New Poly Room Solutions for Microsoft Teams Rooms

Most people don’t realize just how diverse Microsoft is as a company. From programming languages to office applications, operating systems and now cloud, they have many successes on their hands. There are some failures as well but that’s to be expected.

In the mobile market, the company screwed up because it made things so complicated and allowed users to do things in three to five different ways. Apparently, they needed to choose one simple way, like Apple, to be successful.

Apple’s mantra of not releasing something until it was ready won the day. We remember there was a time we carried a Microsoft device and an Apple device because we often had to cut-and-paste large amounts of text on the train and the iPhone couldn’t do it at first.

Apple waited until they were able to do cut-and-paste right, before releasing the feature.

Speaking of doing things in different ways and/or getting it right; In 2007, Microsoft launched Roundtable, a video conferencing camera designed to allow you to look forward at the conference room table – not at a wall-mounted television, often to the left or right.

Software assembled the people sitting around the table into a picture that made them seem like they were sitting side-by-side.

It was pure genius. It was far better than the cameras of the time and the cameras of today in-fact because behavior doesn’t need to change, to take advantage of great collaboration.

This was one of the times Microsoft came out with a better solution (in our opinion of course) that didn’t take hold. they spun off the product to Polycom two years later.

The two companies have had a close working relationship for many years.

Most recently, Poly launched a new series of Poly Room Solutions for Microsoft Teams Rooms – Poly G10-T, G40-T and G80-T. These solutions include audio and video tools that deliver superior meeting experiences for users on Microsoft Teams, and gives IT managers the ability to easily scale for meeting rooms of all sizes.

Poly Room Solution for Teams Rooms provides customizable room tools that enable seamless virtual collaboration experiences with little to no-touch control. They join the previously announced Poly Studio X family that will also offer native Teams video experiences.

 Tim Root, recent ITEXPO keynoter and vice president and general manager, room collaboration, Poly

“As more and more users recognize the value of video-based collaboration while working from anywhere, they will need to stay connected and productive with tools that integrate easily with cloud collaboration platforms like Teams,” said Tim Root, recent ITEXPO keynoter and vice president and general manager, room collaboration, Poly. “Poly Room Solutions for Microsoft Teams Rooms are designed to make meetings feel natural and effortless with the highest quality in audio and video, so all participants feel like a true part of the conversation. Poly partnered with Lenovo’s ThinkSmart team to deliver an enterprise-class compute appliance, built on Intel vPro technology, to provide a secure, reliable platform for our Poly Room Solution for Teams.”

“Lenovo is excited to join forces with Poly to deliver Poly Room Solution for Microsoft Teams, featuring ThinkSmart Edition Tiny,” said Joseph Mingori, general manager, Lenovo Smart Office Business. “This offering allows us to deliver a joint solution designed to meet our shared customers collaboration space needs.”

Joseph Mingori, general manager, Lenovo Smart Office Business

As many enterprise and SMB customers prepare to deploy their organization to Teams, Poly Room Solution for Teams Rooms offers the latest tools to deliver best-in-class audio and video experiences from automatic group framing to speaker tracking technologies, turning even passive meetings into powerful communication experiences. Poly Room Solution for Teams Rooms not only delivers the premium Poly audio and video for Teams, but also provides a clutter-free experience from start to finsh with simple installation and maintenance in any size room. The lack of messy cords means that not only is it simple to set-up and use but ensures that the focus remains on collaboration and output, not on tangled wires.

Ilya Bukshteyn, partner director for Microsoft Teams devices, Microsoft

“Customers look to Poly and Microsoft to deliver a seamless collaboration experience across collaboration, calling and meetings,” said  Ilya Bukshteyn, partner director for Microsoft Teams devices, Microsoft. “Poly brings our joint customers a broad portfolio of devices, all delivering a consistent Microsoft Teams user experience, and enabling those users to collaborate and communicate easily, quickly, and seamlessly wherever they are working.” 

Poly’s Room Solution for Teams Rooms comes in a variety of different configurations and can comfortably equip small to large rooms, depending on individual need:

  • G10-T, the base kit to get organizations started includes:
    • Poly GC8 controller
    • Lenovo ThinkSmart Edition Tiny
    • VESA/Wall Mount Kit
    • 10m fiber optic USB cable
  • G40-T, designed for small to medium-sized rooms:
    • Poly GC8 controller
    • Lenovo ThinkSmart Edition Tiny
    • VESA/Wall Mount Kit
    • 10-meter USB-Fiber cable
    • Poly Studio USB
  • G80-T, designed for medium to large-sized rooms:
    • Poly GC8 controller
    • Lenovo ThinkSmart Edition Tiny
    • VESA/Wall Mount Kit
    • 10-meter USB-Fiber cable (25-meter, 40-meter, option also available)
    • EagleEye Director II
    • Trio C60

These are exciting times for collaboration as the work-from-home experiment mandated by the Coronavirus quarantine has been mostly successful. As we return to offices, many of us will not. As a result, there will be more of a need than ever to have high-quality conversations, electronically. Many people will be in conference rooms and others in their homes.

These Poly solutions seem to have been timed perfectly.

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