Recent Poly Firmware Update Paves the Way for Real-Time Provider Switching
We are big fans of meeting room video bars. They’re easy to buy, easy to install, easy to use, cost-effective, and provide a great user experience.
One highly-touted feature of some Android video bars is the ability to use the system with many different cloud video providers (e.g., Microsoft Teams, Zoom, GoTo, RingCentral, Dialpad, StarLeaf, BlueJeans, Pexip, etc.). The key benefit is obsolescence protection.
For example, a company that has standardized on Zoom (“a Zoom shop”) could configure its video bars to use the Zoom Rooms (ZR) app. If the company later shifts from Zoom to Teams (becoming “a Teams shop”), the same video bars could be re-configured to use the Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) app. How cool is that?
This same capability could – in theory – allow the same room to support video calls on different platforms in real-time. So the same room could participate in a Teams call at 9 AM, a Zoom call at 10 AM, and a Pexip call at 11 AM. Unfortunately, this is NOT possible today because switching platforms requires an IT admin to log into the system and manually choose the new provider.
But it looks like that’s about to change.
Within its VideoOS 3.9.0 update, Poly just added the ability to change calling providers on its Studio-X Series video conferencing systems using API commands. Sure – this may sound trivial, but this seemingly insignificant enhancement paves the way for on the fly platform switching in the future.
In this brief “From the Lab” video, Ira and Jim discuss and demonstrate this new capability.
