This webinar presented by VSGi and Pexip features a brief overview of the Pexip cloud and on-premise video conferencing solution. Its enterprise-grade security and interoperability with both legacy video conferencing end points and new cloud platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Hangouts make Pexip one of the most versatile video conferencing solutions for distance learning.
Click here to contact your MEEC contract specialist at VSGi
Click here to request information about our higher education services
This webinar presented by VSGi and Poly shows how video, voice, and headset products from Poly that are native to multiple conferencing platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, and VSGi Teams (powered by Pexip) can support distance learning in the current environment and going forward. There is also an overview of several new government funding programs for the purchase of distance learning equipment.
VSGi provides both AV integration services and equipment to colleges and universities. We support video conferencing for internal collaboration, classroom AV solutions for on-site teaching, and distance learning platforms.
About Poly
- A global leader in video conferencing and collaboration equipment
- Formed from the merger of Polycom and Plantronics in 2018
- Currently has 6,500 employees and operates in 35 countries
- Known for outstanding audio and noise cancelling technology
- VSGi is a platinum level Poly partner
Poly Solutions
Video Conferencing
- Real Presence immersive telepresence conference room equipment offers the company’s highest quality video conferencing experience
- Group Series video conferencing systems offer a premium collaboration experience for large and medium conference rooms
- Poly Studio makes it easy to enable a high-quality video conferencing experience to any small meeting space or executive office
Personal Collaboration
- Business Phones Poly offers a diverse selection of desk phones, conference phones, Trios, portable speakerphones, and desk phones with mobile phone stations
- Headsets Poly’s sophisticated headset technology provides not only immersive stereo sound but also advanced noise-canceling for call center headsets, wireless stereo headphones, sport headphones, office headsets, mobile headsets, and more
Integrations and Management Solutions
- Poly supports several of the leading cloud conferencing and collaboration providers including Zoom and Microsoft Teams
- Poly device management solutions make it easier to manage your collaboration equipment when you have many conference rooms and employees – especially when they are located in multiple locations
VSGi [Music]
00:12 Rahsaan Wood: So can then everyone hear me? This is Rahsaan Wood with the VSGi everybody can hear me.
00:21 Patricia Collins: This is Pat Collins from MEEC.
00:23 Rahsaan Wood: This is Rahsaan Wood VSGi.
00:25 Patricia Collins: Hi Rahsaan let me start now by saying good afternoon to everyone and thank you for logging on this afternoon on behalf of MEEC. We hope your day it’s gone well so far. I’m Pat Collins your coordinator for MEEC. Members would you please join me as we welcome Visual Systems Group Incorporated and your presenter and host today is Rahsaan Wood Commercial Inside Sales Rep and special MEEC rep also presenting are Daniel Ferguson, Manoja Wimalkantha I hope I pronounced that correctly and Matt Dudek okay we also have Tamara Petronka on the line who is our executive director of MEEC and I’m going to turn it over to Tamara first thank you.
01:14 Tamara Petronka: Thank You, Pat, these are challenging times for everyone and any time we have a vendor who wants to share information with us we’re happy to share it all with you. Please note that on the MEEC website meec-edu.org there is a COVID-19 resource item where you can click and any vendor who shared information with us about things that are going on that will assist you during this dreadful, dreadful time it’s on the MEEC website so please reach out to that website and see what’s out there as always we post after doing a session we post the PowerPoint presentations, recordings whatever the vendor gives to us we post those under the event journal. So without further ado, I’m gonna turn it on to Rahsaan and it’s all yours, thank you.
02:05 Rahsaan Wood: Okay thank you so much, Tamara and Pat, so about that. So good afternoon everyone this is Rahsaan Wood I am the MEEC specialist at VSGi, thank you all so much for joining and for taking the time out of your busy schedule teaching and administrating to join us for the distance learning in a time of crisis the VSGi and Poly joint hosted webinar.
02:31 First I would just like to say, once again thank you all for your continued educating of our children in Maryland even through these unprecedented times. With everything happening so abruptly, many school systems are having to adapt to the reality of mass-scale distance learning implementation at an extremely fast rate. So with no exact end date and return date set the VSGi and Poly worked together to put this webinar together to inform all the MEEC members of the voice, video and headset distance learning solutions available to make your distance learning experience easier and better. Today with Poly we will discuss solutions that work natively with multiple conferencing platforms used across the state including zoom, Microsoft teams Google and many more.
03:22 As I stated, in the beginning, we will cover solutions that will assist you with distance learning but as well be adaptable once you return to normal business functions. So just a few quick notes about us have the VSGi there are customers on here that have worked with us in the past, but for those customers that do not know us we are a full-service start-to-finish audiovisual integrator we’ve been in business for over 30 years and we’ve worked with federal, state, local, healthcare, commercial and education customers implementing audio-visual and video conferencing solutions.
03:59 And just for your own awareness VSGi is a vendor on both the hardware and services portions of the MEEC contract across all regions of the state so just to kind of give you guys a heads-up on that and when I say start to finish VSGi from the very beginning of any project from the design phase to the implementation phase to the continued maintenance support phase we’re total start to finish shop so just to kind of give you guys a bit of background about us and just to kind of jump right into it.
04:27 We’ll kind of kick things off with the webinar was just a quick few housekeeping notes so just the kind of format of the webinar this afternoon we’re gonna start with a 30-minute presentation so that would be like I said joint hosted between Poly and VSGi, mostly Poly will be handling and discussing the solutions that are available and then after that 30-minute presentation we’ll do a 15 to 30-minute question and answer session at the conclusion of the presentation and I say15 to 30 minutes just depending on the amount of questions and the length of the answers, but about 30 minutes at the end of the presentation. Just so you guys are aware the presentation is being recorded so if you have any questions please hold them until the end of the presentation where you will be given the opportunity to ask presenters your questions.
05:13 However, if you need to ask a question during the webinar you can use the chat feature which can be found at the last icon at the top left corner of the screen any questions posted in the chat during the webinar will be presented to be answered in the order they are received during the Q&A session, we are requesting that no one attempts to discuss or answer these questions to eliminate any possible confusion and please note just to kind of assist here if there is any need to make a presentation larger on your screen if there’s some person talking or there’s something presented and it’s smaller you can just double click on that presenter’s box and that will enlarge it for you any questions comments meeting requests after this is all said and done can be addressed to our meec@vsgi.com alias.
06:02 So just to kind of continue on here go ahead and get us introduced to the team that will be presenting so starting with myself in the VSGi team myself and Manoja. I’m Rahsaan Wood once again the VSGi MEEC specialist. I am your direct point of contact for any new projects, questions, anything that you guys have questions about at all in this webinar you can reach out to me directly, my phone number is listed on there and as well my direct email address and as well as you see the meec@vsgi.com alias.
06:35 Feel free to contact us there as a team around ready to support if I’m unavailable Manoja will get it or somebody on the meec@vsgi team will get that, so we can definitely assist and as well Manoja Wimalkantha, she is the VSGi sales manager and she works with me supporting the MEEC customers you can contact her directly I left her her phone number on there and as well as her direct email address but as well feel free to send it directly to them meec@vsgi alias and we can definitely help you guys out there.
07:08 so before I turn it over to our friends at poly to allow them to introduce themselves just wanna first off thank Poly for graciously and immediately assisting VSGi, putting this webinar together but I just wanted to make a note about the name Poly some of you many of you are probably aware, but for those who are not Polycom and Plantronics recently merged into one large company taking the name Poly a fitting name for an organization with many voice and headset video solution options please note that Polycom and Plantronics continue to operate but are now under the one Poly umbrella, with that being said I’m going to turn it over to our team at Poly to introduce themselves
07:47 Matt Dudek: [inaudible] Maryland and DC gem in our world stands for governments, education and medical so if you have any questions during this or after please feel free to reach out
07:59 Dan Ferguson: Thanks Matt and my name’s Dan Ferguson I manage the experience centers here in the Americas so I’m actually located in Washington DC or Herndon Virginia so some of the personnel on the call I might have actually met you may have visited the experience center if you haven’t after this presentation, once everything goes back to normal, whatever the new normal is, please come out and see some of the devices that we’re talking about today in a first-hand experience.
08:25 Let’s get started so you know there’s been a lot of recent on this call about the situation we now find ourselves into it so what we’ll go through today some of the devices that we believe will enhance both the education the work from home as well as the in-office experience with regards to both voice, video and headsets.
08:44 Okay so if you’ve been on any video calls of late which we more than likely all have is we’ve just found out now that good isn’t just enough.
08:53 So we’ve got people who are joining our video conferences using maybe a smaller consumer grade camera, a different headset that’s not designed for UC etc., if there’s one thing that I’ve learned is that distractions are greater in the home environment as I said I work out of an experience center in Herndon Virginia and I’m used to the sounds that are in that environment it’s a fairly quiet, very acoustic, dampened sort of environment. Now that I’m in home the distractions are so much more.
09:19 So we’ve got homeschooling, we’ve got my wife downstairs talking on the phone etc. so some of those distractions are taking me away from what I do on a daily basis and when I think about the education environment I think about the students, how are they coping with what they’re doing on a daily basis.
09:36 As an adult in the work environment they say every time you were distracted and they say that everyone is distracted almost 100% of the times throughout the day it takes you 23 more minutes to get back to the concentration level that you had prior to being distracted so I feel sorry for the young students but also if you think about some of the consequences of that is that we’ve got students who aren’t paying attention whilst they physically may be on camera, virtually they may be off in another world doing concurrent activities whether it’s you know drawing whether they listen to their parents in the background whatever it might be and for adults, I certainly see it all the time on video, everyone’s got a second activity going on the background whether it’s instant message whether it’s an email or a text etc. so just understand that good enough isn’t enough and consumer-grade devices are no longer serving their purpose.
10:30 So what we’re going to go through today is two of the big ecosystems that Poly partners with so the first one in the top right-hand corner is Zoom, Zoom has taken the world by storm not only during the COVID situation but prior to that they were a real big player although they’re an emerging player within the UC market and we certainly saw that as Poly and with Poly’s relationship with Zoom you can see directly on the screen, there is the relationship we have is from end to end it’s one of the most diverse portfolios of solutions in the market so from the left-hand side, you’ll see our personal devices and personal devices are just that it’s for the individual only to use so you’ll see that we have speakerphones we also have headsets and that’s that relationship or that merger with Plantronics, where we now have headsets as well as our desktop phones we just come from that legacy Polycom environment.
11:23 Over to the right hand side you’ll see shared group devices and this is where two or more personnel moving into a huddle space a boardroom and it might even be a work from home or a classroom environment but it’s designed for more than two people and you can see that we have conference phones large cameras as well as some of our collaboration bars that we will talk about today.
11:44 And then below you can see some of our video Interop which is our legacy products that enable us to get into that Zoom environment but again zoom is one of the partners that we’ll talk about today.
11:57 Next slide we’re going to talk about Teams again you’re gonna see replication from both sides our devices are very agnostic in the sense that we’re able to use them in multiple ecosystems, so one of those relationships is with Microsoft it’s a 15-year relationship that we’ve had where research and development is conducted by both organizations and we design the hardware they divide they design the software so again looking at the slide we have personal devices as well as group devices as well as on the second level of that slide you’re starting to see different services management activities as well as video interop.
12:32 So from the two slides that I just showed you with Zoom and Teams if there are two slides you walk away with from today it’s just understanding that we have from end to end a headset all the way to our largest boardrooms we have the ability to work both in those environments from a native perspective and again from a management or an IT perspective if you have an issue with Zoom whether it be the software or the hardware you can call Zoom and you will get a response from them likewise with Poly from our hardware and software so there’s a lot of cross-pollination with regards to services and management of our devices as well as the software.
13:10 So again this work from home environment we’re seeing it all the time and currently, I’m using one of our small devices here which is a part of our virtual family it’s a speakerphone and I’ve just got it off to the right-hand side there you can see that we also have an office liner as well as a mobile lineup of headsets I think Plantronics or Poly, as we’re now called, has over you know 300 headsets and they’re all designed for different use cases we also have been certified by both Zoom and Microsoft so what does that mean that means, that you’re able to do voice controls or call controls from your headset or the inline controller so you can invoke the applications, volume up, volume down, mutes etc.
13:53 Some of the other features that we always talk about with our headsets as well as our virtual speakerphones is some of the acoustic innovations so think about distracting noises etc. we’re able to eradicate those and I’ll demonstrate that very, very shortly but again different headsets for different use cases and different wearing styles just understand that we have all the headsets covered with regards to both Zoom and Microsoft.
14:21 So the first demonstration I’ll take you through is using one of the virtual speaker phones so think about this, we’re on a video call now and we know like what I just spoke about there’s multiple people who would distract us, so they might be tapping away on their keyboard that should be a fairly distracting noise that will say to me as the organizer of this meeting hey can someone mute Dan Ferguson I can see that he’s tapping away on his keyboard etc. but without speakerphones, we have what’s known as noise block which is the ability to block out that non-human noise.
14:51 So think of this as I’m tapping away and I’m talking you’re able to hear me once I’ve stopped talking you’ll no longer be able to hear the tapping of that keyboard.
15:00 If I start to talk again you’ll be able to hear that, so that is the ability for our devices to identify non-human noises and that could be opening a bag of chips, tapping away on a keyboard, rustling paper etc. we’re actually able to eradicate that noise, that’s using one of our virtual speakerphones.
15:19 The next demonstrat-[sound cuts] just of changing devices.
15:30 So now I’m coming to you using my PC audio there should be a significant difference between the Calisto and what the PC audio now is. I’m actually going to inject some background noise and it’s generic office noise or you’re going to hear telephones ringing you you’re gonna hear people in my cubicle next to me starting to talk as well as fax machines photocopies etc. so you should be able to hear that quite clearly now I’ve raised my voice to yell over the top of that, give me a thumbs up if you find that distracting.
16:00 Thank you, Matt, I appreciate your input so now what I’ll do is I’ll keep that audio running in the background but I’m actually going to switch my audio responsibilities across to one of my headsets.
16:26 So now using that black Y 5220, you should no longer be able to hear that distracting noise in the background what I’ve gone from is the PC audio to the headset and you can still see that the audio is still running on the actual phone in the background so there’s no smoke or mirrors I haven’t paused the music or anything like that it is just me now using the headset which is designed by Poly.
16:48 So again there’s multiple noise cancellation capabilities we made in these headsets within the microphone there’s two microphones which are cancelling the background noise whilst enhancing my audio at the same time when I put on a headset there’s two types of noise cancellation for the wearer.
17:02 Active noise cancellation would be the eradication of the background noise so I don’t hear other students, other colleagues, other workers whatever it might be as well as the passive which is the air mask which is you know essentially captioning or creating a buffer around my ear so again incredible headsets all designed around when what how where and why depending on what the user is actually wanting to do.
17:26 Any questions on what I’ve quickly demonstrated with regards to the headset no right let me switch back now to the Calisto which is our speakerphone.
17:38 We can bring that presentation back up as well.
17:49 There we go so, think about the personal devices headsets, speakerphones etc. with that ability to enhance that in-home educational experience work from home but that also transfers back into the office as we’ve already talked about what could you talk about we’re just waiting for the actual PowerPoint presentation to come up.
18:08 So what we’re now going to move on to is some of our the video endpoints and the first one we’re going to talk about is a bring your own device experience first which is a USB studio the second one we’re going to talk about is an all-in-one device again with the ability for it to be both Teams as well as a Zoom native. How we going there Rahsaan?
18:29 Rahsaan Wood: Can you guys see it?
18:31 Matt Dudek: Not yet
18:37 Dan Ferguson: It happens to me all the time but thank you well done so we’re going to move into the Poly studio family so the top left hand side that’s what’s known as the Poly USB studio that is a bring your own device experience, that would be you walking into the room with your laptop and joining to that device.
18:54 The bottom two are the X series so, they are an all-in-one device with a camera, microphone, speaker as well as the operating system built into that device and I’m going to go through each one of those over the next couple of slides.
19:05 Here we go so they’re Poly USB studio video experience there it is in its own footprint it’s a very small device which would sit above or below your PC, below your monitor, you would walk into the room and you need to connect a USB as well as a HDMI cable.
19:23 The HDMI cable goes to your monitor which then replicates your image from your PC when you connect the USB it is taken over the audio and the video responsibilities from your PC so the device is an all-in-one USB bar essentially has built-in speakers, microphones, camera and your operating system comes from your PC so think about this is whatever ecosystem whatever soft client you have on your PC you are able to use with this device so I could walk in use Zoom, BlueJeans, Teams whatever it might be, again if it’s on your PC it’s able to be used. some of the great features that this will give you is noise block technology that was the demonstration I showed you with the tapping of the keyboards it’s able to eradicate that noise also in some of these open environments you’re able to eradicate where different noises come from in the sense that if I was on video today I wouldn’t want noise to be coming from my right-hand side where my door is so I would have set up an array which would give an arc of where noise is to come from and where noise is to be eradicated from.
20:27 so anyone outside arc would not be heard going through to the far end where you are now it’s a 4K camera five times digital zoom so it’s really designed for a small huddle space but again some of the other innovations we will show you is the camera tracking capabilities I won’t talk about it I’ll ask Lillian to actually demonstrate it very shortly.
20:47 so again we’ve already sort of spoken about the x-series there they are in their both footprints and that’s designed to give you an understanding of the size difference so here it is the Poly X studio and what you think directly to your front is the X series that’s designed for the smaller huddle space.
21:02 Think about what this is. It’s an Android operating system so similar to your phone we have an operating system that we’re allowed or capable to load third-party applications. the two alliances or the two partners that we are in lockstep and barrel with at the moment is both the Zoom and Teams so we’re able to load their applications we also have our own application being Poly OS which allows us to be open or agnostics of some of our other cloud providers so the ability and think of it as a Swiss Army knife you can join anything when in Poly OS mode.
21:38 Again the beauty of this device and I’ll show you shortly easy to deploy it takes three cables you position it above or below the monitor and again depending on which platform you wish to use you simply load that application it’s designed for the huddle space but the beauty of this is that it’s an all-in-one device what you see is what you get it doesn’t require any microphones in the ceiling any speakers any additional hardware or anything like that to this actual device because we had the camera we have the microphones we have the speakers, as well as the operating system and that bottom image down the bottom just, shows you some of the ins and outs for that actual device very, very simple I think of this as I could send this to anyone I could ask them to plug in three cables and it’s up and running as a video operating system or a VTC system straight away.
22:25 How would they then control that device well we have a number of ways that it can be done.
22:30 It can be used with a touch monitor it can also be used with a touch controller which is a 8-inch controller that would sit in the center of your table which enables you to go through and touch on the meetings and have in meeting controls as such.
22:46 So this is a build-out slide so if one taps that’s great so here’s what the customers said they wanted a device that was easy to use they wanted 4k quality they wanted to be able to share content multiple ways so think of this, I walk into this room and I want to share content I can use airplay being an Apple device I can use Miracast I can use the traditional HDMI cable or I can use a PC application so four different ways to be able to share so the flexibility is I don’t care what device you have you’re able to share content everyone’s got an idea and we’re able to share that idea through to the far end using video, dual and single monitor options, as well as touchscreen options, are another one with regards to how you’re going to control this.
23:27 Just one more tap and we’ll build this slide out slowly.
23:29 So we have the operating system we’ve already spoken about that being the Android 9 operating system the latest Android platform that we have from there one more tap on the mouse we’re able to load the ecosystems applications like I said it’s no different to your phone.
23:44 Applications go on to the operating system and it moves into the native modes of those ecosystems so, for example, your goal was to place a Team’s application on one of these devices the screens turned purple we’re in a native experience for Teams you have locked into that experience even Zoom looks like Zoom performs like Zoom you must adhere to Zooms rules with sharing content etc. but some of the other ecosystems that we’re starting to partner with you want to give it one more tap there thank you.
24:14 Here they are they’re gray because we’re not there yet but these are some of the other ecosystems LogMeIn, Amazon charm, WebEx, BlueJeans, the Skype for business the Microsoft environment so again if there’s anything I’ll take away from this is the versatility of this actual device but also the future-proofing.
24:30 You know at the moment your organization might be 100% teams but tomorrow an organization may change their direction and go with zoom or Amazon charm is released again it’s just that flexibility there’s no requirement to get rid of the actual hardware it is simply just a load of an application and again the flexibility of who we are working with in the future yes there’s some of the native experiences so when it’s in Poly OS mode it looks like the further screen on the left-hand side,
24:57 when it’s in zoom as well as teams you can see the different colors and a different sort of native experience again these are native experiences so we are locked down into the governance of Microsoft as well as Zoom as to how they want their system to operate Poly provides the hardware which is designed with regards to all the specifications and the features that the operating system requires we then just get the software and load that on there.
25:26 Again here’s some of the great features that we always talk about with this device and they design for different size rooms so the x30 is the smaller one yes you can see it’s for six participants so the limitation is the camera the microphones are incredible the Camrys of 4x so it’s great out to about 15 feet when we move into the DX 50 that’s designed for a small to medium size room as a larger huddle space out to about 10 people but again the pickup range of the microphones is incredible we will demonstrate that very shortly.
25:58 Fit different speakers for different models etc. but again it is the same workflow I invite this system to a meeting I walk in and I hit join and the rest is forgotten about allow the technology to do what it’s designed to do
26:12 So we’ve touched on the huddle spaces and not everyone has huddle spaces. We often have the large classrooms, large training rooms , board rooms etc. If you want that same native experience the same interface they same look touch and feel when I walk from a huddle space into another room the G-7500 is for you this is a larger example or a larger footprint that allows greater deployments so and what I mean by that it for integration so if you have that room that needs a more powerful camera like an Eagle Eye camera which has a 12x zoom versus a 5x zoom.
26:46 If you need ceiling microphones if you need speakers if you want tabletop microphones this would be the device that would be the next step up from the x-series so again this is the G-7500.
27:00 What I’ll quickly do now is show you some of these devices in real time so allow me just to quickly switch across my camera.
27:10 So here we go and again if you need to bring this screen up to uppermost simply just tap on it but what we’re looking at there is the three different modes so I’m on the left hand side you’re looking at Zoom in the center we have Teams and then we have Poly OS but again as you can see on top of the screens there’s just different devices so I have an X 30 and an X 50 so let’s have a look at the actual team’s experience first,
27:37 so you can see by the screen that I’ve simply invited this to a meeting it’s a X 30 sitting on top of the screen but I’m going to have this in a touch screen environment so I can walk into the room you can see that I’ve invited it to a Teams meeting it has the time and it also has the person that invited it I walk in and I simply just hit join that is all I need to do for this experience the TC8 or sorry the X 30 on top, the light turns green it will actually start to track me as I talk but whilst I’m in this call I have all these additional features which is adding additional participants from my contacts list I can turn the volume up volume down, turn camera on and mute etc. so that is the native Teams environment, sticky hands.
28:27 Then we’ve switched transition over to the actual Teams environment what I’ve done is I’ve set this up again you’re able to see the experience it’s an X 30 sitting on top of the monitor it is in Zoom now and it looks like Zoom you can see the meeting invites so I have a Zoom meeting as well as an additional one during the periods of times and we can see those but this experience is going to be a little bit different in the sense that I’m actually going to use the touch controller.
28:55 Again there is a touch controller in a Zoom native experience I walk into the room I can hit start and I’m into that call no longer do I need to go through understanding the dual-screen or anything like that so again that is the one-touch go capabilities of being able to walk in the room join the call with ease is there any questions on that really, really quick demonstration again hopefully it gives you the understanding that as a student as a teacher I walk into the room I’ve invited this system via email I walk in and I hit join the rest is taken over by the technology in the room so the camera is gonna start to track me and the audio is going to be incredible, but what I’ll do is I’ll quickly throw over to my colleague Lillian who’s in Austin Texas and she’ll give you a quick demonstration of some of those camera and audio innovations thanks, Lillian.
29:47 Lillian Trinh: Alright hello everyone as Dan said my name is Lillian and I am the experience coordinator for the Austin site so I’m coming to you live from my Austin home office and I’m just going to really quickly show you how the camera tracking works on this. 30:01 so basically let’s say that I was at a home office and I happen to have a whiteboard along my back wall if I were to back up and kind of start pointing at it because let’s say I’m a virtual educator and I need to show them something back here the camera is automatically gonna frame me as the active speaker and I don’t have any remotes or anything so I don’t need to touch anything and you know if I was kind of somebody who likes to get up walk and talk during my meetings.
30:24 If I were to go over to my right the cameras either going to gently to pan to me or it’ll do a hard cut depending on what it feels is the best production role for this particular situation if I were to just go back to my seat again and eventually it’ll reframe me back up my computer and I think one of the really great things about this particular camera is that the sound is just as good from the back of the room whether I was several feet to the back whether I was over in this corner or even if I’m sitting directly in front of the camera.
30:57 Dan Ferguson: Fantastic so some of the things I take away from that demonstration exactly what Lillian said is she hasn’t touched any remote control she hasn’t needed to control any cameras or anything like that she’s simply just moving around the room and allowing the camera to track her as she talks so there’s multiple different framings of framing technologies or settings that we can add for the camera so we consider with all tracking turned off at 120 degrees we can allow it to frame the amount of participants in the room or like Lillian just had it was tracking the speaker so the person that talks will have the attention all the camera flipped between the people that are talking so another great feature of our cameras you want to bring up the presentation are going there Rahsaan.
31:40 So what we’re going to move on is to voice collaboration so again we’ve gone from headsets to video now to voice and we see this as an integral part of our portfolio lineup as well as our relationship with some of these ecosystems so the latest product and this was released last week this is our conference phone this is our Poly Trio C60 the most powerful conference phone on the market so you can be within 20 feet of this device you will be heard and you can definitely hear the far end participants so the microphones and the speakers are absolutely incredible on this device,
32:14 again it is just a device that you can put in various modes so you can put it in a native Teams experience where it’s going to be the Teams application some of the other things that comes with this device is our noise cancellation capabilities so the noise block the tapping of the keyboards which has already been demonstrated the other things that we can do to enhance the experience with this device if needed is adding microphones expansion microphones so they are wired as well as wireless microphones that it can be positioned throughout the room to give you greater coverage and the other thing we always talk about with this device is the cable management so if you’ve got students or the educators the facilitators that often think that they’re IT experts and needs of disconnect cables etc. the cables can go nowhere they’re actually locked into the actual device itself so foolproof in that sense.
33:02 Again incredible audio pickup, incredibly easy to use as well as deploy in your conferences with a huge pickup so this will cover four hundred square feet.
33:11 In the zoom environment well with all their phones again we have HD voice we have the acoustic fence technology and the poly acoustic these were all built-in and a lot of these are patented by Poly themselves or Polycom so again trusting the phones trust that it can eradicate that background noise but also the acoustic clarity for accents people that talk a little bit quieter etc. or you can pair this with a headset to again enhance that personal use case for these phones.
33:39 Again in that same environment we have Zoom phones we have over 25 models that we can natively integrate into that Zoom environment again you can see some of the things down the bottom deep interoperability integration it works it can be trusted it’s certified by Zoom and Poly will also support from a hardware perspective but again one of the broadest portfolios of phones on the market.
34:03 Now we’re starting to get into the Teams environment so we’ve looked at the Zoom phones we’re now going into the Teams environment again you can see directly on the front of the screen there it’s the same application that you’ve seen on some of our conference phones and it’s a similar application that you would load onto your mobile device so here is the CCX 400 it’s a common area phone you can see on the actual device it has the team’s application so 5-inch screen this would be positioned in a common area so in a school it might be in the cafeteria it might be in the lobby you know in a sort of hotel environment again it would be in the receptionist desk etc. so common area phone where it’s really designed for someone to pick it up make a phone call and leave it at that.
34:47 The next phone it’s the CCX 500 and this is where we would say this is the common knowledge worker phone you would see this on most desks throughout an organization same sort of hardware or same sort of footprint but what we’ve added here is the ability for natural language processing.
35:04 So you’ll see the Teams button up in the top right-hand corner of the phone you would hold on to that you would then be able to give voice commands for the phone in order to call people etc. so for Lillian it would then go through the dialing process.
35:16 The other thing that we’ve integrated here is additional USB ports for headsets as well as Bluetooth so we can start to bring in our Bluetooth headsets to be incorporated with this device.
35:28 The last one here is the managerial phone so the CCX 600 we are moving out to this 7-inch screen but it also has the same amount of USBs as the 500 well now we have Wi-Fi built into this actual device so again if you’ve seen anything with design phones with design headsets we’ve designed some of our video collaboration bars and conferencing systems set for different use cases as well as well as persona, so hopefully as a part of this presentation you walk away with a great understanding that whether it’s Zoom whether it’s Teams Poly is the partner that you need to go to with regards to the hardware innovations whether it be headsets all the way through to the largest room we have you covered and with that I’ll throw it back over to Rahsaan for any sort of Q & As that we may have.
36:21 Oh sorry over to Shannon my apologies.
36:24 Shannon Schaeffer: so I work for Learn Design Apply we’re a grant consulting organization and also work with Matt at Poly in terms of working with customers to identifying funding sources and I’ll make this brief but I do want to let you know about several different opportunities that are out there right now to kind of address the current COVID-19 you know pandemic that the world is facing and how that applies to education.
36:51 So the Higher Education Cares Act, the cares Act was passed recently and they essentially if this is an emergency relief fund the amount of money that is available is astronomical, this is not a grant program per se but this is truly funding that is allocated for each higher ed institution.
37:17 We do have a list I don’t know if there’s an email group, I can follow up with you later we can send out some more information in terms of the details but so essentially each you know higher ed institution has been allocated X number of dollars through this cares act and 50% of those funds have to be spent for essentially emergency assistance to students the balance of that funding is available so that institutions can really ramp up their distance learning efforts so I think this has taught everybody you know that this is something that’s not going to be a one-time problem I think that higher ed is going to have to overcome and so how can we best address this so that you know we are prepared moving forward and if there are expenses that may be you know they’ve had to take on immediately this is kind of a way to help relieve some of those expenses,
38:12 but you know a lot of the things that can’t be covered are looking at the equipment that you need to outfit essentially rooms from both the professor’s perspective the student perspective and then if the student is learning from home you know what that looks like.
38:27 So that’s a great opportunity like I said it’s not a grant per se so much as the funding is there, there is a September 30th deadline and essentially what that deadline entails is institutions have until then to submit their 424 forms which is a federal form as well as certifications etc.
38:49 So that’s one you certainly you know is there and is available to be spent there’s no repayment on that one. The second opportunity that also came out of that cares Act recently is that apparently this is the, the department education they have earmarks 13.2 billion dollars just for k-12 schools again you know astronomical amounts of funding available and we’re not going to see this again you know this is something that is happening now the money is being allocated to assist organizations to get through this and then also you know what is this gonna look like on the other side and I think this is really important K through 12 as well because again this is funding that provides the opportunity to perhaps outfit the schools so that they have smart classrooms so I know in the district I’m in I have a high-schooler some of the teachers are actually going into the school into their classroom and teaching via video from their classroom you know using their boards etc. and then the students are tuning in and can participate in that lecture.
39:56 So you know what does that look like again it needs to be more I think sophisticated I think that a lot of organizations just haven’t had the opportunity to pull that together so you know again this is a great opportunity to not just get through the current month that we have until summer break but look at you know what is this going to look like down the road because this probably is not going to be the only time we’re going to face this crisis as a nation and third opportunity up on the slide is the FCC COVID-19 telehealth grant and this one is basically it’s first-come-first-serve and this is for health care institutions primarily also you know education but in terms of how are you directly impacting care for COVID-19 patients again not just now but moving forward.
40:49 This is first-come-first-serve no match or repayment and there’s a very brief application process for this one so this is one that you actually do have to apply for but again can apply for equipment and infrastructure needed to facilitate basically telemedicine.
41:07 The, our RUS/DLT opportunities so world’s utility services RUS and DLT is distance learning and telemedicine this is a federal grant that comes out every year.
41:20 This year because of the COVID-19 pandemic they have offered a second-round so this second round is going to be due July 13th which gives plenty of time for organizations to pull together an application you can request up to 1 million dollars and that’s for equipment only so this grant doesn’t include any provisions for staffing overhead etc. this is truly an opportunity to purchase equipment for your organization to either implement or you know enhance a current distance learning program.
41:55 So for that one there is a 15% match and again it’s up to a 1 million dollar request so I know that’s a lot of information thrown your way at one time but I do Matt and I have follow-up kind of summary documents if you are interested in receiving that, that has you know more details and also outlines for higher ed exactly how much is each institution is receiving in its first K-12 that’s by state so we can start that information as well.
42:23 Rahsaan Wood: Well thank you so much Shannon and everybody for presenting and so this is the time into the presentation now we’ll be taking any questions that you have so I think we’ll start with any questions that were posed in the chat window and then we’ll go on and take live questions so Manoja were there any questions posted in the chat window.
42:44 Manoja Wimalkantha: There were no questions posted on the chat window Rahsaan.
42:48 Rahsaan Wood: Okay, so yeah with that if you guys have any questions feel free to ask away.
42:55 Manoja Wimalkantha: If you do have a question please note that on the chat window to the left-hand side and I will unmute each person one at a time so there’s not a lot of people, Dave you are unmuted to ask your question.
43:06 Dave Stahl: So, first of all, thank you for organizing this fantastic information it’s a very timely information so the description of the webinar included Google Hangouts but there was not any mention at all of Google Hangouts okay can somebody at least mention something about how what you’ve presented today fits or touches on hangouts Google Hangouts.
43:32 Matt Dudek: Absolutely Dave, can you go back in the presentation and go back to the studio X 30 and the X 50
43:43 Rahsaan Wood: Sure
43:43 Matt Dudek: So one of the things you need to keep in mind Dave right now is in this, in this great fun world of marketing and everything that’s going on you know there’s a lot of different backends right you know you heard the word Zoom you heard the word Teams you hear of Cisco WebEx, Polycom has one Pexip has one Google Hangouts has one and you know when people think of meetings really all it is, is a back end it’s like telephony right if you’re gonna do a conference call you need to go to a PBX right, now and who else is on the call but one of the nice things about our devices is if we can get to it we can talk to it unless we’re blocked out, right so if you’re not using Polycom infrastructure and we’re playing by Zooms rules right if we call Zoom and someone says it doesn’t work well it doesn’t work in Zoom.
44:28 So when you look at Google Hangouts as long as we can get a sip URI from hangouts we can call it and I know this for a fact because I did some calls with what was it it was a Montgomery College in Maryland they threw out, we were doing these meetings every other Thursday and I have a studio X 30 and X 50 and a 7500 in my office and right now I’m on my 7500.
44:52 We have the ability to do what’s called calendaring right so the device if it was exchanged in your case it may be Google, it registers to an email account within either exchange or Google right so when the invite comes across it’s constantly scanning that mailbox and if it sees something in there that’s a sip URI or anything like that takes it, it puts it on the codec and there’s a join button.
45:15 So I set up a meeting sent I had someone I don’t have a video hangouts meeting myself but someone sent it to me I hit the join button and I joined if you don’t do it that way then you’re either gonna have to use like Dan mentioned and you’re going to have to manually dial it through a touch control or you’re gonna have to use a remote control because remember the key to the X 30 and the X 50 is, is we’re replacing the PC in the room.
45:37 The PC is in the box right so if you go out and you say hey and I’m gonna make a couple examples and I know you asked about Google right so when you do Google right use your laptop and you go in I think they had devices but I’m not sure if they kept those devices around but if it’s Zoom or Microsoft and you say hey I want to do a Zoom meeting and you want to go to Zoom room you have to go out and get a tablet you have to get an Intel NUC you have to get a speaker, a microphone and you have to go out and buy a camera, same thing with Zoom right but those devices only talk to Teams and Zoom this device here, can you go back one more slide to the build slide well that’s why when Dan showed this slide here if you look at the, one more if you look at the applications right you see different applications we can natively talk to them right we can turn our codec into a Teams room it’s basically you go in there’s a drop-down box you check it the thing reboots and it shows in that mode but we can leave it in Polycom mode and we can talk to pretty much anyone that’s out there right so you know one of the things I wrote on my whiteboard this is just to remind me right it’s like we’re all stuck in the now everyone is living in the now and I am too, right I got kids at home, kids came back from college universities are more and more likely to be able to do online learning because they have k-12 right now is I don’t wanna say a mess but struggling because you never had to teach online there’s different things that happen there right.
46:58 So when we’re looking into the ways that the Polycom offers and thinking about the now right everyone’s just trying to get through this but I know for a fact and some the folks I’m talking about they’re starting to say what are we gonna do in the fall when we go back if we go back right I know universities, no one said anything yet same with k-12 they’re kind of thinking about it.
47:19 That’s why I wrote this like how are we preparing when we come back because we’re already doing online learning so when you go back to class you know how are we going to incorporate this so the devices that we’ve talked about today not only you know headsets and pucks help now right you know I’m at home but some of these devices depending on how you’re teaching you know some people are going in to a room and teaching and they may want to use it but when you go back in the fall and whatnot these are the devices that think about say hey you know what these are small they’re inexpensive I could put these in now I can collaborate accordingly with anything that’s out there because like Dan said today you may be using hangouts I know not to pick on poor Zoom but there’s all kinds of things that are coming out now where they’re getting hit with security violations so people that are using Zoom right now may cancel that zoom contract and go to teams or something else, these devices will talk to any one of them so you don’t have to replace your device right so, Dave to answer your question yes it can talk to Google Hangouts it just has to be able to get the numbers to dial it.
48:21 Dan Ferguson: So thank you very quickly go up on the screen for me there is hopefully you’re now seeing the image of the Poly OS mode so you can see the invites up on the screen so from the left-hand side there’s a Teams meeting there’s a Zoom meeting there’s a Skype for business meeting
48:36 Rahsaan Wood: Sorry we take down the PowerPoint real quick so we can see it. There you go Dan.
48:44 Dan Ferguson: Yeah so there’s my screen in Poly OS mode so that the invites that are up on the screen that you seen from left to right is Teams, there’s Zoom meeting and there’s Skype for business meeting that could be the Google Hangouts etc.
48:54 So as I come into the room there’s the touch controller I come in and I simply just hit join and I’m actually dialing straight into that call without needing to do any other integration whatsoever so hopefully that answered your question with regards to their Google Hangouts from Matt as well as a really quick demonstration.
49:17 Dave Stahl: It does very much just oh well a quick follow-up. I don’t want to monopolize the time, can somebody address that little icon in the upper left that says Pexip.
49:31 Manoja Wimalkantha: Sure yes VSGi works with a company called Pexip to provide VSGi services and the underlining technology is Pexip.
49:47 Matt Dudek: So it’s another so Dave I can hit that one for you man. It goes right back into what I said about all the back ends that are out there right everybody is picking a back-end it is a back-end to connect to so there’s Pexip, Polycom for whatever reason we did not get something in the cloud but it’s just what they chose to do it and it’s an overlay on there that could very well say Zoom it could say Teams, it could be anything right and to address one more thing and you know I should wrap this up before, when thinking about what you’re connecting to I brought this up to the University of Pennsylvania when we do a conference call an audio conference call when was the last time someone said to you hey Dave let’s do an audio conference call you know what let’s do a Verizon call and you’re gonna say what or hey Dave let’s do an AT&T conference call or hey let’s do a sprint conference call so think about that for what we’re doing in the Polycom world.
50:41 I don’t care what you use I don’t care if you use do whatever you say hey we are going to set up a meeting or we’re gonna receive meeting from whatever is out there and we’re just gonna join it so no one has to say hey we’re doing a Zoom or we’re doing a Pexip we’re doing it cuz you know faculty members, your job is to teach I deal with doctors their job is to do medicine you know I deal with judges their job is to do, they don’t sit there and say oh we’re doing X they want to connect they want to do it and they want to be done with it so kind of overall scope into that it was timely that you brought up the Pexip I like that good eyes, good eyes.
51:18 [inaudible] we don’t care what your back-end is we just want to get you in and join just like we’re doing right now you know they’re using Pexip you know I’m joining with like group 7500 codec I had a joint button I came in my touch controls on my desk [inaudible] here is my touch control my 7500 I’m in the call there’s controls on it, I just came in and hit joint I didn’t do anything that was it.
51:45 Dave Stahl: Thank you, thank you much
51:48 Rahsaan Wood: this is Rahsaan Wood VSGi and MEEC specialist once again just to go over top of what I was saying yes so VSGi, this is our VSGi meeting services and it is powered through Pexip like Manoja was saying this is a solution that we actually have on the MEEC contract and it’s under Videxio as of right now but we’re working on getting that change but this is actually a solution that we currently offer to all our meet members this is just how we present and we’re able to do the live webinar this way so hopefully you guys enjoyed the experience so far.
52:24 So as well with your any other I’m sorry, go ahead Manoja.
52:28 Manoja Wimalkantha: Tamara didn’t have a comment I’m gonna unmute Tamara right now.
52:34 Tamara Petronka: Thank you I just wanted to make sure MEEC members were aware that we have contracts of course with Microsoft and with Google that was my comment period done.
52:49 Manoja Wimalkantha: The next question comes from David Flax, David you are unmuted.
52:57 Rahsaan Wood: It’s just so while we’re waiting for David I apologize I hope I didn’t step on your toes I just wanted to also mention real quick that Pexip is the only Google native platform so just to let you guys know that go ahead David my apologies.
53:11 David Flax: No that’s okay so with the X 30 and X 50 I know it can do Zoom mode I know it can do Teams mode and Poly OS mode and h.323 can I switch between them on the fly or do I need to reboot and reset.
53:28 Matt Dudek: Right now you need to reboot and reset. so if you’re in Teams mode it’s in Teams mode you’re doing Teams and then if someone says oh hey and the way it’s and yeah and it’s done on the administrative side and the reason for that and that kind of brings back the join button right the end-users should never have to know why should they have to go to a room and say oh I have to do a Zoom meeting why did I have to do this.
53:50 So you look at the flexibility Dave yeah it’s what needs to be there right what are you using if you want to set it up in that mode, by all means, set it up in that mode if you want to be generic and talk to everybody you wouldn’t set it up in that mode but you know there was discussion at one point time to have and I know someone else does this and I’m gonna be kind and I’m not gonna bring up the manufacturer that does this they want to talk about having a touchscreen with different icons of the different providers that are out there.
54:21 Zoom button this that and the other to do that then it you know to kind of do some things but in my mind, that’s a level of complexity because most people don’t think that far ahead how they don’t know they’re having a zoom meeting they don’t you’re not gonna walk in and say oh I’m doing a Teams meeting heck, I think most the people on here technology specialists within your organization half the time they can’t even turn on their laptop so we want to keep it as simple and easy as possible for people to join a meeting.
54:48 Manoja Wimalkantha: And we are right at the minute I think and there’s one last question Rahsaan I’m gonna direct this at you the last question is does VSGi help with selecting products that are the right fit for each person’s environment.
55:05 Rahsaan Wood: Absolutely so we’re a full-service audio-visual provide multiple partners Poly definitely one of our top partners, we will work with the customer to determine the best solution that fits their environment we have an engineering team again sales team myself Manoja and multiple others at VSGi that can definitely work with you guys to determine the best fit for your distance learning needs and as well your actual normal business function needs.
55:40 Okay so that’s the last question?
55:44 Manoja Wimalkantha: That is the last question.
55:46 Rahsaan Wood: Fantastic guys so again guys thank you so much for joining us just to put this back up there again these are everyone who presented this afternoon myself Manoja, Dan, Matt feel free to contact us directly if you have any questions about what was presented today or any additional things that we can help you out with we are absolutely here to help and thank you again so much for joining we look forward to hearing from you guys discussing projects in the future
56:21 Dan Ferguson: Thanks everybody great day.
56:23 Rahsaan Wood: Alright everybody have a good afternoon okay.
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