A large display designed for collaboration, the Surface hub is available in 84-inch and 55-inch designs. As a high-end digital whiteboard, it runs on a custom Windows 10 operating system, allowing teams to video conference, sketch, and chat together.
As collaboration hardware goes, it’s a thing of beauty. The gigantic screen surrounded by speakers adds serious class to a boardroom or conference. What’s more, since the display is a 100-point touchscreen, you could potentially have ten people drawing on it at the same time with all ten fingers. Though that’s not realistic in all honesty, it’s still impressive, with pens that write in multiple colours, the ability to move content and more.
The Rewards of the Surface Hub
As a collaboration device, the Surface Hub is certainly engaging to use. There’s something special about getting out of your seat to write on a board at the same time as someone else. Plus, since it’s a Windows 10 device, importing content is easy. Remote team members can join using Skype for Business, so they view the pictures on the screen.
The Surface Hub runs on a style of Windows 10 known as Windows 10 Team. It runs apps from the dedicated app store, including ones that allow for medical diagnosis, engineering, and architecture. Additionally, businesses can build their own apps for the Surface Hub, which need to be signed by Microsoft, though they don’t need to appear in the Windows store.
As with most things in Microsoft’s portfolio, the Surface Hub is part of the overall ecosystem. Skype for Business, OneNote, and Office 365 are all significant features, which means that you won’t get much done if you’ve gone the way of G Suite instead. In those circumstances, you’d be better served by the more affordable Google Jamboard.
Is it Worth the Money?
So, the Surface Hub is impressive – but is it worth the cash? The £21,000 price tag (for the 84-inch Surface Hub) is pretty significant, particularly when you consider that there are much cheaper options on the market. In 2016, Microsoft published research from Forrester suggesting that a potential return on investment for the Surface Hub could be measured at around 138%. However, that model might not be entirely accurate.
The Forrester model assumes a saving of around $25 on printing through meetings, as well as a time-saving of around 15-23 minutes for busy high-end executives who don’t want to manage video conferencing software. That estimate also comes with at least a 20% increase in customer sales too.
Microsoft claims that after about a one-hour meeting, an additional 20 minutes could be spent on tasks after that meeting that involves typing up the notes left on a whiteboard, or taking pictures and writing explanations to go alongside images. In other words, the Surface Hub would eliminate these problems.
Of course, more productive meetings aren’t the only benefits that could come from the Surface Hub. Microsoft claims that the Hub has been used all the way from lecture theatres to oil rigs, as a way of helping people to collaborate and share information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRLDRQePY1o
Approaching New Technology
At a lot of meetings, potential industry-changing ideas can sometimes be discussed, written down on huge pieces of paper, and then forgotten about instantly. Of course, generating new ideas isn’t the only problem for most businesses. Companies often face problems because they can’t capture those ideas properly, and act on them. This is something of an issue with corporate culture, where new ideas disrupt old patterns and lead to some friction.
Although technology can’t always solve every business issue, it can help to make things easier by generating a solution to share ideas in a format that’s easy to use and understand. Though the Surface Hub may never be a device for the mass-market, it might be a great option for some companies. Unfortunately, the chances are that most businesses will continue to make do with post-it notes and emails.
