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Case Study: Business Development Bank of Canada

AV Everywhere

BDC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, wanted its new Montreal headquarters to be a place for what it calls “social collisions” — areas that invite collaboration and knowledge sharing among team members. AVI-SPL’s design and integration work aligned with BDC’s desire to work in spaces that inspire collaboration and lead to improved innovation.

The new headquarters now has areas that promote entrepreneurship among its employees and offer its clients a space where they can interact with their representatives while collaborating over shared content. And those in the head office can quickly and easily connect with colleagues at other branches for video collaboration and content sharing.

Your company may have discovered that its current collaboration solutions aren’t delivering the expected user experience or needed outcomes. I encourage you to take a look at this case study and see what’s possible.

Read the BDC case study >

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InfoComm 2019: Take AVI-SPL’s Guided Tour of New Solutions

Audio distribution

Make the most of your time at InfoComm 2019 by taking AVI-SPL’s Guided Technology Tours of select partner booths, where we’ll highlight prominent digital workplace video and UCC solutions. Each of our five tours is curated by AVI-SPL and features the guidance of subject matter experts from our leading vendor partners as well as your AVI-SPL hosts.
 
We’ll begin the tours at AVI-SPL booth 3852 in the Orange County Convention Center. From there, we’ll spend about 15 minutes at each partner booth to learn about solutions that improve collaboration, engagement, productivity, and talent attraction/retention in your workplace. At the conclusion of each tour, we’ll raffle prizes at our booth. 
 
Register early to reserve your space. Registration will also be available prior to each tour at our booth. Tours include:

  • How to Optimize Your Huddle Rooms
  • Enterprise Video Production and Management
  • Connected Smart Spaces
  • Wow-factor displays and projection
  • AV over IP

Our tours will visit the booths for Barco, Biamp, Cisco, Crestron, Exterity, HARMAN, Legrand, LG, Mersive, MultiTaction, NEC Display, Onelan, Poly, Samsung, Shure, Sonic Foundry, and Sony. There will be plenty to learn from these vendor partners, and taking our guided tours is a great way to efficiently allocate your time while at the show.

Register for AVI-SPL’s Guided Technology Tours at InfoComm 2019 >

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The New Microsoft Surface Hub 2S Is Here!

AV Everywhere

The second generation of Microsoft’s Surface Hub is on its way, and you can get yours through AVI-SPL. For meetings of different sizes, the Surface Hub 2S is your pathway to turning any space into a teamwork space and bringing remote teams together. When the first Surface Hub arrived in 2016, it empowered groups of different sizes to collaborate through an interactive display that included their preferred collaboration tools. Colleagues could be in the same room or spread out around the world, and the Surface Hub brought them and their ideas together in one place.

In creating this updated version, Microsoft has listened to its customers and improved the Surface Hub’s physical design and its integration with software applications. The new Microsoft Whiteboard app gives you the ability to find people, and includes image stacks and intelligent ink. Everyone can take part in the brainstorming session, because you can share your whiteboard across Android, iOS, and Windows 10 platforms. And you can pick up from where your team left off. Other features and benefits include:

  • 50% faster graphic performance over the first Surface Hub
  • 40% lighter than the original version
  • More intuitive user interface
  • 50-inch collaborative canvas
  • Fluid team collaboration through Surface Hub Pen and touch
  • Enhanced 4K camera
  • Can be easily moved when paired with a Steelcase Roam™ Mobile Stand
  • Remote collaboration using Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business
  • Integrated with Windows 10 and Office 365

The Surface Hub 2S empowers you with mobile, cordless, uninterrupted teamwork. Any place can be a collaboration space. AVI-SPL is an official Microsoft partner, and we are your source for the new Surface Hub, which is scheduled to ship in June. For more information, and to reserve your Surface Hub 2S, visit AVI-SPL’s dedicated Surface Hub page. >

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Poly’s “Power of Many” Message for Businesses

Alexa for Business

Poly made noise in the AV and workplace collaboration industry this week as it became the new face of the combination of Plantronics and Polycom.

The company is supporting its first marketing campaign, “The Power of Many,” with some high-profile announcements that focus on product integration with technology from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Poly made these announcements while at Enterprise Connect in Orlando.

In the days that followed the rebranding as Poly, the company announced:

The Power of Many

Common to these products is their emphasis on bringing people together, which is the message of Poly’s “Power of Many” campaign. The “power of many” also describes the functions that are brought together in a solution. Systems that combine useful functions are what you might envision when you hear the term “unified communications” — the ability to review one’s calendar, join a meeting, and make video calls from one device.

Along with this versatility, the goal is simplicity, which is key to the user experience of solutions that combine multiple functions. You could say that’s the main appeal of a solution that includes Alexa, making it possible to manage meetings and room devices through voice.

Poly’s solution announcements this week indicate their focus on a positive user experience. Common to each of them:  These solutions integrate with systems that people are comfortable with and want to keep using in a way that isn’t needlessly complex. One phrase on the Poly website touts the ability to “concentrate on ideas in the air, not devices in the room.” When people use workplace collaboration solutions, they shouldn’t notice the technology to an extent that is disruptive. Rather, they should be able to give their attention to the collaboration that the technology is making possible.

As new solutions enable us to do more from more places, companies are wise to incorporate those solutions in the workplace to attract talented people who want to be able to collaborate in a variety of ways and do it on demand.

The solutions that are easiest to use will be the most attractive, as long as they have the capabilities that people expect. Those capabilities are with us in a variety of solution packages. The power of Poly’s message is in its focus on how its solutions make it easier for people to produce the products, ideas, services and innovations that keeps their businesses growing.

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