As the return to work following pandemic lockdowns gathers pace, new trends are emerging as people look to retain the benefits of homeworking alongside the collaboration and productivity enabled by traditional offices. The era of hybrid working is starting to crystallise into a blend of home, remote and traditional office-based activities, with workers and employers able to pick and choose the most suitable locations for their work and lifestyles. Enabling this to happen in an optimised way relies on providing tools that empower people with high-quality unified communications experiences regardless of their location.
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Laura Marx[/caption]
“There’s a real need to drive meeting equality so wherever people are they have the right tools to enable them to participate effectively and with the same high quality as people in meeting rooms,” said Laura Marx, the Vice President of Global Alliances and Product Marketing at Poly. “The story has changed in terms of what users’ needs are and also for IT departments which now need to manage and support a growing array of communications equipment. IT needs to manage people, devices and rooms everywhere and be able to access insights and have control over these to ensure meetings are successful.”
The alignment of communications devices with IT departments demonstrates that policies and processes are maturing. At the peak of the pandemic, best effort solutions were accepted and people procured what they could get delivered in order to keep working. Now, though, hybrid working is set to continue and people need higher quality, personal devices to fulfill their permanent needs to be able to communicate and collaborate whatever their location.
Attractive portfolios of equipment have been developed to meet this need, addressing mobility, home working, and traditional offices and taking account of the different demands of each and the need for equipment to move from one location to another. Poly Studio P series has pioneered the concept of providing a range of devices tailored to specific needs and situations and it has recently been awarded a Red Dot Award for the Studio P15 personal video bar. The company’s devices can be managed by the Poly Lens app and infrastructure which is enabling IT departments to track, monitor, and manage users’ experiences, thereby simplifying support and management of the device estate.
A further product, the Poly Studio E70, takes the capability to participate in smarter hybrid meetings further. The intelligent 4k camera has been designed to enhance video quality so everyone feels like they’re in the room together. The new-age camera underpins a brand new category for hybrid work in UC launched yesterday by Microsoft which aims to bolster meeting equality by focusing on meeting participants in large rooms so they are presented similarly to lone workers.
