“This is the most exciting time to be in this business, right her at Enterprise Connect 2017,” says Jens Meggers, Sr. Vice President and general manager for the Cloud Collaboration Technology Group at Cisco.
It was an especially exciting time for Cisco. At the EC keynote, Meggers unveiled the companies new meeting room solutions, Cisco Spark Room Kit and Cisco Spark Room Kit Plus. With multiple APIs, Spark Room Kit allows for companies to integrate Spark into business processes, and to integrate legacy business process into Spark. The key here is customizability.
The Room Kit includes camera, codec, speakers, and microphones integrated in a single device and is ideal for rooms that seat up to seven people. It’s a continuation of the Cisco telepresence portfolio that goes further than Cisco has ever gone before.
The key here is ease of use. Cisco Spark Room Kit can be integrated into a display, and meeting can be joined via a virtual AI-assistant. Simply tell Spark to join the meeting and it is automatically done. This AI voice can also do anything a consumer AI could do, all the way up to telling corny jokes if asked for one.
The digital cameras have 5K sensors with automatic speaker track and automatic framing when someone leaves the camera view. Facial recognition places nametags underneath speakers, so participants can always track who is speaking. Diagnostic mode shows that these sensors see – a red box shows how the image is framed while green boxes enclose the faces in the room.
These meeting occur in Spark Space, a cloud environment where meetings can be recorded and stored along with any content or data uploaded during the meeting. Pair Spark Space with a Spark Board and ultrasound is used to exchange the security token so all that data can be available on the Spark Board as well. If you don’t have one, you can join a Spark Space using laptops or mobile devices without having to download anything. In any case, content is mirrored in real time. If you draw on the Spark Board, the same images will appear on all mobile solutions or connected boards at the same time.
The Spark Space, Spark Board, and Spark Room Kit is used to create a continuous workflow between email, chat, calls, and meetings. “It’s the most powerful 3-in-1 device on the market,” says Meggers. “It is super easy to use. It is just awesome.”
Cisco also invested in desktop apps, one of the most underrated touch points in the industry according to Meggers. Meeting are held in Spark Space to be revisited in the desktop. You can schedule meetings with full calendar integration, join a meeting with one touch, and choose whether you want to join the meeting on your desktop or switch over to your Spark Board.
With complete end-to-end encryption designed at the base level of the infrastructure, every message is encrypted. Cisco also announced Spark key management on premises, so you can purchase your own security if need be.
In order to ensure customers stay satisfied, the newly announced Cisco Spark Care offers customer service supporting full message integration and voice products.
Finally, Cisco announced Cisco Spark in VR launching this summer. This solution lets users take any Spark Space into virtual reality. Remote users can throw on a headset and meet in a virtual meeting room, complete with a majestic mountain view out the window. A list of meeting participants hangs on the wall, while a virtual whiteboard can be thrown on the wall to interact with or pulled off the wall to save for later.
Most impressive of all, the virtual space can work in tandem with the physical world. So if a user draws on the whiteboard in the virtual space, it will be mirrored in real time on the connected physical Spark Board miles away as well as on mobile devices connected to the session, and vice versa.
With these solutions Cisco hopes to enable a newer, more simplistic style of collaboration for employees all over the world. Whether in reality or digitally.
More from Cisco’s Announcement:
Cisco Spark Room Kit Prominent Feature/Differentiator
Bringing More Intelligence to Small and Medium-Sized Rooms
The Cisco Spark Room Kit offers video innovation in a box, bringing more intelligence and usability to your small to medium team collaboration rooms. While others are still struggling to insert advanced features such as speaker tracking, wireless sharing, and 4K content into their high-end products, Cisco is already bringing these innovations to small and medium team rooms in a cost-effective and simple way. With the Room Kit, Cisco is helping customers experience smarter meetings, enable smarter presentations, and create smarter room and device integrations. These features were previously the domain of higher-end video conferencing rooms, but can now be brought to every room and every team. And when registered to Cisco Spark, additional cloud-based functionalities are enabled that enhance the user experience and team workflow as well as further simplifying deployment.
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Smart meetings: Powerful, integrated cameras deliver intelligent view capabilities, such as automatic framing and speaker tracking
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Smart presentations: Dual screens, dual content sources, wireless sharing, and 4K content make for great presentations
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Smart integrations: People count for usage metrics and resource allocation; tight integrations with screens for enhanced functionalities
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Registration flexibility: Built for both cloud and on-premises deployment, protecting your investment
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