As the business world continues to embrace collaborative working practices, there has been a boom in the number of companies visiting the recently opened Steljes solutions briefing centre in Moorgate, London. The centre has welcomed over 800 visitors from a wide variety of sectors including architecture, engineering and construction, retail, charity, public sector, telecommunications, oil and gas, finance and services.
The centre consists of six themed areas designed specifically to show how SMART’s collaborative technology improves productivity and reduces costs. The most popular area is the SMART Room System for Microsoft Lync.
“The UK is ahead of the curve in its adoption of interactive technologies.” said Scott Brown, President Enterprise, SMART Technologies. “Together with our partner Steljes, we are uniquely positioned to accelerate the adoption of the SMART Room System in this key market for us.”
SMART worked directly with Microsoft to develop this turnkey solution for meeting rooms that simplifies the collaboration experience for both virtual and face-to-face participants. Available in six sizes, the comprehensive SMART Room System includes one or more SMART Board interactive displays, an ultra wide-angle, high definition camera offering 109-degree field of view, customised speakers and microphones along with an extra-large room control console with an 11.6” (29.5 cm) display. Each component has been specifically designed and manufactured by SMART for seamless integration ensuring a consistently rich meeting experience that enables productive, dynamic collaboration for all participants.
“Lync is at the centre of one of the biggest transformations in business communications. The workforce is more distributed, with more flexible working hours and getting things done increasingly relies on collaboration with people in multiple locations. Our partners are breaking down barriers and delivering complete conference room solutions that are easy to use and fully interoperable with Lync where content—whether a PowerPoint presentation, shared desktop/application, or interactive whiteboard—is just as available and relevant as video,” said Giovanni Mezgec, General Manager of Lync Product Marketing at Microsoft.
There is no doubt that Microsoft Lync has taken the corporate world by storm. Frost and Sullivan published its Communication and Collaboration Technology Trends to Watch in 2014 and Beyond citing Microsoft Lync as one of the main technologies that organisations should be considering with the advice that “organisations should either jump on the bandwagon or get run over”.
“We are entering the era of personalised working” comments Martin Large, CEO Steljes. “Our technologies enable people to work in a collaborative way with their colleagues from anywhere in the world as if they were in the same room together. The SMART Room System takes this one step further by bringing Microsoft Lync unified communications software into the meeting space to provide a seamless online collaboration experience through sharing of real-time video, voice and data. I believe that the SMART Room System is set to become the defacto technology for the meeting room.”