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The buzziest of buzzy terms to come out of the post-pandemic age is “hybrid work.” It’s the new reality for many businesses and employees: during any given day of the week, some staffers will be remote, and some will be working in the office.
That growing mode of work has, however, created a demand for new collaboration solutions. Chief among them: BYOD. For the uninitiated, that’s “Bring Your Own Device,” also sometimes dubbed BYOM, or “Bring Your Own Meeting.” And that’s changing the way we look at collaboration spaces.
The traditional conference room—a table and chairs in a space with fixed unified communications solutions—still exists in this new reality, but the spaces in which hybrid workers collaborate are becoming increasingly diverse. From small niche spaces to huddle rooms to lounge areas and break rooms, connectivity and content-sharing have become a necessary feature for nearly every square foot of the modern office building. BYOD can bring the right content-sharing options to those spaces where dedicated conferencing solutions aren’t always feasible.
Additionally, there’s a new coexistence between BYOD and native room solutions. Traditionally, rooms were outfitted with one or the other, but usually not both. As each meeting has different needs, organizations are looking for a way to bring the benefits of each solution to their organization. Some rooms need to be native, while others function better as BYOD spaces. The key is being able to manage them all as a single solution. Solutions like Crestron’s AirMedia® technology are especially handy for retrofitting traditional offices for the modern hybrid workforce, and it’s an incredibly rapid way to bring third-party platforms (such as Microsoft Teams® software functionality) to those spaces.
Ubiquitous BYOD
One of those solutions comes in a single device, the AirMedia® Connect Adaptor, a dongle shaped like a fairly large puck with USB-C® connectivity at the end of a short cable. It’s a “plug-and-play” answer to the BYOD issue that works without downloading an app or any kind of software (and there’s now a version built specifically for the Microsoft Teams platform). It’s something that Crestron believes will soon be ubiquitous throughout the industry—a solution that offers instant interoperability for any BYOD collaboration.
Security’s always a concern, too, but there’s an elegant answer: The solutions Crestron is creating live on their own network.
Ultimately, though, having as many options as possible—while creating a consistent experience throughout an organization—is the goal, and a partnership such as the one between Crestron and Microsoft provides just that solution for a business that’s already standardized on the Microsoft Teams platform, according to Lauren Simmen, Crestron’s director of product marketing. “BYOD is one collaborative solution in an organization,” she said. “Microsoft Teams Rooms are another. Everything we’ve learned tells us that people want both.”
Check out the "Let's Talk BYOD with Microsoft" video below.