Among the new innovations and devices Cisco unveiled at ISE 2023 is a new beta solution that will bring Microsoft Teams Rooms to Cisco Webex Devices, notching another step in the interoperability trend among collaboration technology providers.
The companies first announce the partnership in October, and the solution is now available in beta for enterprise customers and partners. The solution is expected to be certified and available for the Cisco Board Pro, Cisco Room Bar and Cisco Room Kit Pro in March.
According to Cisco, the innovation will deliver meeting experiences to Microsoft Teams customers and leverage Cisco’s experience in designing reliable and secure video collaboration systems.
First-of-its-kind interoperability
The interoperability is the first of its kind, Cisco says, as the company is the first vendor to offer devices with Microsoft Teams Rooms as the default experience with support to join Webex meetings with full feature and functionality without rebooting or reconfiguration by IT.
The interoperability solution is powered by the RoomOS and Microsoft Teams platform, allowing joint customers to run fully featured Microsoft Teams and Webex meetings natively on their Cisco devices while leveraging advanced device management and analytics in Control Hub.
Cisco collaboration devices to be certified for Microsoft Teams will include the Cisco Board Pro 55 and 75, Cisco Room Bar, Cisco Room Kit Pro, Cisco Room Kit EQ, Cisco Room Navigator, and Cisco Desk Pro, alongside remote work peripherals such as the Cisco Desk Camera 4K, the Cisco Headset 320 and the Headset 720.
Cisco Table Microphone Pro
In addition to the Microsoft Teams interoperability with Webex, Cisco at ISE announced a new Cisco Table Microphone Pro designed to create meeting equity and eliminate background noise. The device is multi-directional and harnesses intelligent audio capabilities to only capture in-room participants’ voices using four built-in microphone elements.
The Cisco Table Microphone Pro can is designed for a range of room sizes, from huddle rooms to large conference rooms and custom AV deployments.
In addition to AI-enhanced audio features designed to reduce distractions during meetings, the Cisco Table Microphone Pro is designed for simplicity, allowing IT professionals to easily deploy and monitor the microphone with plug-and-play functionality. IT pros can configure, customize and monitor the microphone in Control Hub for centralized cloud management alongside other Cisco collaboration devices.
The microphone is also protected with end-to-end encryption for enhanced security.
Enhanced audio interoperability
Cisco also announced that it is extending its video and device interoperability to enable IP-based integration with third party audio systems, with audio equipment manufacturer Shure becoming the first Cisco partner it is supporting. The partnership provides seamless with integration into Shure’s microphones, including Shure’s MXA930 Ceiling Array or MXA710 Linear Array.
This allows customers invested in the Shure Microflex Ecosystem to leverage easy manageability, pristine quality, and plug-and-play compatibility with Cisco video collaboration endpoints, says Brian Woodland, vice president of global business development at Shure.
“The new generation of IP-based audio interoperability between Cisco and Shure provides flexibility and seamless collaboration to future-proof video conferencing environments and provide end users with world-class audio experiences,” Woodland says.
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