Barco
At this year's ISE, Barco's massive (250 square meter) booth included a mixture of display/video wall technology and collaboration solutions, including demos of Barco ClickShare, its wePresent product line (yes – both ClickShare and wePresent are Barco products), and the weConnect learning solution.
The company also highlighted Overture, an IT-friendly, centralized, software-based A/V monitoring and control solution that requires no programming -- only configuration via a web UI. Even advanced features like alerts and notifications can be enabled with only a few clicks. (For more information, please read our white paper, "Meeting Room Management for the Next-Gen Enterprise.")
Biamp
The takeaway from Biamp was a bit different. We met with the new CEO (70 days on the job as of our meeting), who appears focused on leveraging the company's strength in R&D, combined with its existing solid audio product line, to create complete solution sets aimed at customer needs. Interesting quote: "If double-sided sticky tape is what our customers need, Biamp will provide it."
His growth plans include both organic and inorganic paths. Expect to see increased focus on developing tight relationships with channel partners as well.
Bose
Bose Professional highlighted some of its recently introduced products including:
Bose also hosted a well-attended product demonstration day where new products were demonstrated and discussed in detail.
Cisco
Cisco's booth was jammed with attendees experiencing demos across a range of applications. On the endpoint front, we saw team collaboration workflow with a Spark Board 70, a Spark app with annotation. We also got to see in action the new Spark Room 70, a fully integrated single or dual screen 70'' system (based on a new codec platform) with fixed-lens cameras and automated digital speaker tracking (also worth noting, Cisco is a Best of Enterprise Connect finalist for this product).
On the infrastructure front, Cisco showed a Spark control hub, which enables monitoring and management of Spark deployments; a new project workplace portal; and servers supporting common collaboration activities, including integration with custom UIs like Apple TV. The end-to-end Spark story continues to evolve.
If we detected any overall change in the Spark tides at ISE, it might be a slight shift away from cloud-cloud-cloud to cloud-CPE-hybrid. Stay tuned.
