The Future of Meeting Rooms — with Tormod Ree, Chief Product and Engineering Officer at Neat

In this episode, Tormod Ree, Chief Product and Engineering Officer at Neat, shares his view on where meeting room technology is heading and how Neat plans to differentiate while staying simple and reliable for customers.

• AI across the experience: device-side media understanding, and platform features will move meetings from basic framing to experiences that adapt to the interaction in the room.
• Hybrid work isn’t solved: organisations still struggle to give remote participants equal presence for video, audio and collaboration. 
• Rooms must support more than a “video window” and enable local, collaborative and mixed scenarios.
• Neat’s approach to scale: multi‑device architecture for larger and more complex spaces, companion devices like Neat Center, and an App Hub to use devices for more than meetings.
• Platform alignment without losing identity and partnership on Microsoft’s Devices Ecosystem Platform to improve quality, provisioning and integrations, while retaining Neat’s own innovations and simplicity focus.

Thanks to Neat, this episode’s sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Transcript

Tormod Ree: Very excited to be one of the, early, large OEM partners to announce support for MDEP, as it's, often called. MDEP for us is a way to align more closely with, Microsoft.


Tom Arbuthnot: Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we are talking to Toad from Neat. We get into some of the existing hybrid work challenges. AI and industry trends, some of the new technologies and innovations Neat are doing, and just his thoughts on the space and what's coming. Really interesting conversation.

Many thanks to him for taking the time to jump on the pod and also many thanks to Neat who are an Empowering.Cloud benefactor. Really appreciate their support of everything we do in the community. On with the show.

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. I've been excited for this conversation.

I had a really interesting prep call with Tormod. some interesting thoughts on where the industry's going, and then certainly where needs are going. so I guess without further ado, Tormod, could you just introduce yourself and your role, please?


Tormod Ree: Yes. hi everybody. Thanks for inviting me to the podcast.

Tom. So my name is, Tormod. I am the Chief Product and engineering officer at, Neat. Which basically means I'm responsible for all things, product at our company.


Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And there's a lot going on at Neat. and we'll get into that in terms of, new platforms and new, new hardware and new scenarios.

but we were talking more generally about the industry and, and it feels like. A lot's changing at the moment. Obviously AI's had an impact, but even before that, Tormod, I'd love to get your, your thoughts on kind of AI industry impact.


Tormod Ree: Yeah, absolutely. as you probably know Tom and maybe some others, I'm, I'm recently back in this industry.

I've worked here a few years ago. and then I did something else for a few years, but it feels like a really great and, exciting time to, to be back, for a number of reasons. The two primary ones from like a trend or changes perspective is, is is probably sort of this increasing demand for our services and products and the fact that a lot of customers, our customers, our companies, are still really trying to figure out and properly serve the distributed workforce, that they now have.

And I'd be happy to talk a bit more about that, but I think there's still, still some room for improvement in, in properly supporting them. And then the second one is obviously AI. Which is, impacting most, if not all industries. And when you do technology and when you make products, those, those kind of shifts are, are, a very exciting time to be here because they.

Sort of allow you to, to rethink how you solve problems and how you build your products and how you build your experiences. And I think that's definitely going to be happening here as well. And I think we've just seen sort of the very early beginning of it. So I think, yeah, both those two things make it a, a very good and exciting time to be back in the industry.


Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's interesting times in the sense of the. The, the way devices are built and the platforms they work with is quite different. You know, as in we're, you know, connecting to different ucas with their capabilities, then you are putting capabilities in your, your hardware as well, and your software and your platform.

It feels like we're as a, as an, as an industry kind of devices and VC and, and UC and collab, because it's now software driven, is, is in a much better place to adopt. These new AI capabilities than where we were, you know, kind of back in the day.


Tormod Ree: Yeah, definitely. And I think you're going to, going to sort of see all levels of the, of the stack or the sort of all the vendors in the technology mix, going after it.

It's definitely hardware driven. It's sort of enabled by, by new hardware in, in many cases with new chip sets, having new capabilities and sort of an order of magnitude more, more power. Power when it comes to sort of the AI. Perspective. So that's an important part of it. But then of course the actually AI and the experiences are driven from, from the platform side.

I think you'll see both device vendors like needs going after that opportunity, doing more in media processing, better understanding what's going on in the meeting, what kind of interactions are happening, sort of the level beyond just having detectors for people, sort of, it's going to. Move to understand a little more and then sort of cater to the type of meeting and the interaction that you're having better.

And then equally you're going to see it from the, the meeting sort of app and platform provider perspective. I think there's so much to do here and so much room for innovation that's there. Then there's, that's a sort of, there's, there's more than room enough for, for. more than the room enough to go after it.

That sort of from, from various different companies and not at the different, different levels for sure.


Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. It's interesting for me 'cause obviously it's a very competitive space, you know, the, this device is space. Certainly when we think about Teams, a number of certified partners. Obviously you guys are certified for other platforms as well.

like it feels like this is a. Chance to meaningfully differentiate in terms of, you know, video and audio processing and that smarts as well, but potentially more, more additional smarts built into the, the hardware and the platform.


Tormod Ree: Yeah, I, yes, I, a hundred percent agree. I mean, yeah, when, when, when you in the products team, like new technology and new innovations are an exciting.

opportunity to go differentiate, but like also to solve by, by solving problems in a, in a new, on a different way. It's never kind of particularly exciting to just kind of be in the market to try to copy what everybody else is doing and, and not have any, any, any, any new stuff to go. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's, it's good like that.

And I think as you say, it's going to be. Used for a lot more. Right. So there's elements that have been used on sort of the machine learning computer vision side, also for audio to improve the experience, to do things like, what need brought to market with need symmetry to do, to do sort of proper voice isolation.

We're starting to see name tags and, and other sort of features. But, I, I still think that's just the very beginning from, I think from a meeting perspective. It allows us to have a solution that actually understands what kind of interactions are going on, what kind of meeting is this, like how are the people interacting, and then adapt the experience to that.

Now it's sort of just adapting to where people are and then just trying to provide you with the best possible view of, of everybody, or the active speakers say, but like if you actually understand. What that meeting is like. And people have been talking about this for a long time and, and there's been some attempt at solving it, but it's not, it's not really there yet.

But you start to see that what's more like a, a serious movie, TV kind of production, type experience, which I know has been sort of a, a topic of discussion for a good amount of time. But we are actually going to get there at some point. And AI is a necessary, necessary point of the mix. And then I think at the higher levels it allows.

It allows you to rethink how you deliver your experience. And you, you can't always use AI just by adding a, a button or sort of a new feature on top of your product for, for some things that make sense, right? If you want to do an AI summary, perhaps, or other types of features that make sense to add on sort of on, on top of what you already have.

But, but it also. It also gives an opportunity to, to, to rethink the experience with properly with people cannot be manually creating channels anymore. Will they be manually, scheduling meetings? And I think there's, I can think of a very long list of examples that you'd like just do in a different way.

if you, if you have ai, sort of the, as a, a, as a core fabric of, of the product. But yeah. And then everybody's talking about this as we know, and then the proof will be in the pudding and it's about execution and delivery and. Actually using it to solve some real problems that, that people care about.


Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I think we, it feels like we've gone past the hype cycle of AI for the sake of AI and we're into, certainly with the enterprises being much more, objective about, yeah, great, but what's the use case? And, and, and it takes a few generations of conversation and, and, and platform and hardware to kind of get to there.

So it feels like we're starting to get to that beyond just say it's AI when it really is machine learning and, and carry on.


Tormod Ree: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I, I, yes. And I think there's been some cases definitely where the ROI has been unclear and there's been a lot of throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks.

Yeah. and I agree that you definitely need to, I mean, you need to solve real problems with real value in order for it to have an have an, kind of, uptick. and there's been some good examples of that. And then some other examples of perhaps that haven't been as useful. And then we, we learn as we progress.


Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, you, you mentioned kind of hybrid work still not being solved and obviously you have an interesting perspective 'cause you've got customers all over the world, so you see different countries, different markets. We're seeing a lot of, return to work conversations in the US at the moment, for example, slightly different in Europe.

what are you seeing there and what are those kind of, you know, unsolved problems?


Tormod Ree: Yeah. I, yes. Well, I, I still think companies are trying to figure it out and they have a very different approach and some, but I guess fewer are still in this kind of completely, Up to you choose your kind of workplace and style mode.

And then increasingly, as you said, especially in some regions, we see like more mandate thing returned to office like 2, 3, 5 days a week. Sometimes it's different for managers and for others. Sometimes it's, it's the same. but we also see statistics as I remember those, an article in the Wall Street Journal recently that didn't really see the kind of, the matched,
Uptake in, in actual days in the office for, for everybody. So the, the signals are a bit mixed and it's perhaps because the approach is still, is still a bit, diverse. for us it doesn't really matter that much because we're going to continue to have a hybrid or distributed workforce. and people will expect to kind of work, work remotely effectively across sites from home, from wherever, and they need the proper tools to.

To support them. and I think people felt that sort of, when everybody is of in the office together, obviously that's a great experience. When everybody was remote, that was at least okay or every, everybody was on equal fit fitting and I don't think, we don't fully figure out how we. Support the distributed workforce yet?

I think there are challenges. I think still in many cases you feel that is a bit disconnected if you're remote and others are in the office. hard to be an equal part of the conversation. It's hard to do more interactive kind of work, sort of creative collaborative type sessions. I think at times when you work from home or remotely, you could feel a bit disconnected and you try to do a combination of like email and meetings, sort of various different, messaging tools, but it's not quite the same as being in the office together.

And I think, so it's up to us then and our partners in the industry to, to solve for that, better. And I, I still think there's, Plenty room to improve and, innovate also in, in that space.


Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I think collab, collab particularly resonates with me. So there's a few things I've seen is one. The anybody doing return, return to work, push or mandate is got to have good facilities in the office, right?

So you can't turn up and the, the, the room not work or the audio be bad. 'cause that's just a reason to be like, well you've, you, you've said you want me in here, but the, i, I get a better experience, you know, on my headset at home is one thing. but also it's not, it's not the case that it very often used to be, you know.

95% of the participants were in the office, and then somebody was remoting in and they had a very. Bad experience typically 'cause they were almost forgotten, whereas now it can be 50, 50, 30, 70, whatever. So yeah, your, your point about needing to then, be equally engaged in the meeting, both video, audio and collab, there, there's still, still is some room for improvement there, I think.


Tormod Ree: Yeah, definitely. And then the devices that you put into those spaces, be they kind of meeting rooms or, or something else, they need to be able to support those types of interactions. But also everything else that you want to do in that meeting room, kind of having like a. Like in the old days, like a static video conferencing or this is just for meeting kind of device, doesn't really make any sense.

It needs to support the kind of interactions that you have there. The different teams that have different needs for different types of meetings. So it can't just sort of be a video window that you use to talk to somebody. It also needs to support local sessions, more collaborative sessions. It needs to be able to kind of be used for more classic video centric meetings.

But like you, you can't have like a different device or a different room or a different space for all those things. You need to have. Spaces that are properly equipped for the kinds of scenarios or activities that you want to have there. And from that perspective, I think we also have a job to do, in the industry.

I think Neat has been quite conscious about that since the beginning, and we're trying to approach that with, with our, partners to make sure that we have something that's flexible, supports more than video, and that can adapt to the different, different use cases.


Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it goes full circle to the AI conversation.

Microsoft are talking a lot about facilitator on Microsoft Teams Rooms, for example, being a full in person experience. So that's just you, you like the, the, the, the facilitator up. Everybody's in person, but it's still doing your, your meeting minutes and, and, and, and being your AI assistant and you've, like you say, you've already got the hardware there.

Why would you not use it?


Tormod Ree: Definitely.


Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And there's been a lot going on in Neat in terms of kind of expansion. I mean the, the Google announcement, the Dual Centers, the, the, like the platform. Maybe you could, kind of give us an insight into your thinking and a niche thinking behind that in terms of how you architect the, the, the, the products and platform for, for different scenarios.


Tormod Ree: Yes, definitely. Yeah, there's a lot going on. We are trying to keep the pace up and I think we're doing a decent job, but I'll try to shed some more insights on it. So in, in general, Customers, like what they get, from it. And interestingly enough, which was sort of a positive surprise, for me when I joined the company, we had, we did the survey, we had some of our largest customers up on stage for our, for our, sales kickoff in the beginning of this year.

And we all stem. What they like about Neat or why they stay with Neat. They all point back to something that has to do with simplicity. So it's always there, it always works. It's easy to start a meeting. my support, overhead is reduced. I have fewer IT tickets. It's easier to deploy and configure something remotely, which was good to see.

So I, I, I, I love the innovation that we drive out, but it's like, it's nice to see that the focus on simplicity sort of filters and appreciated. All the way out. So like, first and foremost, we are, staying true to that. That's going to continue be to be a priority for us. And it's not in the new announcement or in the data sheet or in the press release typically, which is why I like to still, mention it.

But then with, with that as a starting point then, so I guess need. It is growing up as a company, we're no longer the new kid on the block with, with a bar for your medium sized, meeting rooms, and and zoom. So it's expanded quite significantly over the last few years, but we still have wide space, so to speak, or, or areas that we.

can move into our support better than, than what we do today. And that's kind of the lens for expansion. That's true both from like a rooms, spaces perspective. we know that there are some really large rooms or complex configurations that we can improve the need experience in. we know we can do more.

In the smaller, meeting, meeting spaces. and we're approaching those by a combination of new devices, sort of primary devices or companion devices like need center or with software where we have a, a unique approach where we combine our devices together and sort of a, a multi device approach to those, rooms.

So we're not building a new box for every possible scenario we're using. Distributed compute network to, to solve for the larger and more complex scenarios. So that's one area, one access, I guess I can say. Mm-hmm. In terms of expansion. and then we're doing more meeting platforms, and I think the two need centers.

They, they go into that sort of larger meeting room, category there, Tom. and then we're doing, more meeting platforms. We've have announced, support for Google Meet that's coming towards the end of, of this year. excited about that as well. and then we're also investing in. In new experiences.

and by that I mean, for instance in our app platform supporting, more third party applications, which I, I think that the primary use is then to use our devices for, for more than meetings. And we realize that we can't and won't be doing everything ourselves. We should do it together with partners, is a good example of that.


Tom Arbuthnot: And you recently added BYOD as well as a, as a supported option

Tormod Ree: Thank you. And that's the other, so it's sort of a platform, it's sort of an experience. yeah. But you know, that's a big market. there's a lot of demand for it, and it hasn't really been playing it properly that in that category earlier.

so again, that's a combination of, well, we've, we've done announcements with our existing. Products that all support BYOD. You can also now do the, the Bar Gen 1 and now Gen 2 and without the patent then sort of a cost effective, BYOD setup. And then we're doing some. Innovation on the software side to make that a, a better experience.

and yeah, customers vary. So some of them really prefer the sort of native experience and that's something that we definitely continue to invest in. And some others for various reasons, prefer the BYOD way of having meetings either for sort of the UX perspective, that's what their users are used to, or perhaps they have a bit more differentiated approach where they have.

Some BYOD rooms, typically the smaller ones and some, some larger dedicated rooms. So that's, yeah,

Tom Arbuthnot: that's what I see. I see a lot of, like, even in some of the biggest customers I talk to, you know, thousand plus MTRs, they still have a use case where a, a division or a region or budget or just, you know, it's huddle, whatever they, they're like, like actually BYOD's fine.

So being able to keep. Within their vendor support ecosystem. So you've still, in your case, you've still got Pulse and Management, same SLA, same gear, but it's a different use case. Or the other thing that's interesting is, yeah, customers that might have. Different platforms or want different options.

Google's interesting. I don't see tons of overlapping in the customers I talk to with Google, but yet you see what they're doing with Gemini Workspace and actually they've got some potential to do interesting things there.


Tormod Ree: Yeah, I agree on both. I, we, we see the same, I, I think BYOD is definitely. used more in like the doll market, space.

and then as you say, there are companies with certain regions, certain offices, but perhaps more often like certain types of spaces where they prefer BYOD. And often they've been struggling with properly supporting those rooms because they've lacked, management capabilities, often any management capabilities at at all.

They don't have insights into room, room utilization and sort of bring that in. With the rest, yeah, often, often get feedback that there's a, there's a lot of value there for sure.


Tom Arbuthnot: And talking of, software you recently announced, or made an announcement along with Microsoft and the the Microsoft devices ecosystem platform team.

Can you talk us through that? 'cause that's pretty hot news.


Tormod Ree: Yes, absolutely. I very excited to be, one of the, early, large OEM partners to announce, support for, MDEP as it's, often called, So, MDEP for us is a way to align more closely with, Microsoft. And that is an important initiative from, for Microsoft.

many of your sort of audience might already know that, but it spans broader than, than teams and, and teams, devices. It's, it sort of cuts into a lot of other, segments where Android is, is used as the, the operating system and sort of our space being. Being one of them. So for us, I think that this is sort of a, a testament to our close relationship and partnership with, with Microsoft that allows us to continue to align very closely, with them and with having sort of the, the app, the, the meeting platform, the app and the OS from the same vendor.

I think that also puts us in a, in a good position to make sure that we continue to deliver something with high quality and reliability and potentially also. Tighter integrations through the likes of, APIs between the OS level and the app level. So that's sort of, there's more visibility and, and, and, more opportunity to deliver something with even higher, higher quality and also line them aligned with Microsoft on, into their efforts on, on zero touch provisioning or easier onboarding of, of devices.

So we're super excited about that, and, look forward to, to delivering that, together with our, Microsoft. And

Tom Arbuthnot: how does that impact your kind of, your uniques and your roadmap and your capabilities? Because that's an interesting conversation in our industry at the moment is like, well, if you go m depth, does that, does that reduce your kind of capability to do your own unique smarts?


Tormod Ree: Yeah, very good question. I think initially, at least sort of me coming back and being new, new in the space, so that was one of my concerns, to be honest, because. There's quite a lot that's been done at the operating system level. by need to make sure that we deliver a need experience. It's not just the hardware and then the app on top of it.

There are, operating system like capabilities that are important. when it comes to things like, at least in the area, sort of that are related. So like outbox experience, being able to freely choose which platform you want to run. media innovation, multi the device architecture has been important for us.

It's quite different from what the other vendors are doing. So today, when you have a main device, one, two Neat centers, pad, maybe more in the future, and as that expands, those are. Capabilities that need some form of support at the OS level. Also, having the opportunity to continue to deliver and innovate with, with Pulse for management has been very important to us, which means that it can't really be doing MDEP, can't turn our devices into like plain vanilla bars.

Then we just, that will just commoditize them and there's really kind of nothing neat about them. anymore we're, we're about more than sort of the hardware and, and the industrial design and, and pretty looking devices. So, so it's important for us to also have an operating system that supports that.

And I was concerned about that initially, but as we progressed in our discussions with, Microsoft, we've, we've gotten to a point where we can combine the best of both worlds. We can deliver on, on and depth with the requirements that we have from Microsoft side, but we can continue. To deliver an, an experience that's uniquely in need and continue to innovate on top of that, I mean, we have that outcome.

I'm happy about it. I think Microsoft is happy about it and, it's, it's a good place to, yeah. Continue to be very closely aligned and yet continue to sort of have, have, have the room to innovate and do new things.


Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's great to hear because I mean, that's, that's obviously from, from a, if you're a neat customer perspective, you, you, you wanna only see new and better capabilities.

Like the, the, the strength and security of Microsoft obviously is a, is a benefit to some customers and, and, there's some standardization there and I'm sure we'll see. like Teams and MDEP, you know, as you say, they're different, different business units, different teams, but working closely together.

So there'll be some other benefits there, but for the OEMs and also I talked to lots of different OEMs, it's gonna be important to maintain that differentiation and, and smarts and be able to innovate on top of that platform.


Tormod Ree: Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's true for us. It's true for all the other OEMs.

It's more fun to be in this space if there's lots of competition, innovation. definitely. So I'm, I'm glad to see that that's, that's the outcome. We'll, we'll get outta this. Yeah.


Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, Tormod, thanks so much for the, the insight. It's really interesting to hear your perspective and some of the kind of thinking, not just on a per device level, but the actual philosophy going into some of the, the design and innovation.

maybe, I know you've got some other stuff in the works we can't talk about yet, but maybe we'll, we'll have you want to get in the future and we can dive into some new stuff then.


Tormod Ree: Yeah, I would love to. There's more to come.


Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Thanks so much. Appreciate you joining us.


Tormod Ree: Thank you.