Smart Room System for Skype for Business
If you think an interactive whiteboard with native video conferencing that brings the Skype for Business experience to conference rooms sounds familiar... it probably means you read too much of my stuff. It might also mean you remember how Smart and a few others first announced these things way back in 2013. Back then they were based on the Lync Room System reference spec, which later got some minor tweaks to become the Skype Room System (SRS) reference spec, which recently got some major tweaks that turned it into a very different kind of animal.
I'm not going to detail all the ways Skype Room System version 2 differs from what I've seen brilliantly described as "Classic Skype Room System." But the salient point for this blog is while Classic SRS has native whiteboarding, SRS v2 doesn't. And the salient point for this profile in particular is Smart Room System is still based on Classic SRS, delivering an all-in-one whiteboarding/videoconferencing experience that the new-fangled SRS solutions don't.
With that preamble out of the way, let's take a closer look at Smart Technologies' device. It comes in three models, each of which have dual-screen configurations as an option -- so lots of options depending on the size of your conference room. Smart Room System updates to be released this month include support for the most recent Skype for Business client, Skype Meeting Broadcast, and video-based screen sharing.
It supports only two touchpoints thanks to some weirdness in the Microsoft reference spec. But there's nothing in the hardware preventing more, and I'm told up to 16 are supported when the device is in "interactive sharing" mode. Interactive sharing, incidentally, is a really interesting feature. It lets users mark up most any business application displayed on the monitor, then save it in the same format as the app it came from... not just as an image file.
Finally, Smart offers a number of professional and managed services around Smart Room System: usage reporting ($1,079/year), proactive monitoring ($1,199/year), and network readiness ($3,799/site).
