The Cisco Room Series is a video conferencing solution that wakes up when users walk into a meeting room where it is installed and provides theater-quality voice and video, as well as content sharing from personal devices. For small to medium rooms with 6-8 people, there's Cisco Room 55, and for larger rooms of 7-14 people there's Cisco Room Kit (camera and codec in one device) and Cisco Kit Plus (separate codec plus and quad camera). Any of these systems can be run in the cloud or on-premises.
N/A
Dolby Conference Phone (Dolby Voice)
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Dolby presents the Dolby Voice product line of consisting as software as well as conference phones and video conferencing equipment, able to produce an immersive, natural conferencing experience. It is available in various kits, such as the Dolby Voice Room kit, as well as Dolby Voice Pro (for boardrooms), and Dolby Voice Huddle.
Its a fantastic software and hardware. However from time to time as tech improves, these may require a facelift. Maybe a subscription based model could work better so that it can be used widely instead of purchasing it at a full price. It may not be easily customizable for smaller businesses. It is very useful for large scale organizations that are spread out and need live meetings with a better video support.
Implementing these units within our business reduced the number of support requests to our internal IT support desk. This was simply because these units are so simple to use. The user books a video conference meeting within Outlook and includes the meeting room they wish to hold the video conference in. Within five minutes, their meeting is recognized on the Dolby Conference Phone (Dolby Voice). Their meeting is also shown on the TV screen within the meeting room so that other people can see who will be using the room. On entering the room, the user simply touches the Join button next to their meeting on the Dolby Conference Phone (Dolby Voice), normally in the middle of the table, and within a few seconds, the meeting room has joined the video conference meeting.
Cisco Room kits, it's a video conferencing system, so it has the, compared to the old systems where you use a webcam in a conference room, we don't see the person, the participants in the room. So with the installation of this kind of devices, it has a speaker fracking. So you can see the person, it clearly captures the speaker, whoever. So let's say that are 15, 20, people are sitting in a room if someone is speaking among them. So this camera is actually focused that person, so we can see that person. And it just shifts from one person to other based on the speaker and the webcam. If you're going back in the old days, like a webcam, using a webcam, it just gives an overview of the room. If someone is speaking, you don't know who is speaking unless you know the voice. So this is much greater. And you have so many other features like digital signage, you can display signage on the, so there's a lot of other features out there. So those are cool features I would say.
Perhaps any downside I might see is not necessarily with this product, it's more interoperability with other products. And I think these are all roadmap items that are being addressed. For instance, when you're in a Cisco meeting, it's not as feature rich as it might be as if you joined from a computer. However, as I said, these seem to be roadmap items which are coming along soon. Things like integration with the text or chat rather in a meeting, and also whiteboard integration.
By the time we are up for an upgrade, this particular series of products might not even been in the market. The typical product cycle for such products in the market are about 5 years. More importantly, the codec supported by such devices may also change by the time we are up for an upgrade. Even so, getting this system to a level of functionality we require was a frustrating ordeal that I do not look forward to during the next cycle.
This rating is given because it is simple for us--a no-brainer to replace these units with a new Dolby video conferencing device. The fact that these units make the room neater and make it very easy for a user to onboard and use, just makes it a must-have item. The Linux version of these units is also easier to use with a little software patching required. For us, we can also use the Microsoft Teams gateway.
A lot of the features are really easy. You can just click connect and you're in. But using all of these other integrations and all these other features that are there, it's kind of the blind leading the blind as to how we use it. So it's probably the downside of it.
That this unit is so easy for users to use. To join a meeting is a simple one-touch join. If they have not added the meeting room to their invite, then entering the meeting ID into the unit via the touch screen on the flying saucer is very easy. The mute button is on the top of the unit and shows a red LED circle when on mute.
Cisco has always stood out for the excellent support and documentation on its products, this is one of the reasons why they are so well positioned. The means by which you can create a case and the response times are very good. I especially like the support through the Webex teams.
When we have asked the question to either BlueJeans or Dolby, we have been given the answer quickly. To be honest, the number of times that we have had to go to support on these units has been very low--maybe once a quarter.
We did not have any key issues during the implementation. The units are very easy to configure for BlueJeans. When you first turn on the unit, you select the video conferencing platform that you are using. The wizard will then request various information (e.g., IP address, network) and then look for software updates. Once completed, the unit can be installed in the meeting room. The unit will run off a PoE network lead, so one lead to the unit.
As a partner, I always used mainly Cisco products and offered them to my customers. I have personal experience with Avaya, Team and polycom but non of them provided me with the Premium feelings which Cisco does. Even the product quality and look of the product by itself gives you the premium experience. But I want to mention that Polycom has some features and easy setup which Cisco lacks sometimes. It is mainly 3rd party integration.
The biggest issue with others that we find is that no one has a simple one-touch method for users to join a video conference meeting. With most others, we found you either have to find your meeting or manually enter your meeting. With Dolby Conference Phone (Dolby Voice), you are straight into the room--one touch and in the meeting.
