Commercial Integrator February 2022 - 30

BUSINESS BYOD
BYOD SYSTEMS Are
Wildly Popular Right Now
The pandemic, remote work and the proliferation of videoconferencing platforms
has accelerated the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) meeting room trend.
By Zachary Comeau
Currently, interoperability between some
major platforms is splintered, but the
industry will get to a point at which there
is more interoperability between different
platforms and devices.
it hard to connect with others who prefer a
different platform.
" Microsoft and Zoom are definitely
THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has accelerated
many collaboration trends and put
technologies like unified communications
and videoconferencing near the top of the
list of enterprise IT investments.
Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet,
Cisco Webex and other platforms have
become wildly popular parts of the new
normal, with each reporting a massive uptick
in users since the onset of the pandemic
and the movement toward remote work.
Each of those platforms has innovated
and added new features designed to pull
in new customers in what has become a
very competitive space. Now, a new category
of meeting-room technology offers
a solution to having to choose between
Zoom Rooms, Microsoft Teams Rooms
and other in-room videoconferencing and
30
collaboration systems: I'm referring to
bring-your-own device (BYOD) and bringyour-own
meeting (BYOM).
These systems essentially allow users
to use their preferred videoconferencing
platform with the room's product-agnostic
hardware.
Platform Agnostic
Some collaboration experts say this technology
is here to stay, as it allows users still
concerned with sharing in-room devices
and social distancing to use their own
personal devices to run a meeting.
According to Brian Rhatigan, director of
business development at Almo Pro AV -
soon to be Exertis Almo Pro AV - in-room
meeting systems like Teams Rooms or
Zoom Rooms can be restrictive. They make
Commercial Integrator FEBRUARY 2022
leading, as far as, you know, the number of
users, " Rhatigan says. " But then there's a
long tail of people using other systems like
Google Meet or Webex. "
According to Rhatigan, it comes down
to user familiarity. A huge portion of
employees worked out of their homes.
Thus, they got used to operating different
platforms right on their laptop or other
device. Making the transition back to the
office will be a lot easier if they can simply
plug in their laptop to the meeting-room
system and fire up a conference call on
their chosen platform.
" You connect to the system, you're using
your own interface that you're already
comfortable with and you don't have to
learn how to use the room technology, "
Rhatigan says. " To me, that's one of the
biggest pros. "
Another benefit is the ability to share
content and files. Sharing a spreadsheet,
PowerPoint presentation or other content
will be easier since those files are already
on the user's device. There are plenty of
cloud systems that allow for easy sharing
of content, but this makes it just a bit easier.
BYOD systems also help cut down on the
time expended to start a meeting. Today's
users are adept at quickly starting meetings
from their laptop. Thus, with BYOD, setting
up a meeting should take no time at all.
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Commercial Integrator February 2022

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