Reviews


to make important decisions about office facilities and increase room and UC hardware ROI. Avocor will provide access to its Aquarius WSI software for 90 days standard for its W series displays. However, all AVW-6555’s purchased in 2020 will receive an entire year of Aquarius WSI at no charge. “Avocor and Microsoft share a goal of providing seamless, sophisticated technology to allow companies and their team members to achieve more, from wherever they are working,” said


Scott Hix, CEO, Avocor. “As Microsoft Teams is well-established and con- tinues rapid adoption, we’re seeing a market demand for collaboration technology that can support it. Being certified as a Teams device means that we’re enabling seamless commu- nication from a device standpoint, by developing simple and easy-to-set-up solutions that reduce time spent on troubleshooting. From a collaboration standpoint, Avocor is accelerating teamwork and bringing teams together to get more done in the Microsoft eco-


Brian Carskadon, Avocor’s Director of Products, introduces the company’s new range of Microsoft Teams Certified, Windows Collaboration Displays (WCD).


“The WCD range is not a single prod- uct. It’s really made up of three differ- ent entities that we had to go through. First, was the windows collaboration device itself, which started off as the lead programme and then morphed that into this latest specification.” “I’m sure you’re well aware of what it what it takes to get a product team certified. It’s more than just making sure that the audio or the video works. There’s a lot of the back end that that goes into this to make that, when it’s connected, that whole chain of Mi- crosoft Teams experience is set up and goes off really well. So the things that we’re doing within the Microsoft Teams environment is finally bringing that last the last mile of the of the product into play and then bringing that collaboration part that’s been missing.”


“The ability to now annotate and in- teract - the power of collaboration that I think is really there now. People are going up to the, to the display and properly interacting with it. I think, very quickly, people are going to walk up to a display that isn’t interactive, they’re going to be confused, because they’re going to just expect it. Other- wise, it’s going to be like having an iPhone that doesn’t have touch on it.”


Efficient starts


“What was apparent was that we needed to have a better way to start meetings. Microsoft did a study that


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said it took roughly about 14 minutes to start a meeting. We’ve got that down to about 15 seconds. A lot of this has to do with this type C connector which we are combining a DisplayPort cable, a USB cable, all of the USB controls. In all we’re bringing 65 watts of power from the display, back down the cable to the laptop, as well as wired Ether- net. So, somebody can walk in maybe somebody from outside the company, you can come in, plug in and instantly be up and on the network without hav- ing to worry about the password of the Wi Fi or any of that.”


“The other thing is the camera, the microphones and the loudspeakers. A lot of time and energy was put into making sure that they were well suited for the application. We wanted to have the best optics and the best field of view for this display and the applica- tions that we’re running. So, we’ve got a six-element lens with a 120-degree field of view, so people can sit close to it without looking distorted. It’s crisp and clear. The microphones are tuned with the speakers to make sure that the downstream audio the is always easy.” “The hard part is making sure that the downstream audio sounds good and that you’re not getting echo or feed- back. So, we spent a lot of time mak- ing sure that that the audio was tuned. That’s part of what goes into Teams Certification. Not only the audio and the video side, but that seamless com-


patibility with Microsoft Teams room, making sure that what works at the ta- ble also works on the display.”


Azure Certification


“Having the Azure certification is that is that badge of security. So, if you’re an IT manager, and you know that data is going to be coming from the room and out to the cloud, you want to make sure that it is secure. That’s what that Azure Certification gets us. The dis- play itself is a 4K display. We take the glass and we remove any gap between the LCD where the image is being dis- played. and the outside of that glass so that it’s as thin as possible so that you don’t get any parallax.” “The other thing that we built into this that has to do with Azure or the sensors. The types and the amount of sensors that are going to be in confer- ence rooms coming up with a lot of regularity now, and for us to be putting sensors in the display that now go out to Azure through the what we call the Aquarius, workspace intelligence. That data now gets converted into informa- tion that people can act on. For facil- ities people this is the first time that sensors will be utilised in a room, and I think they’re quickly going to start to understand why it makes sense. “The other thing that’s interesting in this is what we call ‘swap smart switching’. So the other thing that is always problematic in conference


system they already know and use.” Albert Kooiman, Director of Microsoft


Teams devices Partner Engineering and Certification, Microsoft Corp. said, “We are pleased that Avocor is empow- ering people and teams by making it easy to come together and collaborate. The Windows collaboration displays from Avocor, now certified for Micro- soft Teams, makes it easy for individu- als to connect their PC , and seamless- ly share Microsoft 365 and Teams on a room size display, so everyone in the room and online can work together.”


A deeper dive into the Avocor WCD


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