Thread by @PolyCompany

🧵 #EC22 Breakout session

Video Conferencing Room Interoperability: What are the Paths Forward?

Moderator @JimBurton asks the audience how many people in the room wish their companies could figure this out.

A massive show of hands 🖐🏽

@JimBurton Jim described a company he spoke with recently who had different floors of their buildings set up for Zoom, Teams, etc. There has to be a better way

Jim Kelly - @GeekInAwe outlined different methodoligies for interop.

1) The dreaded corporate mandate (just pick one platform!)

2) BYOD - bring your own device. let people bring their laptops to the room and use whatever platform they need. Lots of challenges here

3) Shared PCs - sitting in meeting rooms with all the apps loaded. Privacy concerns big issue

4) Integration: build conference rooms with control systems with codecs capable of switching between platforms. Comes with higher cost and more IT overhead

5) Standards-based rooms: more complex for most users to navigate

6) Gateways to get you from one platform to another

7) WebRTC: Been around for a long time, but there is revitalization and excitement with vendors spending more time building solutions

8) Multi-app devices: This is the dream, where you walk into a conference room, launch a meeting and you barely even notice which platform you're on

Poly and Logi doing great work in this space.

@abhaysk - Webex/Cisco: Cisco started as multi-protocol networking company, so Interop is in their DNA. Recent survey from Cisco customers: 85% said they use more than one video platform. Interop is good for our customers, good for our industry.

@abhaysk: Interop is not only about the products....there is a critical service and support element involved to deliver the experience our customers deserve

@ShawnRolin - Zoom: WebRTC has been a promise for a long time, but has not always delivered the best experience. Zoom is working on enhancing its multi-stream capabilities.

Scott Wharton - Logi: Been working on interop for years and thinks the problem is getting worse as all these new device/ platform features and functionalities come to market

Logi developed Switch as a hardware solution to a software problem, but wishes it wasn't needed

Chris Moss - Poly: Poly can cover all the bases: BYOD approach to interop, supporting standards and bringing native experiences with nearly all platforms directly to the conference room devices

@GeekInAwe: Interop is changing rapidly...he geeks out over the release notes and is exciting about changes coming. Cisco and Google Meet working together is great example. If you go into a Cisco room, you can click a google meet button and connect to a call

@GeekInAwe: Poly Studio X30 - you can quickly switch between a Zoom Room experience and a Microsoft Teams Room experience, enabling a truly native experience when someone walks into a room

@jimBurton: what is it going to take to get to a one-touch, one-button experience to switch between platforms?

@ilyabu Microsoft Teams has one-touch button experience already in place for the user experience. (Only limitation is that they need to be scheduled meetings at this point)

SIP is the lowest common denominator and WebRTC is way ahead.

@ShawnRolin: We're very focused on personas: for your desktop, meeting room personas, shared and personal. Need to make experiences intuitive and predictable for users

Scott Wharton: The challenge here is more of a business issue than a technology issue. Industry needs to work together

Audience Comment: you vendors have created an arms race of rich features (ability to whiteboard as example) that are going to make it very difficult to move forward past beyond clunky app switching. Native experiences are critical for users be confident/comfortable with tools

Audience Comment: Is Interop just a pipedream because it's not in your best business interest to truly integrate? Been coming to #EC for years listening to this Interop convo. This isn't a technology problem

Audience Comment: vendor marketing is doing too good of a job playing up all the fancy features. Execs want to walk into a room and experience the fancy features they just paid for. Very difficult for IT to deliver if not a native experience