How productive was your last Google Hangouts experience?
Today, Google is taking the next step in their journey to deliver more comprehensive Unified Communications and Collaboration experiences to the corporate environment. The Search Engine and technology giant just unveiled their innovative new conferencing system, which comes packed with all the latest technology you need to create a fully-immersive meeting room.
The system comes with speakers, a camera, and the software required to integrate with "Google Hangouts Meet", which is Google's latest video conferencing solution. Basically, it's an upgrade to the equipment that Google introduced back in 2014, but as you might expect, the era of digital transformation means that this new release is pretty impressive from a tech standpoint.
Introducing Your New Meeting Room
The new conference room equipment package is designed to make it easier for companies around the world to broadcast and conduct meetings in a range of settings. While it contains all the standard video conferencing tools you might expect, it also comes with a host of extras like a touch-screen tablet that automatically syncs up with your Google Calendar. That means that you can instantly set-up a follow-up call when you're still in the middle of your meeting.
The system costs about $2,000 initially, plus a further $250 annually for the subscription, and it seems to be Google's answer to some of the other meeting experiences that are being introduced by other major players around the world. After all, Cisco has their Spark lineup, Facebook has its Workplace software, Microsoft has Skype for Business, and now Google has a more fully-comprehensive experience with Hangouts Meet.
Upgrading Your Next Hangout
Up until now, companies have been able to access the Google Hangouts "Meet" strategy for conducting online video meetings without any need to invest in additional gear. Of course, you can continue to do that from this point onwards if you want to, too. However, Google believes that you can't really get the full experience with the standard camera and microphone on your laptop.
