Poly Crestron and Avocor Conferencing Solutions Are Now Available With Zoom Rooms

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Poly and Crestron have offered industry-leading conferencing hardware for decades. Zoom offers the world’s most popular conferencing software, used in more than half of Fortune 50 companies. Now, Poly and Crestron are partnering with Zoom to offer the best of both. The Poly Studio X and the Crestron Flex already come with easy deployment, scalability and excellent call quality. They are now designed to work with Zoom out of the box, which makes them easier than ever to set up and operate. [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Why More Companies Are Transitioning to Zoom Rooms

Zoom has emerged as the world’s top video conferencing platform, especially among professional teams. In a crowded conferencing market, Zoom has stood out for several reasons, including:[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/2"][vc_column_text]

Ease of use

The fewer buttons needed to start a conference, the better. Professionals want to sit down and get the meeting going immediately. After all, the amount of time people are spending in meetings is increasing by 10 percent every year according to research published in The Wall Street Journal. Zoom ensures there is no wasted time, as professionals can start a scheduled meeting with a single button press. Everyone involved in the conference is brought into the call at once and presented on the display for instant starting. If additional people need to be joined in, they can do so from any device, without interrupting the conference.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/2"][vc_column_text]

Comprehensive feature set

Zoom is also designed with all of the features professionals have come to expect from their conferencing platform. In addition to one-button functionality, Zoom allows users to screen share from their own devices, annotate using a device or interactive whiteboard and record the meeting. Zoom Rooms also provide intuitive room scheduling, which is an emerging need for companies. The Wall Street Journal article also pointed out how much time professionals waste looking for unoccupied meeting rooms. For about 40 percent of professionals, 30 minutes a week is lost searching for a space. Room scheduling gains this time back because meeting rooms and times can be reserved as soon as the meeting is scheduled. Everyone involved in the meeting is notified immediately, and if there’s a display placed outside the meeting room, this screen can be used to display the current meeting and its expected runtime.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/2"][vc_column_text]

Scalability

Companies are integrating video conferencing at a rapid pace, and in many cases that means more than a room or two at a time. Zoom makes this easy to manage, as Zoom Rooms can be organized for a space of any size, from focus and huddle rooms, to large training spaces. Zoom is designed to work the same way in every room, with simple controls that ensure a consistent user experience from space to space. This allows for easier scaling up, as every conference room can be handled with the same approach.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/2"][vc_column_text]

Flexible hardware options

Zoom is strictly a conferencing software platform, so it is not locked into a particular hardware vendor. There’s no need, then, for businesses to transition to a new vendor, which can be costly and frustrating to deal with. It also allows for easier scalability, as businesses can utilize the hardware they already have.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]In fact, Zoom can be used with some of the most respected conferencing hardware brands in the world, including Poly and Crestron.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Introducing Poly, Crestron and Avocor ALZ Zoom Room Solutions

Poly, Crestron and Avocor already offer scalable solutions that are designed for ease of use, but the addition of Zoom makes them that much better. To be clear, these aren’t completely new hardware solutions designed for Zoom, but proven hardware solutions adapted for native use with Zoom. Here’s a closer look at each:[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

The Poly Studio X

The Poly Studio X is available in a pair of models, but both include the same equipment. The Poly Studio X30 is ideal for huddle rooms while the X50 is built for standard conference rooms (recommendation is up to 10 participants). The Poly Studio X is an all-in-one video bar that combines a camera, codec and audio. This video bar can be paired with an array of digital displays, so integrators can properly size and place any display for any room. The Studio X is designed for quick installation and easy use, so it can be utilized within minutes of unboxing. There’s no compromise on call quality or features, either, both of which are points of emphasis for Poly. The Studio X is built with a beamforming microphone array, so it captures and delivers top notch audio that fills the room. It’s also designed with Poly’s respected noise blocking and suppression technology, so it filters out background noise without sacrificing spoken audio. The onboard camera is built with a 5X optical zoom and comes with automatic framing capabilities, so whenever someone speaks, the camera finds and frames them instantly. The Poly Studio X also comes with robust content sharing options, including whiteboarding and screen sharing capabilities.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

The Crestron Flex

The Crestron Flex is Crestron’s scalable video conferencing solution, and it’s designed for rapid, scalable deployment. It comes with a tabletop control unit and a front-of-room video bar, with integrated audio. Like with the Studio X, the Flex uses beamforming technology to output pristine audio. It also comes with a camera capable of a 120-degree FOV and face tracking technology, so when someone speaks, the camera frames them. The Crestron Flex is especially flexible during setup and configuration. Through Crestron’s XiO Cloud, thousands of Flexes can be configured at once and deployed, before they even arrive at the office. Through the XiO Cloud interface, every Crestron Flex can be monitored and updated, so if there are any issues with a conferencing room, IT personnel will know about it immediately.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Avocor’s ALZ Solution

Avocor’s ALZ solution is another popular option for Zoom Rooms, combining one of Avocor’s excellent interactive displays, the Logitech Meetup and Zoom’s video conferencing software. The Avocor display is available in 65-inch, 75-inch and 86-inch diagonals, and it offers 4K resolution and InGlass technology for superior handwriting detection. The screen is also textured so that it feels like writing on paper, making handwritten annotation as precise as possible. The Avocor displays used in the ALZ solution are also loaded with an Intel i7 PC that’s preconfigured for Zoom, so it’s fast, responsive and reliable. The Logitech Meetup provides an all-in-one approach to video conferencing, as each Meetup combines front-facing audio, a 4K camera and microphone array for crisp audio capturing and delivery. Logitech’s advanced, proprietary camera optics also prevent the fisheye effect common to most other cameras, so there is no image warping.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Companies in a variety of industries are choosing Zoom as their primary conferencing platform. The only thing Zoom needed was a hardware provider that could create the perfect setup for its software. Now it has three, with Poly, Crestron and Avocor each offering Zoom Room solutions that businesses can integrate right away.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]