We’re in the midst of a seismic shift in collaboration. At Enterprise Connect Orlando 2017, these considerable changes were highlighted and their affects were analyzed. There’s now a significant migration to cloud-delivered services and accelerated adoption of UCaaS. This is accompanied by a growing demand for team collaboration apps with interactive meetings, a rise in new products for physical meeting spaces, and a steady stream of new APIs. After attending this event and digesting everything that was unveiled, IVCi’s executives offer their keen insights on the interplay of these major industry trends and their impact on the future of collaboration.
Enterprise ConnectTim Hennen, President of Sales and Engineering, IVCi
“We’ve seen a sharp rise in products aimed at improving physical meeting spaces. From huddle rooms to conference rooms and executive boardrooms, all the way to high impact immersive collaboration rooms leveraging technologies from partners such as Oblong, Prysm and Cyviz, there are a lot of creative solutions being developed for this space. Also, in response to the market’s growing demand for better team collaboration, we’ve witnessed a proliferation of new software platforms including: Cisco Spark, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Skype for Business, Zoom, and others. We plan to carefully study this shift and the impact it will have on the physical meeting spaces we are building for our customers.”
Mark Schwefringhaus, Vice President, IVCi
“There’s definitely a spike in cloud-service companies and a major movement towards collaboration as a single entity. This is where everything a worker needs to create and communicate is conveniently accessed from one place. That’s what Cisco Spark does and there are many others like it. These team collaboration apps offer mobility—the freedom to work anytime from any device. Also, there are now many new APIs to connect applications (such as Salesforce), so workers have the ability to quickly access every workstream they need from the same spot. However, as an organization builds and adopts a new workplace, the next challenge will be how to wean it off of email.”
Chris Böttger, Chief Technology Officer, IVCi
“There’s now a significant movement towards improving response times and service by leveraging smart Internet of Things (IoT) devices and unified communications (UC) systems. For example, in Healthcare, there is increasing demand towards using open APIs to build real-time, visual collaboration informed and enhanced by smart, connected devices directly into a provider’s app and website. The goals are to increase patient engagement, and therefore improve outcomes, by enabling a medical provider to instantly intervene and coach a patient back into adherence with their core plan. Using APIs to build visual collaboration into an app or website is a rising trend now seen across many industries where fast response times are vital to reducing costs and driving results.”
Best of Award for Spark Board 55
Improving the employee experience is the focus of many new developments in collaboration. Cisco accomplished this and earned top honors for its Spark Board 55, as a product and service that best advances enterprise communications and collaboration. (For more information on how Cisco revolutionized the workplace with the Spark Board, download IVCi's white paper.)
“Spark board is truly innovative, which is something I look for when judging,” said Robin Gareiss, president and founder, Nemertes Research. “There were many compelling entries this year, to be clear. What intrigues me about Spark Board is that it changes the way people meet, with two key enablers: the price point is affordable, and the product is intuitive so there will be a low learning curve. Also, the extensibility to multiple devices brings people into the meeting regardless of location. And finally, the ability to store and retrieve documents and drawings for the next call keeps efficiency high.
This blog was originally published on https://www.ivci.com and shared with AV Network by permission. Learn more about using collaboration to overcome business challenges and improve outcomes. VisitIVCi for more info.
