Meeting rooms, communication platforms, calendar coordination software, videoconferencing equipment – the function-rich, multi-vendor nature of today’s modern hybrid office is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, this apparent Frankenstein monster is an unlikely fusion of the world’s biggest and best enterprise communication brands capable of delivering stellar user experience. After all, for many, what’s not to like about the recent, surprise, and much-vaunted Microsoft/Cisco endpoint certification partnership announcement?
On the other hand, the complex intertwining of many infrastructures’ autonomous and interdependent components burden those tasked with managing them at scale with a new level of complexity that has the potential to undermine any resultant productivity gains.
Of course, whether hardware or software, most vendors’ offerings now come complete with some kind of self-management smarts that enable easy deployment, configuration, and data capture to help maximise efficiency. However, enterprise IT managers must go to several different places and master several different systems if they are to maintain a helicopter view of the whole.
Much better – and infinitely more efficient – is to bring all of that separate management functionality seamlessly together onto one single interface: every back-end nut and bolt of every multi-brand element of the stack right there in the same place.
Do that, and enterprises will be able to really ride the hybrid working wave; delivering the kind of at-scale premium user experience capable of enticing people back to a new kind of office fit for a new purpose.
“The ongoing move towards hybrid working means there is a huge requirement for a great meeting room experience in and out of the office – more and more brands are working together to create superior solutions, and that means an emerging need for a single place to manage, monitor, and optimize it all,” says Tim Jalland, Solution Manager at leading digital workplace management software provider VOSS Solutions, which offers a slick, single point of control for multiple vendor set-ups.
“News of Microsoft partnering with Cisco to approve and certify endpoint devices is a hugely interesting market development. Microsoft Teams is the dominant enterprise communication platform across the world and more and more meeting room vendors’ solutions are now Teams accredited.
Add to that the hybrid working tool set of deskphones, softphones, and videoconferencing endpoints such as cameras, screens, and microphones. It's a mix of vendors – managing everything via a single point of integration has to be best practice.”
