Enterprise meeting rooms are under fresh scrutiny as IT leaders assess whether collaboration spaces still justify their cost, complexity, and footprint. In this UC Today interview, we speak with Javed Khan, CEO of Neat, about why the next phase of meeting room innovation may depend less on adding more hardware and more on making the room itself intelligent.
Why Neat Is Betting On Distributed Room Intelligence
Khan, whose appointment as Neat CEO followed senior roles at Cisco and Aptiv, says one of the company’s biggest differentiators is its distributed intelligent architecture. Instead of depending on a central box to control the room, Neat designs cameras, microphones, and related devices as intelligent endpoints.
That approach, Khan tells UC Today, gives customers more flexibility to expand meeting rooms over time while preserving the simplicity that Neat has built its reputation around.
A central theme of the discussion is AI at the edge. Khan explains that more processing can now happen directly inside the room, rather than relying entirely on cloud services. For real-time collaboration, this matters because latency can quickly damage the experience for remote participants. It also supports privacy, especially when sensitive conversations, transcripts, or contextual insights do not need to leave the room.
Khan points to Neat Center and the intelligent layouts announced at Infocomm as examples of this direction. These capabilities use signals such as who is speaking, how people are reacting, and where attention is focused to create a more natural view for remote attendees. As Khan puts it, the aim is to ask how a Hollywood director might frame a meeting.
What Enterprise Buyers Should Watch Next
The interview also explores Neat’s value across Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet environments. Khan argues that Neat can add value below the platform layer through better audio, video, layouts, device management, and applications that support work before and after meetings.
For enterprise buyers, the bigger opportunity may be connecting room activity to wider business workflows. Khan discusses potential links to systems such as ServiceNow and Workday, as well as use cases including whiteboarding, transcription, translation, action items, and digital signage.
As Neat looks to grow, Khan says success means covering more of the enterprise estate while staying true to the simplicity customers expect. With Neat’s Thinking Rooms announcement also pointing toward distributed AI at the edge, the company is positioning the meeting room as a more active part of the enterprise technology stack, not just a place where calls happen.
