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Hewlett Packard Enterprise is offering a service that will help enterprises create smart conference rooms utilizing technologies from Microsoft, Logitech, EventBoard and its own Aruba Networks wireless networking unit.
The company this week introduced Modern Workplace to help organizations create conference rooms that will include collaboration tools to make the meeting experience easier and increase the use of the meeting room, according to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) officials.
The HPE service will help businesses set up smart meeting rooms that use the latest generation of Microsoft’s Skype Room Systems, which is a center-of-room device providing a Skype for Business environment. In addition, the conference rooms will use room management capabilities and audio/video accessories from EventBoard and Logitech, and indoor navigation through Aruba’s Meridian technology.
According to HPE officials, the conference room will encompass both physical and virtual environments and offer such features as a cloud-based mobile reservation app, the ability to join Skype meetings with a single touch, analytics to give organizations greater visibility into how the conference rooms are being used, and automation to improve the utilization of the conference room and reduce employee frustration.
A key to driving adoption of video conferencing and unified communications (UC) technologies is making it easier for employees to use them and to show how they can make workers more productive.
HPE’s Enterprise Services’ Modern Workplace offering, which is slated to be available in November, “optimizes meeting space utilization through detection of actual usage while enhancing worker productivity,” Fred Love, UC manager at the company, said in a statement. HPE installed Microsoft’s Skype Room Systems in its own conference rooms “as a test bed for the Modern Workspace solution, and our experience shows 5 to 10 minutes of time savings per meeting locating and reserving a meeting room for ad-hoc collaboration. Meetings started 75 percent faster with local and remote users claiming a richer audio, video and content-sharing experience.”
The service helps organizations through the entire process, from planning and design to deployment, support and management of all Modern Workspace offerings, including Microsoft’s Office 365 or hosted Skype for Business. In addition, Skype Room Systems make meetings easier to set up and use by offering a touch-screen interface that joins meetings in seconds and connects to existing room monitors or projectors, HPE officials said.
The service also includes meeting tools employees can use, motion-based intelligence and analytics and high-definition video for an improved experience for in-room and remote employees.