On this episode of Catching Up with, Craig Durr catches up with Olly Henderson, VP of Products at Jabra, live at InfoComm 2026. They explore how the company's collaboration portfolio has evolved to support every meeting space, from bring-your-own-device rooms to large enterprise deployments. The conversation highlights Jabra's broader vision for connected workplace collaboration.
Craig Durr: Hey everyone, Craig Durr, Chief Analyst at the Collab Collective. We are still here at InfoComm 2026, and I'm making an update. It's a combination of a new product alert and catching up with an old friend from, of all places, Jabra. We've talked to Jabra along the path a long time ago, but let's go over here and talk to my friend Olly Henderson.
Olly, how are you?
Olly Henderson: Mr. Durr, how are you doing?
Craig Durr: Very well, thanks for coming. I appreciate that. I was just talking to the audience about our long path of you and I interacting and seeing each other, but you guys actually have a new product update that I want to talk to you about. Will you share with me about the U30?
Olly Henderson: Yes, the PanaCast U30. I’m very excited about it. It's our new baby bar. It's the first rung on the Jabra ladder. There's one right there, and there's one over there. Let's go take a look.
Craig Durr: All right, come on.
Olly Henderson: So the PanaCast U30 is your latest addition into the USB bring-your-own space. This is our entry-level BYOD device. Entry-level in terms of price point, not in terms of features and performance. We've got it super laden with some really powerful processing inside, so it's actually a full Android bar, Qualcomm processor.
But we've not exposed Teams Rooms on Android or Zoom Rooms on Android. We put Android in there so we can make it very intelligent. What that allows us to do is have things like wallpapers. This is the generic one, but it can be customizable. We've got great audio AI algorithms on there, it's fully manageable through Jabra+, and the HDMI output allows you to have extra features and functionality, and that's one of those key things.
Craig Durr: Now, because these have been the forgotten rooms by IT management, what's happening now is you're bringing them back into the whole construct. It's managed, it's intelligent, it delivers a high-quality experience, and you're staying at a great price point.
Olly Henderson: Absolutely, the price point we can't ignore. I don't usually talk about price, but 899 USD as an MSRP is compelling. That is one of the big things, though, it's just de facto for any bar at the moment, single cable USB-C. One cable connection plugs into the side of your laptop, you're up and running, and it comes in the box with the 3.2 USB-C cable.
Craig Durr: Oh, really? The long cable.
Olly Henderson: Yeah, so you've got an option of upgrading that to a five-meter cable, or we've also got another new product coming on the horizon, which might extend things a little bit more.
Craig Durr: Are we going to talk about that?
Olly Henderson: No. But look, this is only the start of the story of the portfolio. This is something you've been passionate about over the last couple of times we met.
Craig Durr: Exactly, this is a great example. Let's go ahead and go down the whole size range.
Olly Henderson: So if BYOD is your weapon of choice, we'd ask you to start with the U30. If you are a big Teams Rooms customer or a big Zoom Rooms customer, and you want a native Android bar, we'd be looking at the PanaCast 50 VBS.
Craig Durr: So this is the one I had a chance to talk to some people about in the past, when you launched it at ISE. I love this bar because it's, what, 140-degree field of view? You and I could be sitting at that totem table, seeing each other, and the far end can still see us, but we still have a natural conversation.
Olly Henderson: Yeah, so you've got full Android features on there. Again, high-end Qualcomm processing in there, Teams Rooms, Zoom Rooms, BYOD, 180-degree video. In those smaller rooms where it's designed for, you can be snug up to the screen and get full utilization of, say, four or six people sitting around a small totem table. You can either use it with the controller, or if you have a touchscreen, you don't have to have the controller, you can interact with it directly.
Craig Durr: And this has your secret sauce within the two camera heads, still doing the stitching together for that nice image as well.
Olly Henderson: Historically speaking, we were always three camera heads. We got it down to two, and then the new U30 is no longer 180, this one is 120. But if your use case is 180, then it's appropriate towards that.
Craig Durr: Building towards you. And talking about the original three-camera idea, I see behind me the 55.
Olly Henderson: This is the new 55. So we took our PanaCast 50 VBS, which was working very well, but we wanted to make it modular and scalable. We'll come on to that piece in a second. But same great design, 180-degree field of view, full Android bar, Teams, Zoom, environmental sensors.
Craig Durr: We're even seeing the experience right now, here in the example.
Olly Henderson: Yeah, this is a video that's playing, and it shows you that you get that full panoramic field of view in the room, everyone captured at all times. Now, what I love about this one is that you put a lot of processing power in it, so this has a lot of headroom to grow, because in the world of AI, AI on the edge devices is very important, and you're planning for the future.
On an Android level, Qualcomm processor, Android 13. We're about to upgrade that to Android 15 as well, to get people that extra longevity, and we'll take the next steps after that. We're also starting to play a lot around with AI processing. We always have done edge AI processing on video, but now we've got a whole new audio toolbox as well, which is able to monitor the room, the environmental conditions, all of the above. So it's really growing.
Craig Durr: I'm kind of hearing on the grapevine that Jabra does have some experience with audio.
Olly Henderson: Apparently, we're pretty good at it.
Craig Durr: The last time we met in person was when you guys were talking about the larger experience. Now, I'll tell you what I like about this. This actually completed the portfolio. You were really known very strongly for the small to medium room, through the room kits, and you were now bringing that same great experience to the large rooms.
Olly Henderson: Exactly, it was always our Achilles heel, the portfolio was too slim. We weren't helping our end customers, we weren't helping our channel partners. We have to cover all of the room surrounds, and we were thinking modular.
So what I would do is take my medium room with a PanaCast 55 VBS, and then one of the first things I might want to do is extend the audio with your speaker microphone. Then, once you've extended the audio, you might want to get more video horsepower into the room, and that's where you'd start to add the IP cameras, where we partnered with our friends at Huddly to bring those to market. You can have one, three, or five of them, depending on the size. So now you have multi-camera capability, as well as what the bar might be doing, into that larger room environment experience.
So what you get as an experience, you can see on the screen, the PanaCast 55 is giving that picture-in-picture point of view, so you get those social cues in the room, Craig. You can see who's paying attention, who's writing emails, who's not listening so much.
I would always pay attention to you, but maybe some of my leaders might fall asleep in the back of the room. But ultimately, the Huddly cameras are actively zooming in on the active speaker, picking it out and popping around the room, so you have your speaker mic further down the table getting the audio in, and then your IP cameras from Huddly.
Craig Durr: It's a great partnership for you. It's a great marriage of people with the same mindset, taking advantage of processing power on the edge to help create these really immersive experiences.
Olly Henderson: Well, it made sense. We are excellent at what we do, we enjoy our Android operating powers that we've got, and our friends at Huddly, just north of the border in Norway. When I'm in Copenhagen, it's an hour flight, so we're always at each other's offices, lots of collaboration, great group of people, and it just made a lot of common sense.
Craig Durr: I love it. So, going all the way from BYOD, small room, medium room, wide room,
Olly Henderson: And we've also got our scheduling panels for outside the room as well. So we're really looking to bring everything together.
Craig Durr: And there's actually one other thing Claus would not allow me not to talk about. You actually have a new service offering also that helps bring all this together in some ways.
Olly Henderson: We are. We're launching our premium services. You'll always have your essential tier, that will allow you to look after your firmware, get RMAs, all of the above. But then as you move into enhanced services, you'll get more features, faster RMAs, longer service warranties. And where I see the marriage of this taking place is, now your single portfolio is allowed to address those customers that said, “I love you, but you don't have all my rooms, and now you have that tier of service level to match it going forward as well.”
Jabra+ is really going through massive growth and iteration, the services stacked on the back of Jabra+, so you can manage your rooms, you've got the enhanced services, you've got the full portfolio. I think it's coming together quite nicely.
Craig Durr: I love it. You know what, it's a good time to be Jabra.
Olly Henderson: It is. In fact, I've done a little something for you as well.
Craig Durr: Am I a new recruit?
Olly Henderson: You are a new recruit.
Craig Durr: I love it. Hey, thank you so much for the time, I really appreciate it. I'm going to go ahead and sign off.
Everyone, thank you so much for your time. This is another exciting update. I'm glad to see this portfolio view from Jabra and the holistic point of view. We'll bring you some more updates from InfoComm 2026. Stay tuned.