Providing solutions for small meeting rooms and huddle spaces, medium to large conference rooms and boardroom suites, Yealink has continued to grow their video based offerings and now finds itself a key component of VideoCentric’s video endpoint portfolio, with features and functionalities that make their products stand out from the rest.

Their leading Video Conferencing solution, the VC800, is a SIP/H.323 system, designed for the medium to large meeting space. So, what does it provide?

VC800: Features in Brief

This updated and feature rich Yealink system provides a robust feature set and brings to the table many of the features that you’d expect only to find in a much more expensive room system.

• 24 site embedded MCU – the biggest embedded MCU in the industry
• Ability to divide the MCU into 2 VMR’s
• Multi-camera solution for up to 9 cameras to work at the same time
• 5″ Touchscreen control on the CP960 phone
• Audio – 360 degree omnidirectional voice pickup of 6 metres per unit
• Full HD camera 60fps and 12 x optical zoom
• Annotation features for integration with an interactive whiteboard or display
• Wireless data sharing capable

The compact design combines camera and codec together, and supports standards-based 3rd party Video systems, meaning remote collaboration and video based communication between teams, suppliers and clients is possible – without gateways or subscriptions.

What Comes with the System?

The Yealink VC800 comes supplied with the VC800 codec and integrated camera, wireless microphone expansion units, a remote control, a cable hub and the CP960 video conferencing “phone”  – the touch screen device for controlling the conference.  It also enables sharing via HDMI, although wireless sharing can simply be added with the wireless WPP20 wireless presentation transmitter.

• VC800 Codec (with integrated camera）
• Video Conference Phone CP960
• CP Wireless Expansion Mic CPW90 (2 units) or CP Wired Expansion Mic CPE90 (2 units)
• Remote Control VCR11
• Cable Hub VCH50
• Cable Bundle

The Yealink CP960: Tell me more…

The Yealink CP960 is an enterprise-grade conference phone for mid-and-large-sized meeting rooms, and comes supplied with the VC800 Video Conferencing system through VideoCentric. The CP960 harnesses advanced acoustic technologies to provide excellent audio performance and balanced quality.

• 5-inch color touch screen, modern metallic sliver-grey look
• 20-foot 360-degree dead-zone-free voice pickup
• Support a pair of the Yealink CPW90 Wireless Microphone to extend coverage to 60ft
• Noise Proof reduces constant background noise from sources such as typing, air conditioners
• When a person is not speaking, Noise Proof automatically mutes the microphone(s) until the sound of a human voice is detected.

An Embedded MCU

An embedded MCU is rare these days, since most VMR offerings (and general intelligence in hardware) has moved away, into the cloud. However there are definitely still needs for it, and many customers are still wanting the capabilities of an embedded MCU.

The Powerful built-in MCU means the Yealink VC800 supports up to 24-site HD Video Conferencing capacity, which can be divided into 2 Virtual Meeting Rooms for expanding the capability of one system to multiple teams, simultaneously.

The VC800 Camera

The VC800 includes a camera with an impressive 12 x optical zoom, providing 1080p at 60 fps. It’s PTZ is wide, with a 30 degree angle and 100 degree rotation, providing high flexibility for unusual shaped or large meeting spaces.

The multi-camera solution enables up to 9 cameras to work at the same time. You can control each separately, put all cameras into one picture, or set certain pictures larger, or as full screen. Plus there’s no need for an extra video matrix – the deployment is simple with PoE.

An Impressive Audio Experience

Using Harman Kardon speaker technology, the Yealink VC800 provides much higher end audio than would be expected of a system of it’s type, and price. Combined with the CP960 audio device, you get high end audio quality at both ends of the conference and an immersive audio, and video, solution.

• Audio codecs:
  • Opus, 8~48kHz sampling rate
  • 14kHz bandwidth with G.722.1C
  • 7kHz bandwidth with G.722.1
  • 3.4kHz bandwidth with G.711 (PCMA/PCMU)
• Audio technology:
  • Acoustic echo cancellation
  • Automatic gain control
  • Yealink Noise Proof Technology
  • CNG, PLC, AJB, De-Rerb

What Next?

The Yealink VC800 is a H.323 and SIP system, though Yealink themselves have Microsoft Teams and Zoom enabled devices too, with similar features and quality to the standards-based VC800. There’s systems designed for smaller meeting spaces too, and devices with touch panels (such as the MVC Series) rather than the CP960, if it works better for your meeting room setup.

We’re an accredited supplier of Yealink, and the UK’s expert integrator of Yealink Video based solutions. Come and take a look at the system in action and side-by-side with other systems designed for the meeting room, to decide for yourself what you like, what you don’t like, and what would work best for you. Get in touch to arrange a Yealink meeting, demonstration or trial of the Yealink Video systems today.

Although we’ve seen quite a number of video bars brought to market over the past few years, such as the Logitech Meet Up and Rally, they’ve generally not had the quality we personally like to see for video communications for business, when compared like-for-like against other professional meeting room and huddle space solutions available. However, seeing the new Poly Studio X released, we’ve been excited – knowing that it doesn’t just bring together the experience of Poly (Polycom + Plantronics) in video and audio with their innovative and high quality technologies, but is also able to run Zoom Rooms natively – it’s going to be a fantastic addition to our Zoom Rooms solutions portfolio.

The Poly Studio X for Zoom: At a glance

The Poly Studio X Series runs Zoom Rooms natively without the need for a PC or a Mac, providing a full Zoom experience in the meeting room. Simple to deploy and manage, the X30 is designed for rooms of up to 4 participants, with the X50 for up to 8.

The Poly Studio X30 has been designed for small offices or huddle rooms, and supports 4K Ultra HD video and built-in wireless content sharing capabilities, in an all-in-one compact design. The wireless sharing means we can eliminate wires from your Zoom Room spaces, with much higher quality audio than from previously used Zoom Room video bars.

The Studio X50 is the larger of the two X Series solutions for Zoom Rooms, and is designed for users to experience full boardroom-quality and advanced camera capabilities, including 4K UHD and 5x zoom. The Studio X50 also supports dual screens, so your Zoom Rooms with Poly can be deployed in rooms of all sizes.

Improving the Audio of your Zoom Room

Many customers come to us as they are experiencing poor audio quality from their current room setup. Running audio from a laptop just isn’t suitable when you’re involved in an important meeting, or you’re trying to huddle 4 people around a desktop designed speaker phone to be heard at the other end of the remote meeting.

It’s great to see that the Poly X Series for Zoom Rooms includes the legendary audio features we’ve come to expect from Poly (Read: Why Poly for audio?). These audio features include:

• Crisp, room-filling sound made possible by an innovative acoustic chamber design
• Innovative machine learning algorithms make unwanted noise and distractions disappear
• Next-generation beamforming microphone array (X50) clearly picks up all voices in the room
• Acoustic Fence captures only the voices within a defined zone in open workspaces

A high end Video Experience for Zoom

With Poly’s history in providing businesses of all shapes and sizes with the highest quality Video Conferencing for their meeting spaces, we can be assured that when they claim “Board room performance in a huddle room package”, they’ll be pretty spot on. Video features for the X Series include

• 4K UltraHD camera to see every detail
• Up to a 5 x zoom camera (X50)
• 120-degree field of view so everyone can be seen
• Next-generation automatic framing and speaker tracking for more productive conversations

The flexibility of Poly Studio X family sets it apart. Running the Zoom app, Poly delivers a native Zoom Rooms experience. You can also connect to any video conferencing platform using industry standards like SIP and H.323. This is critical, as 84% of enterprises are using 2 or more cloud video applications (State of the Cloud Survey 2019: Forrester Research)

A key Part of our Zoom Rooms Solutions

Poly are continuing to grow their portfolio for Zoom Rooms, bringing not just the Studio X Series to market, but also announcing the new G7500 4K Video Conferencing solution to be having a Zoom upgrade before the end of this year, too.

As a Poly Gold Partner and a Zoom Accredited Integrator, we can help you understand the ever growing portfolio of Zoom certified devices from Poly and other manufacturers and how to best optimise your meeting spaces for Zoom – just get in touch. Plus, we invite you along to see all the Zoom Room solutions in action side-by-side at our HQ in the Thames Valley, or at our facilities in London, just give us a call on 0118 214 2300.

In the past few months, the Lifesize Collaboration Service has been transported across to a brand new global cloud service architecture. Named the Galaxy platform, ensuring the future of growth and reliability of the service for customers around the globe.

This new 4K global cloud service architecture has been built from the ground up to provide:

• Greatly improved reliability and fault tolerance
• 4K dual stream conferencing
• The ability for future features to be delivered rapidly and effectively
• Media flowing of 4K at full frame rate
• High resolution broadcasting and higher quality recording
• Hugely enhanced current features including VMR sizes
• Larger directories, groups and permissions
• Near real-time reporting and alerts

Whilst it’s important to provide the newest, latest and greatest features and the flexibility required in today’s SaaS (Software as a Service) world. What is most important is that it meets and exceeds the essential security and robustness requirements of the modern business. Here’s a summary of Lifesize security and privacy features. For more information on security and privacy of various SaaS collaboration platforms, Contact Us!

Secure Foundation

All of the Lifesize calling capacity is hosted within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres. This provides a highly secure foundation based upon the most mature public cloud offering in the world. The elastic capabilities of AWS enables Lifesize to adjust to customer needs and provide new and improved services extremely quickly, and with the Amazon Web Services data centres leveraging independent third-party certifications for privacy and security, including ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus and SOC, customers can be comfortable that the Cloud platform is running upon the most resilient and secure base available in the marketplace today.

The Lifesize cloud-based service is operated in secure AWS data centers in North America, South America, Europe, Oceania and two locations in Asia. Lifesize calling capacity is hosted exclusively in AWS. Lifesize room systems and client software will automatically create conferences in the optimal AWS data center based on the location of the initial members of the conference. Recordings of conferences are stored in the AWS data center where the conference was hosted. They are not replicated outside of that AWS data center.

Secure Operation

The Lifesize Service runs entirely independently from the Lifesize corporate environment, and the processes and controls include:

• Source code scans for common vulnerabilities
• A build and CI process that only accesses the external source code repository and never engineers computers
• CI environment promotes container images to staging QA environment, completely isolated from the production environment
• Very constrained access controls to all systems in the code development pipeline
• Regular penetration testing by industry recognised and independent third party on the production environment

Secure Room Systems

The Lifesize Icon room conferencing systems are built upon decades of Video Codec and meeting room security knowledge, built from the ground up with security as one of the main architectural requirements.

Systems are engineered exclusively for Video Communications, as pooposed to component-based kits on general purpose operating systems. The closed-box design does not allow others to use and/or add their own applications.

The softwarre is encrypted as it is downloaded onto the system, and releases include third-party intrusion testing to ensure search out any possible vulnerabilities.

Video Calling

The Lifesize Cloud service, Icon room systems and Cloud client software provide secure and encrypted video, audio, presentation and call setup (signaling) in every call, from end-to-end.

Admins and users have no ability to disable encryption, and all calls are encrypted with no compromise in quality. By employing WebRTC, encryption is mandatory and applies to both signaling via DTLS and media via AES-128/SRTP. Plus third-party systems will join video calls in a secure fashion when configured for either H.235 or SIP TLS encryption.

Meeting Security & Access Control

Lifesize offers several features to keep meetings secure:

• Passcodes can be used to secure meetings.
• One-time meetings allow for a single-use meeting that is deleted following the event and cannot be reused. One-time meetings are always hidden from the directory.
• Permanent meetings can be hidden from the directory.
• Call escalation allows users to actively accept or reject new participants into a meeting.
• During a meeting, a moderator can remove or mute individual participants from a call.
• During a meeting, a moderator can remove or mute all participants from a call.
• During a meeting, a user may mute their own audio and/ or video.

Licenced users can be assigned one of three roles within the Lifesize app – A User, A Superuser or an Administrator. Each role has particular permissions including placing calls, controlling in call features, creating and owning meeting, customising layouts, enabling and making recordings, configuring single sign on, managing the directory and managing room systems.

Firewall/NAT Traversal

The Lifesize architecture allows you to keep your Lifesize room systems and client software safely behind your firewall and manages firewall traversal through our global service.

Lifesize room systems and client software do not require any firewall ports to be opened inbound from the internet. There is also no longer a need for static public IP addressing or complicated static NAT and port-forwarding firewall configurations. This allows you to maintain your existing perimeter posture and protects your users and devices from SIP and H.323 nuisance calls that are common on the open internet.

Lifesize only makes use of outbound TCP/UDP connections for call signaling and media. These TCP/UDP connections are always initiated by the Lifesize room system or client software in order to establish pinholes and dynamic port address translations. These connections are directed only to our global service resources on a specific list of published FQDNs, allowing for tightly crafted firewall rules. Lifesize manages these FQDNs and controls their Time to Live (TTL) so they are always current.

User Information

Lifesize stores only basic information for each of our customers’ user accounts. Should you choose to leave the service, this information will be deleted 180 days following the end of your contract.

Recording, Streaming and Sharing

The Lifesize Stream, Record and Share features are an additional option for organisations, with recordings also stored within the AWS data centres.

• Lifesize Record and Share is available to subscribers of the Lifesize cloud-based service. Record and Share is disabled by default and must be purposefully enabled by an administrator before users are able to record any calls.
• Content distribution may be restricted to only your own organisation.
• Lifesize Live Stream and Record and Share are encrypted using AES-128 for data in-flight (streaming, recording, or playback) and AES-256 for data at rest (storage).
• Lifesize Record and Share is hosted on AWS, which is designed for security across all geographies and verticals.
• Initiation of recordings requires manual intervention whereby a user of the Lifesize cloud-based service must activate the feature to record the conference session.
• An on-screen notification will be displayed to all video participants taking part in the conference to notify users that the call is being recorded and by whom.

For more information about the Lifesize Service, it’s security features, or to arrange a specific discussion with Lifesize and VideoCentric Technical Engineers to discuss particular security concerns or challenges for your business, get in touch with us today.

Want to compare pricing of Zoom, Lifesize, Poly, Cisco and Teams?

Or just looking to budget for your future business communications?

Whatever pricing you need for your Video Conferencing deployment, as independent and accredited integrators, we can swiftly provide an extremely competitive quote, often at the lowest price when compared like-for-like, with discounts based upon our expert levels of accreditation with all of the leading Video Conferencing vendors. Get pricing now, if you’re ready. But before you get pricing, we urge you to read this so you can fully make sense of the prices and quotes you receive.

So what’s the Price of Video Conferencing, Anyway?

So, what is the price of Video Conferencing you ask? Well, we could start with free. Free Video Conferencing is available, and it works. And there’s many vendors providing free, or freemium solutions – just look at Lifesize, with Lifesize Go and Zoom’s basic subscription model. We could give you a price of Video Conferencing as a simple £4 per user per month. We could also tell you that a Video Conferencing system is £3500, or that a room Video Conferencing solution is £8,000. It could also be that a fully fledged Telepresence room could cost around £65,000+. But all of those costs would be quite irrelevant. Because what do these prices even mean? What do they include?

Finding pricing of Video Conferencing solutions on the internet is simple. Do a quick Google or Amazon search and there are plenty of box shifters giving you “the best price available” for Video Conferencing. But making sense of the huge range of different prices given is not a simple task. Whilst marketing teams are great at making their prices as small as possible for their Video Conferencing offerings (for example, showing subscriptions as per user, per day, to have lower pricing than their competitors, per user, per month price), each individual offering usually differs hugely – with many often omitting vital licences and options you need for your particular space, certain peripherals (that will make the solution ultimately work), required hardware and software, other related cloud subscriptions and professional services such as maintenance (which is often mandatory).

While Video Conferencing becomes much more mainstream and prevalent throughout businesses and organisations around the world, it’s important to recognise that every business has its own strategies, outcomes and challenges when it comes to communicating, and therefore the answer to “how much will Video Conferencing cost us?” is much less straightforward than you may think. So how do we calculate the costs?

Calculating the Cost of Video Conferencing

To calculate the cost of Video Conferencing, we have to understand the different types to consider.

Free Video Conferencing

Cost – Free!

“Sign up, it’s free!”. “Start Video Conferencing today, free!” If you’re searching around for the cost of Video Conferencing, i’m sure you’ve seen more than a few of these kind of phrases already.

But Video Conferencing solutions suitable for a business are rarely free. Although they provide a taster to what video conferencing can provide, it would be silly for anyone to think that a business would offer another business a solution to improve their business, with all the business requirements available, without any money being exchanged.

Yes, they can be great for one to one chats, non-vital conversations or one-man bands, but free Video Conferencing often just provides a subset of features, a “dumbed down” package with limits on usage, and limited support services. Reliability is generally the biggest issue we hear when organisations get in touch about upgrading from a free service to a more professional paid for offering. Quality can be compromised, yes, however this has improved over the years and is often good enough for much peer-to-peer video chats. However for a business, where security, resilience and interoperability may be of importance, or where video is being used as a regular form of communication, free is just not a suitable option – they are technically designed to get individuals hooked on “personal plans” and use the “land and expand” approach, often resulting in extreme costs over time, once you’re reliant on their video platform but need all the additional features a professional platform offers.

Don’t expect any Service Level Agreements, uptime guarantees, or quality information if the service goes down. There’s no guarantee the features you use today will be there tomorrow either – in fact, it’s common to see highly used features being removed at a later date to push you up the subscription plans. Nice? Not really. Fair, unfortunately yes.

However it can of course be a good chance to try out a platform before rolling it out. Some of the most commonly used Free Video Conferencing solutions are Zoom (Personal Plan), Lifesize (Go), Skype, Join.me and GoToMeeting Free.

However we’d recommend trying a Free Trial instead – giving you the features of the more professional solutions – for example, you can get a 14 day Lifesize Trial for free, and you don’t even have to add your Credit Card details for this one.

Cloud Based Video Conferencing

Cost – A range of subscription levels, starting from around £10 per month per user, up to £40 per month per user, depending upon the features needed and size of company. Options and add-ons of course, add to the cost per month.

Cloud-based Video Conferencing, often put into the “Software-as-a-Service” category, is a subscription service hosted and managed by a service provider, rather than you hosting your own infrastructure on-premise. Cloud-based conferencing is the most modern and useful way of accessing Video Conferencing, and though some may see this as obvious, organisations must recognise that this £15 per month per user subscription is generally just the platform for communicating via – the network, virtual meeting spaces etc – and doesn’t include the devices such as Video Conferencing endpoints in the meeting room (see below).

Note: VideoCentric provide “Device-as-a-Service” subscriptions that combine both the cloud service and the hardware in a simple monthly subscription, to help combat the need for some one off up-front costs and some subscriptions, making it much more simple on the finances.

These subscription packages are often based on a company size basis – for small organisations, you can simply subscribe to the smallest subscription package, but for larger organisations, the number of employees is often taken into account (whether they will be using it or not!) and an organisation must pay per user, for all the business employees.

This is true for many subscription solutions these days, so be careful not to get stung by the baseline figures given – a “per user per month” price advertised may not be applicable to your business, or may be applicable to every single person in your business.

The Cost of Cloud Based Video Conferencing – An Example

An example of a basic subscription package at £12 per month per user of one of the current leaders of Video Conferencing SaaS includes up to 100 participants in a meeting, admin controls & reporting, and online support (not via the phone). The platform provides a simple-to-use quality conferencing solution, but only at the desktop between individuals, not meeting rooms. It provides a little recording, but if recording’s important, you’re likely to need more space.

Want to bring a meeting room into the conference, and you’re looking at adding £39 per month to this cost. Need webinars, add £32. What about the cost of extra recording storage? Another £32. Adding up? Indeed. Perhaps it could have been best to have subscribed to a package which in fact looked more costly upfront, but may have included all of these features already.

If you’re not sure, we can help work this out and give you the best quote for the tools and features you need – that’s what were here for and what we’re experienced in doing! If you want help working out which would be best for you at your needs and budget, just give us a call on 0118 214 2300.

Video Conferencing Hardware for the Meeting Room

Cost – £500 – £10000. Or even up to £50,000 for a specialised design and all the mods & cons.

Many businesses looking for a quote for Video Conferencing are looking for the pricing of meeting room Video Conferencing systems and not just the cloud subscription to enable connectivity and communication between desktops and locations. Video Conferencing systems have come a long way over the past 20 years, dropping in price to a far more affordable cost for the masses. Quality and features have improved, costs have dropped (by not just thousands but tens of thousands).

Still, there’s a broad range in prices, and good reason for it too.

If you simply asked us to provide pricing of a meeting room Video Conferencing solution, to compare against another integrators price of a meeting room system, I could (if I was that way inclined) give you the lowest quality, stripped back device, designed for 1-2 people meeting spaces, with basic audio and no technology to make it a full solution (such as a display or wires etc). I could select cheap USB peripherals, not questioning the size or shape of the room, the acoustics, the data sharing needs or aesthetic needs. And I could ignore the licences and connectors needed to make it work with your platform. (Sounds awful, but we do see this on a regular basis when quotes have been provided by unaccredited resellers, just to win a deal). I could give you a price of £500.

But if I took into consideration the needs of your business, the challenges you were trying to solve, the space the system would be installed within & the user and IT needs, any other communication platforms you may be using across your business, and ensure I quoted a future proof solution, they I may give you a price ranging from around £3,500 plus of course for services such as installation.

Yes, the upfront cost is higher. But the value is far bigger. It’s a solution that works for your space, meets your needs and goals, provides your business far more features to enable you to be far more productive, improve communications and see a far better return. Systems not up for the job usually barely get used and sit collecting dust, and that £500 will soon be looking like an expensive mistake!

Perhaps a lecture theatre or an operating space would cost more. A room requiring multiple cameras and displays, interactive 4K monitors, a programmed touch screen interface for the Executives and specialist audio integration, more again. But it’s vital businesses look at long term value, rather than short term cost. Of course, get the balance to fit with your budgets, but don’t skimp without understanding what you’re not going to have access to if you go for the cheaper product.

How do we make a guesstimate?

We can’t, until we’ve had at least a little chat. It would very rarely be right until we know at least a little about what you are trying to do, where, and how. But to give you some ideas of some general Video Conferencing costs, here’s an example of some figures (approximate & average SRPs) to show you a little more.

Small Room Video Conferencing Cost – Example One

A Small dedicated HD Huddle Room system for 1-3 people inc. integrated PTZ camera and a single microphone, suitable for a single display £2,400 with one year maintenance & support package £500 plus professional deployment service £400. You need a display for the video – around £650 for a professional monitor with a suitable warranty.  Want to share wirelessly? For a wireless presentation system, you’d be looking in the region of £500 – £900 too.

You may not need all of these things, but other costs can include brackets, cable management, wide angle lenses (dependent upon your room shape) and of course, any connectors or licences to your chosen cloud platform, or indeed, for integration into your UC platform such as Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business or G-Suite.

Meeting Room Video Conferencing Cost – Example Two

A medium sized meeting room for 6-12 people is likely to need not just the meeting room system, but additional audio and touch controllers to make the system usable too. The world is now in 4K, and for a new 4K Video Conferencing system, you’d be looking at SRP around £7000. Add to that a 65″ 4K professional monitor with interactive touch, which you’d expect to see approximately £1800  and the other peripherals, professional services, integrations and additional AV solutions that you require, and you could be looking in the range of £10 – 12,000. 

Note: If all this sounds out of budget completely, remember we’ve got a limited handful of almost brand new ex-demonstration systems, and some 2nd hand Video Conferencing endpoints that we can do some extremely fantastic deals on – just give us a call ASAP on 0118 214 2300 to see if we have any suitable available for you today.

USB based Video Conferencing – is it cheaper?

A lot of vendors now promote USB based peripherals as a solution for cheap Video Conferencing within the meeting room.

For some rooms and some organisations, these USB based solutions are a great solution for bringing Microsoft Teams into the meeting room, or for connecting into the Zoom conferencing cloud. Many USB devices, paired with the right displays, such as the Logitech Rally, Poly Studio, Aver and Huddly cameras do a fine job for small meeting spaces (and can all be tried, demonstrated and tested at VideoCentric’s HQ side-by-side), with their integrated cameras and microphones/speakers, but don’t include features for larger spaces, especially when related to audio and correction of video (i.e. when experiencing a fish-eye effect).  For a USB based all-in-one device of this type, you may be looking at around the £1000 – £1500 mark for something that is reliable, good quality and supportable. You’ll of course need to add the additional AV items and services too.

For larger rooms, USB deployments are far more tricky, unreliable unless extremely well planned and thought out, can look messy (with many cables – for example one Lenovo system requires 7 cables to be trailed to the device on the meeting room table), and can be far more costly than would first be expected. There are great devices that we integrate in meeting spaces for these types of deployments, including devices from Biamp and Nureva, however thoughtful planning is needed – a one-size-fits-all approach very rarely works.

One of our solutions, the Huddle Buddy, is a tried and tested selection of USB devices, combined into a fully supported bundle.

So Do You Now Know the Price of Video Conferencing?

It would be impossible for us to give you the real cost of Video Conferencing on a blog. We can give average prices for best-of-breed products and subscriptions, but there are so many variants, so many options, so many services and offerings, and so many vendors. Not any one system or solution does the same, and so like-for-like comparison is difficult, and basing your choices on price alone would likely result in something far more costly in the longrun.

However what we can do is provide you a quote for the basics, and when you’re ready, discuss with us your needs and challenges so we can recommend the right solution for you, and then give you the best quote possible for the right products and services.

The best way to do this would be to have a quick call on 0118 214 2300 – let us know what you are looking for and we can create a quote for you there and then. But if you’d rather not speak to a human straight away (and we don’t have salesmen type people by the way, we’re technology enthusiasts with a keen eye for Video based communications) then pop us an email or contact us on our contact page here – we’d love to hear from you and we’re certain we can help you achieve your goals, whether that be meeting a budget, rolling out one or two systems for huddle rooms, or deploying Video across your entire organisation.

]]> https://videocentric.co.uk/simple-business-communications-guide/ Mon, 24 Jun 2019 07:32:42 +0000 http://www.videocentric.co.uk/?p=60182 The simple business communications guide (for small companies and startups)

Effective business communications are essential to a company’s success. But it can be overlooked by startups and small companies in favor of developing and manufacturing their services and products.

This is understandabl – when one’s time, capital, and energy are limited, it makes sense to allocate them to areas of the venture that actually make money. For many small-scale operations, this means focusing on the things that the customers actually pay for.

However, not thinking of worthwhile communications technologies and practices for business as investments from the get-go can be a huge mistake. So, here’s an easy guide to help you mavericks out.

What is business communications? (and why it’s important)

The term “business communications” refers to the means of sharing information within the context of commerce. It covers both internal conversations between a company’s employees and their external conversations with customers and partner organisations.

Crucially, this kind of exchange is focused on achieving objectives that will ultimately benefit the overall goal of an enterprise. If you can’t communicate effectively within and outside your business, then it will be difficult for all concerned to align with each other, leading to inefficiencies, miscalculations, and even total failure of the business.

Main benefits of effective business communications

There are so many benefits to ensuring that your communications are effective – a quick Google search reveals that you get more than half a billion web pages covering the topic.

At the end of the day, though, we can boil them down to two main benefits:

Efficiency

The ideal scenario for any growing company is to yield optimal results with the least possible time effort. Effective communications mean fewer misunderstandings, which translates to fewer mistakes, less waste of resource through redundancy, and more time to spend on activities that provide the business some profit.

Relationship building

Companies rise and fall through the relationships they forge within their ranks and with their customers. Investing in good organisational communications tools and practices can help reinforce these connections through regular productive contact and build trust not just between employees, but between the business and its customers.

Technologies to get your small business started

So how do you start getting your teams to communicate better? You start with the tools they can use to communicate. Here are some pieces of technology you’ll want to invest in –

Cloud-based file storage

Your first order of business is to provide everyone in the company all the information they need to know to operate in the organization. What are the goals of the business? How do you want employees to conduct themselves during official and unofficial interactions with each other? What do you want them to project when talking to customers? Does anyone have best practices they want to share? You must document all of these and store them where old and new workers alike can access them. You can find some really nifty options in this TechRadar article.

VoIP PBX

The very next thing you need to invest in is a phone system that’s dedicated to your business. This is because the phone calls are still a common way by which most customers try to contact companies. Thankfully, it doesn’t really cost as much as it used to thanks to voice over IP service providers that offer robust virtual phone solutions. These offerings are comparable to legacy telephony without incurring exorbitant add-on fees. And it also has the added bonus of being more easily incorporated into unified communications.

Business email

Email is another communication tool that almost everyone is familiar with and comfortable using, and it’s just as important that you have an email address that lets the world know that your company is a full-fledged entity. The easiest way to get this is by signing up for a web hosting service (you’ll probably want to have a website for legitimacy anyway—along with helping you register a domain name, they also provide you with an official email address. That address can then be connected to an email hosting solution.

Video Conferencing

Face-to-face communications is vital for building relationships, and whilst email is great for summaries and document sharing, and phone calls are the norm, your conversations via email or phone both miss the vital cues and expressions needed to build stronger relationships. Video Communications shouldn’t be there to replace your email or even your in person meetings, but to add a sprig of personality to the faceless phone call, improve the number of times you see your colleagues and clients, and help reduce unnecessary travel. Video Conferencing is proven to have huge improvements for business efficiency, and today, it’s become a mainstream communications technology for businesses of all shapes, sizes, industries and locations around the globe.

Team chat

As awesome as email is, for those who want to be text based, email can still be a little slow for some of the people you need to communicate with. That said, not everyone is comfortable with a video, or even a phone call either. Team chats can offer organisations a happy medium in that they give you the option to send messages quickly while still offering individuals enough time to consider their responses. There are lots of team chat solutions for businesses these days, many of which include features that make collaboration easier.

There are many other technologies that your business could explore, but these are practically must-haves these days. If you want to be ahead of the curve, though, you should keep an eye out for business comms trends of the future.

Types of business communications

Apart from investing in the technology, you also need to keep in mind the different ways communication in a professional setting are classified. There are different types of business communications, and they depend on the characteristics of the informational exchange you choose to focus on.

To summarize, here are some ways to classify the types of communication used for business.

Internal communication vs external communication

These primarily deal with whether you’re talking to people in your organization or individuals outside the organization.

Internal communication

Connecting with people within your company—regardless of team, department, or office branch.

External communication

Connecting with people outside your company—such as vendors, customers, and partners.

Internal hierarchy

These focus on the positions of the employees within the business and who is communicating with whom.

Upwards communication

This is information or messages sent from individuals to their superiors.

Downwards communication

This is information or messages sent from individuals to their subordinates.

Lateral communication

This is information or messages exchanged between employees of the same level from different teams or departments.

Diagonal communication

This is information or messages exchanged between employees of different levels from different teams or departments.

Tone

These types of business communication concern themselves with the level of familiarity between the parties engaged in the conversation.

Formal communication

A formal tone of communication acknowledges authority, accountability, and hierarchical relationships between all involved in a given discussion. It’s often highly-structured and generally neutral but genial in character.

Informal communication

An informal tone of communication discounts roles within the organization and allows for a more organic approach to sharing information. It’s very casual in character and creates

Medium

This categorization pertains to the form the communication takes.

Verbal communication

Also known as oral communication, the emphasis is on speaking, and it’s the quickest, most convenient way to communicate. Common examples of this include one-on-one conversations between coworkers and phone calls between remote staff working on the same task.

Written communication

This mode of communication puts emphasis on the written word, and it’s considered to be a more business-friendly medium in that it automatically documents conversations for future reference. Common examples of this include work chats and email.

Audio-visual communication

This combines words, visuals, and sound to convey messages. Common examples include video conferencing, virtual presentations (like in online meetings) and training webinars.

Knowing all these can provide you some perspective on how to approach different opportunities for interaction, depending on your situation, goals, and company culture. This, in turn, can influence which business communications technologies you’ll want to invest more money on and which ones you may need to bring in.

Ultimately, the most important thing to remember is that you need to think about communications for your business from the moment you set down that first metaphorical brick. And much like your company, you also need to build on your power to connect.

Author’s Bio: Elea Almazora is an Organic Search Content Optimization Manager at RingCentral. With 10 years worth of experience in covering topics like communications, marketing, and business productivity, she enjoys trying and testing technology that help people work better. Elea is based in Manila and collects courses on Udemy.

“We now have the ability to do physical exams through the use of peripheral technology. We can actually look in the back of someone’s throat, we can look in their ears, listen to their heart and lung sounds as well as their abdominal sounds.”

We are used to personal, direct interaction from doctors, nurses and care assistants, but although the addition of video conferencing and remote delivery of healthcare services have been strongly proven as a vital and highly valuable addition to the NHS and across the healthcare sector, especially to provide medical assistance and services in remote locations, it’s still a challenge to convince patients they will get the same comfort, service and trust over video as they would in a direct setting.

The number of annual telemedicine visits in the U.S. rose from around 200 to more than 200,000, between 2005 and 2017.

So how do we manage the emergence of digital doctors? How can we change our expectations or does the delivery need to change itself? With more than 70% of healthcare providers using remote digital medicine in some shape or form, specifically for mental health support, remote monitoring of patients and follow up to assessments, it’s vital we find ways to improve the perception that some parts of care are inherently lost when a screen is placed between the caregiver and the patient.

Advanced Training to Build Relationships

New training programmes for medical professionals within the USA aim to improve the remote interaction, such as training for recognising virtual physical cues and limiting distractions within the shot, so that nurses and doctors can better build relationships via the remote technology. However, although improvements to the remote communications can be improved, it’s inevitable that some loss of human interaction will need to be made in return for the great benefits of telemedicine services.

This kind of training seems like the best way to improve the challenge of remote interaction. Ultimately, however, it seems likely that patients will simply accept the loss of a little human interaction as a necessary sacrifice in return for increased convenience, accessibility, and effectiveness of medical services.

An Additional Service, not a Replacement

Although there are many studies to suggest that many aspects of healthcare can be carried out via remote communications, it’s probably best to think of these tele-medicine services as an additional service, not a replacement service.

Being able to quickly gain access to a medical expert for those based in remote areas with no local doctors could be lifesaving. It could also save much time and money if the travel and visit to the doctors would not be beneficial at that time. Similarly, those patients feeling isolated (for example, half of women over 75 in the USA live alone), with reduced mobility or with mental health conditions that sees individuals spend less time outside the home, additional communication via video link could be a vital part of keeping people connected in a way that wouldn’t be had if only in-person visits were possible.

Despite the challenges of telemedicine and the way we have been programmed to accept in-person care as being superior to remote, the benefits of video conferencing for telemedicine have been proven time and time again as a way to improve on the care we can give to patients and the elderly (see “Video Conferencing Grandparents”). With the right training, tools and attitude, it’s likely that the trend of remote medicine will continue to rise to become the main communication path within our future healthcare systems.

More information?

Take a look at our solutions for healthcare, or take a look at our customer story about improving MDT Rooms in the Brighton and Sussex NHS University Hospital. You may also be interested in:

• Improving Mental Health Services in the NHS with Video Technology
• Improving Cardiac Diagnosis with Video Collaboration Technology
• NHS Reform: Improving Education & Training in the NHS

In recent years, we’ve seen the delivery of everything from advanced collaboration strategies to virtual assistants and artificial intelligence. Now, some companies are beginning to look forward and predict what the future of our conversations will look like in the years to come.

Already, emerging trends and technology offer an insight into the way that our business communication will evolve. Everything from a demand for greater mobility, to the need for better user experiences, is sure to impact the environment. Here’s what we see for the future of the corporate conversation.

1. The Office Environment Will Change

It’s not hard to imagine an office environment that’s vastly different from the one we used to know. Already, brick-and-mortar businesses are getting smaller, as more employees choose to work from home. In fact, by 2020, half of the UK workforce is set to work remotely.

Although many predictions suggest the changing office environment will mean the end of the desk phone, that may not be the case for some businesses. Instead, it’s likely that the endpoints you use for communication will be more advanced and more mobile than ever before.

There’s also a good chance that smartphones will begin to play more of a role in communication as BYOD becomes more popular. More than 80% of employees feel that smartphones will be a part of the future workplace according to IBM.

2. 5G Drives Transformation

Speaking of the demand for mobility, greater connections on the go should be easier to achieve in the years ahead. Already, we’re beginning to explore the possibilities of better-unified telecommunications through 5G connectivity. According to Juniper research, by the time we reach 2025, there will be more than 1.4 billion 5G connections in the world.

As enterprise mobility continues to drive transformations in the business environment, we may also see smartphones and wearable technology getting smarter. We’re already looking at bendable phones, augmented reality apps and facial recognition in the consumer landscape. Who knows what the business space could be capable of by 2025?

3. Data Plays a Bigger Role

Data continues to be one of the most buzz-worthy topics in the world of business communications. Thanks to an increased number of mobile workers, embedded devices and network protocols, we’re all generating increased amounts of data each day. Going forward, companies will need to find a way to manage and analyse that data, without going against privacy protocols.

The rise of new regulations like GDPR has changed the way that we handle data for good. In the years ahead, organisations investing in unified telecommunications will need to choose a vendor that can maintain their security and privacy compliance standards.

4. Unified Communication and Collaboration as Standard

Finally, the question “What is unified communication” will become less common in 2025, as more people embrace the power of an end-to-end communications system. As the ISDN and PSTN network ends in 2025, companies will move to VoIP systems more aggressively, and discover the flexibility and features that come with them.

Already, unified communications is becoming an increasingly popular and crucial part of the business space, driven by the increasing demands and expectations of customers. With unified communication and collaboration, companies can achieve a more cohesive and productive workforce.

Author’s Bio:

Irina Kirnos is a Product Marketing Manager at RingCentral in EMEA. With experience in the cloud software and communication industry spanning Silicon Valley, Research Triangle Park and now London, she enjoys working collaboratively with global teams to develop product messaging and positioning, sales enablement and competitive differentiation. Irina grew up in San Francisco, California and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Check out one of her articles: The Best & Worst Productivity Apps: 2019 Edition.

Here’s a few phrases and descriptions to help you more clearly understand some of the terminology used within our Lifesize Cloud discussions which we hope can help you when doing your research and reading.

User

A named user on a Lifesize Cloud account that is part of your community. They will appear in central phone books and there will be a maximum limit for each cloud service. For Example, Lifesize’s Discovery plan had 250, the Medium Plan has 250. Extra users may be purchased individually if required.

Guest

An un-named user that is not part of your community. This guest does not appear in central phone books but can be invited in to a call or meeting by any named user. Guests cannot call out to each other, only into a multipoint conference when invited in by a named user or Icon Video Conferencing System. There is no limit to the number of guests as long as the individual conference “seat” limit isn’t exceeded in a specific meeting.

Registered Icon

A professional Lifesize Video Conferencing system registered through its DSS Maintenance Subscription to Lifesize Cloud. This does NOT consume a user licence and so can be additional to any named users you have. However it will still impact on the total number of seats used in a specific conference.

Seat Capacity

How many participants can be in any one conference, whether pre-scheduled or created by adding users on the fly. For example, the Lifesize Medium plan is 50 seats. Extra capacity may be purchased in 100 or 300 capacities and these apply to the entire account therefore benefitting named users as well as Icons.

Multipoint Conference

A “three or more” party call (up to the limit of your seat capacity), built up on the fly by a named user or registered Lifesize Icon adding other users, Icons or guests. Such multipoint conferences can be created either by outbound dialling or accepting in-bound calls. In a Medium account every one of 250 named users, plus registered Icons can host their own 50-seat conference at the same time and no VMR needs to be used to achieve this if no meeting is pre-scheduled.

VMR Capacity

The maximum number of PRE-SCHEDULED conferences that can be booked in advance. This has no bearing on how many multipoint conferences can co-exist although each pre-booked VMR is still limited by seat capacity. A Medium account has 25 schedulable VMRs (each with 50-seat capacity) which has nothing to do with named users building their own conferences on the fly. Extra VMRs may be purchased individually if required.

Storage

The total number of hours available for recorded content. This is across the entire company account, so 10 hours is unlikely to be sufficient if you have 100-250 named users and a quantity of registered Icons, as they will not all delete their content from the video library (as pictured) immediately afterwards.

10 hours is suited to very occasional users and “Unlimited Storage” is recommended for accounts of 10 or more active users, unless there is day-to-day centralised administration of the storage space with regular content transfer and archiving.

Find out more about Lifesize Recording >>

One Time Meetings

An option which is not available with the Fast Start plan, but is now included with the Small account (and up). One time meetings prevents the meeting being accessed again after the conference has finished. The meeting identity is deleted afterwards. Accounts with OTM activated may optionally purchase SSO and Microsoft Integrations for Skype4B or Teams, those without OTM cannot.

SSO – Single sign-on

Single Sign-on is a model of user authentication that enables a user to have one set of login credentials to access a variety of applications that enable SSO. Lifesize Cloud supports SSO, so your teams will be able to use their common logins to access the service, once IT have configured Lifesize Cloud within the organisations SSO settings, just as they would for any other application.

Live Streaming

Enabling you to turn any Virtual Meeting Room (VRM) into a streamable meeting room to broadcast out to up to 10,000 viewers. Live Streaming, sometimes called Webcasting, Webinars or Broadcasting, includes regular streaming features such as Q&A, attendance and reporting.

Got questions about other phrases and buzzwords? Need help understanding features and functionality of your solution? We’ll add new Lifesize ones here as they appear, but feel free to pop us a message and ask about Lifesize Cloud or give us a call on 0118 214 2300 to find out more!

Organisations worldwide have been using Zoom software at the desktop and on mobiles for peer-to-peer communications since 2011, and the last few years has seem tremendous growth of Zoom’s cloud platform usage, especially in the huddle room, meeting room and conferencing spaces. These Zoom based rooms are otherwise know as “Zoom Rooms“.

Zoom Rooms is the idea of enabling individuals, teams and organisations to access the Zoom cloud conferencing platform from a meeting room so that your employees using Zoom can communicate from wherever they choose to work from.

Zoom Rooms is a combination of a Zoom Cloud subscription, Zoom Room Licences, and meeting room hardware… and of course a meeting room or collaboration space. Don’t forget – Zoom Rooms is not included with an organisations Zoom subscription – here’s a few questions and answers to help explain what Zoom Rooms are, and how it can work for your business.

What can Zoom Rooms do for me?

Zoom Rooms extends your Zoom Video Communications into your meeting spaces. When properly deployed, with the right hardware and services, your meeting spaces are enhanced with video and audio to connect with remote teams and businesses.

Like any modern Video Conferencing deployment, there are a huge benefits to professionally enabling your meeting spaces with Video. Connecting with remote teams, improving relationships, reducing travel costs, improving interviews & training, being more productive as a global team, reducing time to market…  here’s a couple of past posts on benefits that you may like to take a peak at – “Video Conferencing in the Manufacturing Industry” and “Can Small Businesses really benefit from Video Conferencing”

In fact, Zoom Rooms can bring all these benefits and more to your meeting spaces, with a solid cloud communication platform in the background to deliver a range of features for remote team collaboration.

Can I buy Zoom Hardware?

No, not specifically manufacturered by Zoom, anyway.

Zoom doesn’t have it’s own endpoints, video conferencing systems or room based hardware. You can buy hardware FOR Zoom, but Zoom itself is a fully software based solution. However, there are a number of certified Zoom Room Hardware components, brought together as suitable solutions for professional meeting spaces, tried & tested by ourselves, that we recommend & install for professional video and audio, if you are using Zoom as the software platform. These include:

• Video Conferencing devices & audio solutions for kitting out a Zoom meeting room
• Video soundbars for Zoom Huddle Rooms
• Displays and interactive technologies for  Zoom Rooms for Touch
• Controllers and PC based devices such as from Crestron or HP
• USB Cameras and Audio systems
• Devices such as the Poly (Polycom + Plantronics) Trio for Zoom, or X Series for Zoom

The idea of Zoom Rooms is that organisations deploy hardware for the particular room and space, and then connect into the platform to access the features from the Zoom cloud – Secure multipoint Conferencing, audio and content sharing with recording, chat, calendaring integration and all the other features you’d expect from a professional collaboration platform.

There are many certified, and non certified peripherals that can make up a Zoom Room hardware bundle – but there are some limitations, challenges & combinations that work better than others, so if you’re unsure, make sure you get some assistance to understand which ones will work best in your spaces.

What is a Zoom Room Connector?

The hardware and conferencing room systems to use for your Zoom Rooms is dependent upon your needs, aimed outcomes, room size and space, and the current communication and collaboration environment you have in place. Many organisations already have professional Video Conferencing technology in place, such as Cisco, Poly (Polycom + Plantronics) or Lifesize.

Zoom can be accessed with standards-based Video Conferencing systems such as those from Cisco or Poly (Polycom + Plantronics) by using a Zoom Room Connector, which enables organisations to use their current investments and professional Video Conferencing endpoints to access the features of the Zoom Cloud.

The Zoom Room Connector is a licence that enables SIP or H.323 room systems to connect with Zoom Rooms, and provides additional professional features to be brought into the Zoom Room meeting space, such as one-touch-to-join through your calendaring system.

I hear Zoom Rooms includes Digital Signage?

Yes. Screens in your meeting rooms can be utilised to display company information and notices, social media, weather and news reports and other information you may wish to share to the space whilst the display is not in use.

In fact, you get this functionality as part of your Zoom Rooms subscription licence. The digital signage offering enables you to manage displays at scale, or individually from the Zoom administration portal, and supports an unlimited number of displays.

The Zoom Digital Signage package is relatively basic in features, and suitable for those who just want the more simple aspects of Digital Signage.

What is a Zoom Room Licence?

Of course, you don’t get the ability to connect a bundle of hardware for your meeting room straight into the Zoom cloud for free! Whether you are currently using the free Zoom package, or you already pay for a subscription to Zoom cloud for your organisation, you’ll need to subscribe to an additional licence for Zoom Rooms.

That licence can also include additional add-ons, such as the Webinar, recording or large meeting add-ons, dependent upon what you need from your rooms and entire Zoom solution. Plus, Zoom Rooms for Touch, and the Zoom Rooms Connector – you’ll have to factor in those too. Don’t worry – We will create a bundle for your needs, that includes the right Zoom Licences alongside the right Zoom Hardware Bundles to make it simple – just ask.

What about Zoom Services?

Ensuring Zoom Rooms are deployed professionally and to the highest quality standard that you require for your meeting rooms is just as it would be for any other Video Conferencing or AV deployment across your business. Professional design, integration, installation, support & maintenance of equipment must be managed by a trusted integrator and certified supplier, with quality support from the manufacturer… in this case, VideoCentric & Zoom.

One key area to think about with Zoom professional services is around your maintenance and support. With lots of peripherals and accessories, different cloud connectors and licences, and a variety of options for different spaces, an all-in-one wrap around support service for your entire room is recommended. If managing multiple devices from different manufacturers with a range of warranties, offerings and hardware is something that may challenge you, have a chat to us about “XT Maintenance” for everything, including cabling, in your meeting space.

Sonos: A Zoom Rooms Story!

With 2 key offices, and a 3000 mile hallway between the two, Sono uses Zoom rooms to connect over 170 project rooms to enable engineers and manufacturers to look closely at components and technology from across the multiple sites and rooms. Take a look at the video case study here:

What next?

If  you are looking at Zoom Rooms and are interested in the various room based solutions available for your meeting spaces, or want to talk to us about the different Zoom Room bundles and Professional services available, get in touch with our team today.

]]> https://videocentric.co.uk/unified-communications-increase-business-productivity/ Wed, 16 Jan 2019 11:54:31 +0000 http://www.videocentric.co.uk/?p=40296 Unified communications entered business terminology in the mid-1990s, and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) rose to prominence approximately two decades later.

This category has since evolved significantly over the last few years, so let’s examine what UCaaS is today and where it’s headed.

What is UCaaS?
(Unified Communications as a Service)

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) provides a cloud-based business communications system across multiple channels and devices. UCaaS combines phone service, video conferencing, team messaging, SMS, fax, and other communications tools on a single integrated cloud platform. It is designed to be accessed from any device – desktops, laptop/tablets, or mobile phones.

Benefits of UCaaS

Unifying communications in the cloud offers a wealth of benefits for workers and businesses in terms of productivity, ease of use, economic value, flexibility, and security. Because UCaaS is cloud-based, it enables businesses and IT departments to save money and achieve greater scalability, security, and reliability from business communications.

Other benefits of the cloud: you don’t have to procure space for hardware, worry about energy bills, or configure and manage your communications environment. In short, you incur no upfront expenses while enjoying greatly reduced operating costs. The keywords in UCaaS, after all, are “as a service,” which means you don’t have to hire additional IT support – and you can lease phones from the provider instead of purchasing. That means you can move upfront capital expenditures to a monthly operational expenditure. UCaaS billing also simplifies your accounting.

But perhaps the greatest value is that the cloud offers all of the latest and greatest technologies – updated and upgraded seamlessly and automatically – which means you don’t have to be at the mercy of lengthy, on-premises, scheduled upgrades.

Simply put, UCaaS is built for a mobile, global, and distributed workforce – enabling your employees to work the way they want, anytime and anywhere they want. With UCaaS, employees can use any device (e.g., phone, computer, laptop, tablet) for voice, video, texting, conferencing, file sharing, etc.

UCaaS also successfully deals with the issue of “app overload.” Consider this: A typical office employee uses between five to seven communications apps every day, generally consisting one phone line (more and more, the business world is shifting from landlines to VoIP), one email account, one SMS app, one team messaging service and an audio and video conferencing solution.

When you’re considering unified communications for your small business, here are the key features you should look out for.

Unified messaging

Unified messaging is the cornerstone of a good unified communications service. The ability to access all of your communications from a single point streamlines workflow and improves productivity. Using desktop and mobile apps from UCaaS providers, such as RingCentral, all your calls, voicemails, faxes, and SMS messages are available in a simple unified interface. Everything syncs instantly through your account, so your messages are available on any device. You can easily switch between devices without worrying about messages or notifications getting lost in the shuffle.

Presence

Whether you handle customer calls or need to coordinate with colleagues, presence notifications can help your business by relaying an individual’s status in real time. Presence can indicate whether someone is available, on a call, holding, or if they have a call ringing. Choose a UCaaS provider that supports presence monitoring on desk phones and also via our desktop and mobile apps. Utilizing presence, you’ll know that transferred calls will be picked up by the recipient and minimize back-and-forth between colleagues when people are unavailable.

Collaboration

Keeping teams in step with each other is a significant challenge for every business. Effective collaboration is even more difficult when resources are spread across a variety of apps and interfaces. That’s where shared workspaces can help.

Conferencing and online meetings

Audio conferencing is critical for many businesses, allowing multiple parties to connect simultaneously. Online meetings with video, screen sharing, text chat, and collaboration tools enable participants in multiple locations to conduct face-to-face meetings in high definition.

The Future of UCaaS

With more mobility opportunities available to their employees, organisations will continue to embrace telecommuting, making it important for distributed teams such as sales to stay on the same page and stay connected anywhere, anytime and on any device.

Small- and medium-sized businesses as well as large enterprises will find UCaaS solutions to be the most logical option for their global and distributed collaboration and communications needs.

This guest blog has been provided by Stephanie Liais. Author’s Bio:

Stephanie Liais is part of the Product Marketing team for RingCentral in EMEA. She is focusing on helping businesses in EMEA transition to cloud business communications and contact centre solutions. She has spent the last 6 years in cloud software and communication industries. Stephanie is based in London, has a European background and is a keen traveller.