack and stack, reasonably easy to deploy.

00:15:51:23 - 00:16:13:18
Craig
Right. And and I think what's, what's taking place to drive that further, if you take a step back is what we were just talking about, the strength of these UC platforms in terms of becoming ubiquitous, of what a meeting room is deployed with, is become pretty powerful. So Microsoft has got a wonderful market share. What's taking place right now in that space?

00:16:13:19 - 00:16:31:12
Craig
which means not only their personal licenses, but then you want to start enabling the group scenarios as well, too. And, so the bars play into that naturally. All right. Especially as again, that IT centric point of view, a lot more rooms are coming on board. And this is when we were still ramping up. And huddle rooms are becoming very important.

00:16:31:14 - 00:17:00:15
Craig
and then we hit into the pandemic time frame and it continued to be important. You know, one of the things that I do that that I share with you, and other clients of ours is, the numbers of the market, what I see taking place in terms of total units sold, their form factor, the meeting rooms that they're actually being, leveraged within, and that small to medium space was part of the rocket ship that was taking place in huddle rooms are already becoming important because, video was becoming a little bit more ubiquitous and people are getting more and more on.

00:17:00:15 - 00:17:18:08
Craig
And you wanted to take it from the white glove experience down to every employee can use it. Experience. and so that kind of played into it as well. The other thing that, interestingly enough, played into it too, was price point. Right? the bars were starting to bring down the price point of what was taking place in the room.

00:17:18:10 - 00:17:20:20
Craig
So yeah, that was really key.

00:17:21:01 - 00:17:40:12
Tom
Yeah. But Microsoft have now kind of semi blessed BYOD previously. That was very like not the thing to do. And now it's, that's the reality which now if you're getting into BYOD and bars you can get some really good technology in the bar for the price point because you're not putting compute in the bar. And that's that's interesting as well.

00:17:40:13 - 00:17:40:20
Tom
Right.

00:17:41:02 - 00:17:46:00
Craig
Exactly. And actually that's what's actually playing out here as well.

00:17:46:00 - 00:17:52:13
Craig
and that's, that's the recent translation I've probably given too long of a of a history lesson that all your, your listeners probably know about.

00:17:52:15 - 00:18:13:14
Craig
But the as the price point came down and, rooms became, a big selling point, especially coming out of the pandemic, and people are starting to do that. It wanted to become and very important. So vendors were having huge opportunity. Logitech was well positioned at the time. For example, Neat had their bar. They were bringing in certification.

00:18:13:16 - 00:18:32:12
Craig
Poly had theirs as well too. And this bar's continued to fill out. then that came. The next thing is BYOD, because now we're starting to get into this idea of Android versus Windows, and I call that the religious war. And that was the big challenge there. Right. Like no matter what, people can find the right answer.

00:18:32:12 - 00:18:51:21
Craig
It seemed to focus mostly on security and management. And if you're a zealot towards Android, you can talk about why you thought security and management was best there. And if you're a zealot towards Windows, you can talk about it in the same way as well that continued to do it. But as price points came down and more rooms came in, the BYOD bars were key.

00:18:51:21 - 00:19:18:04
Craig
So so things like I mentioned, Logitech Meetup was well positioned and ready to be there at that point in time. Poly had their their studio bar. yeah. Link had some, some other USB bars as well too. But in this last 18 months, as Microsoft started embracing BYOD, those, we're seeing a lot of BYOD bars come out, but with intelligence in them, you know, their network connected, their managed devices.

00:19:18:06 - 00:19:35:14
Craig
And what's taking place now is where you had this price point of BYOD bars pushing it down in those Windows environments. You now have, some of the other bars that are still coming back in that are, a little bit higher. So it's gonna be interesting to see what takes place in the market of the adoption rate.

00:19:35:14 - 00:19:44:13
Craig
So you almost have these tiers now. It's not just dumb BYOD bar full operating system bar. There's now somebody landing in the middle creating middles.

00:19:44:13 - 00:20:13:11
Tom
Really interesting isn't it? Because the classic BYOD criticisms are, multiple cables are a pain. But we kind of got to usb-C and that's kind of gone away. then it was they never get updated, which is definitely from the customers I work with. Accurate. Nobody goes around and firmware flashes them, but suddenly you've got things like the Meet Up 2 and Poly have others where they their network connected, even though they’re BYOD suddenly you can manage them and you can flash them, and you can get stats out of them remotely.

00:20:13:13 - 00:20:32:12
Tom
and the price point, more of that money is going into the, the actual, acoustics and video than in an equivalent Android bar. But then the Android bar price points are getting more and more aggressive, and suddenly you'd be like, well, actually, I can step up to Android for 50% more. And now I've got a capable self serving unit as well.

00:20:32:15 - 00:21:00:21
Craig
A native room experience. So that's what Microsoft calls it native versus BYOD. And it's interesting. And I don't know if your audience thinks about this, but for many of those systems they just wind up being software restricted full Android bars. I mean, I, I wouldn't be surprised. So that so the cost of goods, the cogs underlying are probably about the same as the full operating system bars as it is for the other ones, which creates interesting dynamics for those, as OEMs and how they want to position.

00:21:00:21 - 00:21:09:07
Craig
And then price them. At the end of the day, we want the end users to have a great experience. And so, that's what we're driving towards. But but yeah, point.

00:21:09:07 - 00:21:18:20
Tom
And Microsoft still push the the Microsoft Teams rooms is the premier experience. So I would always say that that's the, the ideal experience.

00:21:18:22 - 00:21:48:06
Craig
But but they've but that Teams room under Ilya has done some really great things with the BYOD. So I really like what they've done in terms of recognizing BYOD rooms based upon device ID, and then at the point in time, I think your end users know this or your listeners, if you and I go into a room and we both plug in our separate laptops and we hit the same dumb BYOD bar, it's able to identify, I think I think it triggers after the fifth time and saying, hey.

00:21:48:11 - 00:21:51:15
Tom
That's five, five uses being they have a shared device and.

00:21:51:17 - 00:22:09:06
Craig
It's a shared device. So now we can start capturing and thinking about that in that point of view. No, it doesn't have ongoing insights, but every time somebody connects the device to it, it can grab some insights, which is really helpful. And then the second thing they did really helpful in this process is they updated that BYOD experience.

00:22:09:06 - 00:22:14:02
Craig
So you're not default sharing screens when you plug into the device. And it really.

00:22:14:02 - 00:22:24:03
Tom
Yeah you get this gives a look at the stage. You get the stage on your laptop properly with your your speaker notes. You get the proper thing on the on the right screen. It is it's a much, much improved experience. Yeah, it.

00:22:24:03 - 00:22:55:16
Craig
Is because, there was some research I did on this and actually I did it for, well, who I did it for, and we were trying to understand native versus BYOD. And in fact, we're looking at the buyer cycle. And so I went out and interviewed channel to talk about this. And one of those interesting things that came back is when a customer, a customer does a lot of research on their own top of funnel information and figuring out and decide that I want to get into a beard bar is probably a decision they're comfortable doing early on without going too deep.

00:22:55:18 - 00:23:02:23
Craig
Price point low. The risk seems low in the back of my mind. I can I can eventually plug in a PC and make it into a Windows room with.

00:23:03:03 - 00:23:04:21
Tom
No no, no platform dependencies.

00:23:04:21 - 00:23:06:09
Craig
Another one I yeah, yeah, exactly like.

00:23:06:11 - 00:23:17:07
Tom
That can do that. We're all in on Teams now, but who knows what's happening with merge acquisitions. Who knows about what tomorrow brings? BYOD just lives on and on as a as a USB device.

00:23:17:09 - 00:23:37:02
Craig
Frankly, the idea behind that is it's it's no platform lock in to the point that I'm already using multiple systems. I might be a Teams shop, but I have people coming in and have to do a Zoom call or a WebEx call. And that's a big part. So at the point in time that these customers had that mindset and they were contacting the channel, they were already committed to the idea of buying BYOD.

00:23:37:04 - 00:24:04:03
Craig
So what we were interviewing around was this, is that a window for that channel to upsell that person to native room experiences? Because there's true value and it's not just making the better sale, but there's value about being better managed, more security and things like that. But what we came back and find out is that the friction from that channel team to sell upsell, that, that group, that, that already made the decision to buy it was too much more than the effort of the value of the sale.

00:24:04:05 - 00:24:05:09
Craig
So what took place in that.

00:24:05:09 - 00:24:10:12
Tom
Rather just shipped the units, closed the sale, go to the next versus pitch the customer on the change.

00:24:10:16 - 00:24:32:16
Craig
So there was a very human element versus a technology need that was actually servicing. Why that BYOD market? So it was a little bit of a challenge of why can't we, at the point of customer contact, move people more to native? And I think this helped fit into a little bit of a, ecosystem mindset of BYOD is going to have momentum.

00:24:32:16 - 00:24:52:10
Craig
We have to continue to think about this as well. How can we embrace it and pull it back into our management construct? How can we pull it back into this? Because then then at that point in time, once you have a more managed experience around the BYOD device, you have a second opportunity to talk about going up to native and you're talking to that IT administrator or that.

00:24:52:10 - 00:25:02:00
Tom
Yeah. and in an informed way, like these rooms are being used heavily. Actually, it's a chance to, I'm sure. Yeah. Everybody sense.

00:25:02:01 - 00:25:18:22
Craig
So there all of a sudden is, is the moment of clarity of how, BYOD plays into this ecosystem and then it still creates an opportunity for the UC platforms to upsell the appropriate room experiences and the room devices to that, to that idea. Yeah. So it's a pretty great time.

00:25:18:22 - 00:25:28:17
Tom
Let's go ahead. Let's go the other way. Craig. What I want to talk. You've been doing a lot of work around kind of a high impact multi-camera scenario. I think you've got some talks coming up about it as well.

00:25:28:18 - 00:25:48:08
Craig
I do so by the time this airs, we would have had a a talk at InfoComm. it's calling demystifying multi-camera experiences. And if you weren't there live and didn't say hi to me because I see you now, I'm sure, eviction is going to have it on line. You guys can go down there and take a look at it as a podcast on the stage.

00:25:48:08 - 00:26:07:02
Craig
I'm going to have people from Crestron, from Logitech and from Neat. these are three, three OEMs that I really enjoy talking to because I think they have some forward thinking ideas and we're going to try and demystify the use cases around and where to use multi-camera rooms. Not only that, but then we look at it from two different ways.

00:26:07:02 - 00:26:22:19
Craig
If you think about the vendors, I'm framing it as outside in experiences, cameras on the wall, looking in and then inside out or center of table. So I've got two center of table experiences. I've got Crestron with the outside in the, one beyond experience as well. I had a.

00:26:22:19 - 00:26:32:12
Tom
Really good pod with Sam where we talked about the kind of pros and cons of those different options is exciting. And again, this is back to options in the market. It's exciting to see different people doing different things for different scenarios.

00:26:32:14 - 00:26:52:19
Craig
It is. And go back to why these rooms are becoming important. Coming out of the pandemic, we had a big influx, a big increase in terms of Teams deployment, for example, to stay focused on the platform. A lot of end users now, I'm trying to drive people back into the office and create community. I'm trying to communicate to these people, and I've invested in all these small rooms and these personal licenses.

00:26:52:19 - 00:27:14:01
Craig
But those high impact rooms think about boardrooms, town halls, community spaces. We're not yet upgraded to that right platform. So there was a lot of investment here in the last two years around those high impact rooms. Some of our, you know, the ecosystem. Not only are we talking about multi cameras, but we're talking about control AV over IP.

00:27:14:01 - 00:27:17:02
Craig
We're talking about audio installed reinforced audio.

00:27:17:04 - 00:27:30:03
Tom
Yeah, audio is a big one as well with the, with things like the Copilot and transcription. Having the audio right is more important than ever because you want those, transcriptions. And again, high impact rooms means important meetings means good transcription ideally.

00:27:30:05 - 00:27:49:18
Craig
And we're at this really interesting inflection point too. And price points are playing into this a two by two matrix. And if you have outside in cameras and you have center of table cameras and the two use cases I'm trying to align to, what I'm trying to do is create a framework for people to think about this and start this.

00:27:49:20 - 00:28:07:18
Craig
Think about these as being two types of meetings. I would call them one touch meetings, and then I would call them high impact meetings. Now a one touch meeting is what you and I know. We walk into there. There's a control device. I can see it, I hit the button, I join, and I've democratized this enough so that I don't need a white glove service to join the meeting.

00:28:07:18 - 00:28:25:16
Craig
You can join it. I can join it. My intern can join the meeting if she needed to because it's really simple. It's a one touch experience. and then those high impact rooms might need a little bit more production value behind them. It might have somebody presenting on stage. It might have a hot zone by a whiteboard that I want to make sure it's picked up.

00:28:25:18 - 00:28:36:09
Craig
Frankly, for the far end, it might have a key attendee like a chairperson or a chair, or a CEO that I want to have zoomed in on all the time because I want to see their reactions. Right.

00:28:36:11 - 00:28:37:03
Tom
Yeah.

00:28:37:05 - 00:28:56:00
Craig
That's what I think about with high impact rooms. If you look at these solutions, they can both of them, but some of them tend to be optimize a little bit more and price point plays into it. So those center of table cameras, I love them because, you know, what they're doing is they're bringing this multi-camera solution really easily to those one touch rooms.

00:28:56:04 - 00:29:03:13
Craig
So a one touch room might be a huge, long boardroom, you know, about, right? Yeah. And the irony is, the most important person sits the farthest away.

00:29:03:17 - 00:29:04:18
Tom
The top of the table.

00:29:04:18 - 00:29:24:04
Craig
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They have the the fewest pixels in the screen and they're the most important person. So that center of table camera brings not only the camera down to them but think about it. Microphone and potentially control to mute button things like that. So you can pick them up. So in those rooms, and you have more volume going through those rooms.

00:29:24:06 - 00:29:36:23
Craig
You don't have to call an IT tech to start a meeting and drive it. So they play really well to that one touch experience plus and a price point. You're getting, you know, it's using it's high volume.

00:29:36:23 - 00:29:55:07
Tom
Cameras coming down isn't it. yeah. I think I think Crestron either have or imminently have two of the 1 Beyond cameras running on USB. So you can have dual camera without without the, the full on kind of brain of it and just have those running together, like you say, the center of rooms, the prices.

00:29:55:09 - 00:30:05:16
Tom
I think Poly got something coming there, obviously, that there's a few other vendors coming as well. And it'll just be it will get competitive as well there. So it is it's a good good options for the customer.

00:30:05:18 - 00:30:23:00
Craig
It's just going to be like bars right? Right now like you said. Yeah, I can think of we're going to come back from I again InfoComm and I can think of four vendors that are going to have working center of table cameras there. and I can tell you a couple more that probably have whisper rooms talking about them as well.

00:30:23:01 - 00:30:41:07
Craig
So, yeah, it's, it's a hot area. But then go back to those other ones, the high impact rooms and you have outside in and this is where you want to have. Can I have I controlled high value use would still not bringing someone in 1 Beyond solutions a great one as example of that I can create a hot zone.

00:30:41:07 - 00:30:45:21
Craig
I can I can hone in on presenters zone and things like that.

00:30:45:23 - 00:31:03:02
Tom
yeah. And then moving to dynamic, dynamic direction based on audio zones as well. So the camera lines up with the audio. See that technology as well with now that AI here he's just going to get so exciting over the next couple of, you know, 6-12 months. The AI is going to get really good that direction I think it is.

00:31:03:02 - 00:31:23:21
Craig
And then crossover with what Microsoft is really promoting which is attribution. They call it the ability to voice identify that it's Tom talking or Craig talking. Now I've got these intelligent shots getting you at the right angle, giving you your name. So I see you. But then it adds into the transcription, which adds into the post-production of all that AI it feeds well.

00:31:23:21 - 00:31:36:03
Craig
So closing some of these challenges on those multi those large rooms, getting better images, getting better sound feeds into that AI work stream as well. It's going to be a pretty powerful story.

00:31:36:05 - 00:31:49:07
Tom
it's exciting time. So yeah. I think we're about out of time, but Craig, really excited for what you're launching. What we've been talking a lot about behind the scenes, I think can be really great for people that want to follow them with you in the Collab Collective. What's the best thing to do?

00:31:49:09 - 00:32:09:11
Craig
URL is collab-collective. I'll have writings out there, blog post, videos and what have you. If you're watching this now, I invite you to go out there because you'll see a lot of updates from InfoComm that that I'll have posted, including some booth tours and some great things like that. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

00:32:09:13 - 00:32:35:03
Craig
I'm not going to call it X. And you can find it under my name, which is CraigDurr so yeah, please follow. Please like please comment, please engage. You guys have so much great feedback and I love that you guys always bring me back to my core roots, which is understanding the product and the technology because underlying all this, I'm a product geek and I need to be able to keep myself true to those roots there.

00:32:35:03 - 00:32:37:00
Craig
So that's great.

00:32:37:02 - 00:32:40:09
Tom
Thats awesome Craig. All right. Well, we'll have you again on the Pod soon.

00:32:40:11 - 00:32:46:23
Craig
I appreciate it Tom, thank you for having me.