Solving the Collaboration Tools Interoperability Challenge with Webex Rooms

Expanding the capabilities of the Webex Room system

Conducting day-to-day business has become increasingly depend on the ability to constantly adapt, change, and foresee the challenges of the future. This is very clear in hybrid business environments with disperse workforce and distributed IT environments. For these organizations, the struggle is very real. How can you retain contact and keep the teams coherent and coordinated? How can you ensure equality and inclusion? How can you open the doors and build environments for talent to grow and flourish? At least a part of each answer to these questions is high quality video conferencing applications and services.

The problem of (too) many solutions to the same challenge

Although the necessity of rich visual communication has grown, the industry has been serving the needs of businesses worldwide with segmented islands of technology and connectivity. If established ITU-T and IETF protocols for rich media conferencing applications were the standard, many industry leaders have then chosen to set an unprecedented path of providing proprietary technology. One of the major entities to make the move towards proprietary technology was Microsoft, with the Microsoft Teams line of products. With Microsoft’s omnipresence in virtually every organization, the company’s decision influenced the industry in the broadest term to move away from interoperable standards. Today, virtually every vendor like Google, Zoom, BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, On24, Pexip, and Adobe provides siloed, island technologies with very limited ability to communicate with each other.

Interoperability: Yes, maybe, but up to a certain point and always complicated

The most prevalent question therefore to the state of technology is: How do we communicate with other entities, or even other divisions within our own business, if we use different virtual conferencing solutions? This is the most important question you have to answer when discussing meeting solutions of choice for your business. There are solutions that allow certain interoperability between the meeting solutions and their proprietary technology, but to a certain degree, and always at the expense of poorer capability and user experience. Moreover, all these interoperability solutions are complicated. They are technically challenging as well as hard to procure, have special licensing structures, and come with inherent uncertainties to their present and future functionality.

A better way to do the conference calls

At NIL we propose the solution to the described interoperability challenges and poor user experience.  Our proposal is coupled with the best portfolio of videoconferencing room endpoints – Webex Rooms – and is geared towards providing interoperability with any of the meeting solution technologies without any licensing.

The common denominator for all various meeting services and solutions is the meeting software provided for a standard operating system, such as Windows or Linux running on a computer or laptop.

Using a computer or laptop, it is always very straightforward and easy to join into Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, BlueJeans, On24, etc., usually by just clicking a link in an invite email.

What if we could pair the capabilities of the cameras, screens, microphones, and sound systems of our Webex Room-enabled videoconferencing install-base landscape with the ease and flexibility of joining a meeting with a laptop?

The answer to the above question is simple – yes, we can.

We have a solution where irrespective of the meeting platform or solution a business is invited to or plans to use for a meeting, a Webex Room endpoint coupled with a laptop can be extremely easily used to conduct the meeting, but at the same time allows a superior experience of the quality of image and sound inherent to the room endpoint system.

How does our Webex Room-based solution work?

An audiovisual integration between the Webex Room system endpoint and a laptop computer allows us to present the microphones, cameras, screens, and speakers of the Webex Room system endpoint to the computer operating system as the computer device’s own peripheral hardware – one that can be chosen in the meeting application software for use within the meeting solution of choice.

An easy-to-use button on the Webex Room Navigator touch panel interface makes a one button configuration for the Webex Room system endpoint to work with the in-room laptop. Due to the automation and intuitive approach, all that the meeting participants need to worry about is the topic of their next meeting and not the technical details of setting it up. Furthermore, IT departments need not worry any more about whether they can accommodate meetings for an ever-expanding landscape of meeting solution providers whilst utilizing their high-quality room endpoints.

Want to know more?

If you would like to learn more about the Webex Room system solution, visit the solution website.

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