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20 minute read
Summary
On this episode of Decision Point, The Collab Collective's Craig Durr catches up with Olly Henderson, Head of Video Product Management at Jabra, about the company’s latest video bar system, the Jabra PanaCast 40 VBS. The discussion focuses on the small room market, the features that make this device unique, and how Jabra is positioning itself for the future of video collaboration.
Their Discussion Covers:
- Jabra PanaCast 40 Capabilities: Exploring the 180-degree field of view, flexible deployment options, and its certification for Teams and Zoom.
- Strategic Market Focus: Why Jabra is prioritizing small meeting rooms and how the PanaCast 40 VBS aligns with their expanding video portfolio.
- Ease of Installation and Use: Key design improvements, including ADA compliance, enhanced mounting flexibility, and better cable management for quick setup.
- The Road Ahead for Jabra Video: Insights into Jabra’s approach to evolving video conferencing solutions, large room solutions, and continuous product improvements.
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Transcript
Craig Durr: Hello everyone, this is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of The Collab Collective. And I want to welcome you to the next episode of Decision Point–technology insights for IT leaders. Now, what is this webcast about? This is moving past the marketing fluff. This is the opportunity to ask questions to understand products and solutions from the people that are bringing them to market. We want to kind of cut through the noise and answer the questions that you, as an IT decision maker, are interested in finding out. You ready to get going? Let's go.
On this episode here, I am excited to introduce to you a friend of mine, Olly Henderson from Jabra. Olly operates as the head of video product management and portfolio from Jabra.
Olly, how are you doing?
Olly Henderson: I'm doing very well, Craig. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to have a chat. And it's been too long, my friend.
Craig Durr: It has been. It has been a little bit. Now, actually, what we're going to be really focusing on is something that you in Jabra recently announced, which is the Jabra PanaCast 40 VBS- video bar system, right?
Olly Henderson: Yep.
Craig Durr: Okay, I want to dive into this a little bit more and talk about this. But let's first set up the stage here. I want to talk to you and get an idea about- what does it mean to bring another small room solution to market? I mean, is this still a challenging space that you see in the market that needs a solution?
Olly Henderson: Yeah, so we're delighted to bring PanaCast 40 VBS as the trial product, really of the PanaCast 50 VBS. PanaCast 50 was designed for medium rooms, around sort of 8 to 12-people-rooms, and it does really well in that space, but we found a lot of our customers were using it in rooms that were even smaller. And to be honest, the vast majority of rooms and where the market is is in that small space.
Small into focus, down into hubble as well, and with around 80% of the video rooms in the market being of that size and scale, and on the whole we were finding our data was showing us that we were looking after rooms of six people or less. We thought the opportunity was there to bring PanaCast 40 VBS to the market, and we're delighted with that, launched it, and announced it in ISE coming to us in the summer.
The whole market reacted really well to it. It's a space where our customers are super excited about it. Our channel partners see loads of scope for it in those spaces. And it was just a natural decision that even though we're building up the portfolio in its entirety, Craig, we've really got to help our customers and travel partners target where the volume part is in that small into medium, and then later in this year, into next year, we're going to be tackling the large rooms as well.
Craig Durr: Oh, good. We'll have a chance to talk about that. But I'll have to agree with you. I think those small rooms tend to be one of those underserved rooms. They tend to fall into this kind of lost, no man's land, right? Sometimes they wind up being under IT management, and sometimes they wind up being under facilities. Sometimes the decisions are around “Are they worth the investment of a price point?” point of view. And I also think there's an element of this that is the most prolific size room that isn't technology enabled–at least, that's the data that I'm seeing. It sounds like that's very similar to what you're seeing as well, too.
Olly Henderson: Yeah, absolutely. There's a load of these small rooms out there, but a lot of them aren't even equipped with any tech or, you know, as I walk around, I'm lucky enough to be with customers a lot of the time. As I walk around, a lot of the runs, there's TV on the wall with cables hanging down and maybe an old webcam attached and that really underutilized spaces.
I think our thinking was the two primary ways this device can be digested or come to market is either in BYOD mode or as an Android appliance. Later in the year, it will be available to use as a Teams Rooms for Windows or Zoom Rooms for Windows peripheral. But at launch, it will come as a BYOD bar, or as a full Teams Rooms on Android or Zoom Rooms on Android.
Why is that? Well, we're starting to see a lot of those spaces could potentially be used as BYOD runs because customers aren't quite sure about the utilization of the space, how many people are going to use it, and how often it will be used, so that they can have that security blanket of maybe not applying the license to it. But then once the runs are getting traction, once they can see there's lots of usage in those runs, then they're able to, very simply, without changing any gateway, turn on their Android layer, as it were, activate a Teams Rooms license or their Zoom Room license, and they're up and going with a full premium. A product bar with all the features that you would expect from any premium Android bar.
Craig Durr: Hey, so look, you're right. We talked about these small rooms, but help me understand. So we've got PanaCast 40 VBS–how does this solve the problem in a unique, different way? I mean, okay, it's a beautiful bar. It's part of the same family that we've come to love–the PanaCast 50, for example, which has multiple modalities, Android BYOD bar. It can be part of a Windows solution. Tell me how this helps with the problem.
Olly Henderson: I've got one here. We've got some slides in the background there. But ultimately, what this guy does is it capitalizes on Jabra’s previous market experience of having the 180 degree field of view, which we think is probably more important than ever in the smaller spaces that we're targeting here. This time, what's apparent is that we can now do this through only two lenses, and that's because of a couple of reasons. Firstly, we've got improved lens technology that's going on there. And secondly, we've worked super hard on our clever people in Cupertino and Ancona, and here in Denmark, where I am at the moment, have worked really hard on the algorithm stitching that allows those two lenses to now take 180 degrees and dynamically move that stitch around so it's never lying over someone's face as they're on it.
Craig Durr: You guys have been the market leader in that technology. I mean, I think you were one of the first to bring together a very viable, working solution around that stitching technology. So we're talking here that we've got years of experience to help continue to improve this and refine it, right?
Olly Henderson: Absolutely. You know, this is a mature technology for us now. As I’m saying, PanaCast 50 and PanaCast 50 VBS, we're using three lenses. Now for the first time, we're using two lenses. And let's be clear, as our portfolio grows and evolves and the roadmap gets a little more mature and strong, it's not always going to be 180 degrees. There's other use cases. I may want to see further–that doesn't necessarily recommend the 180 degrees, but I think in this smaller room and at the premium price point, we wanted to offer people what they know and love and they want, which is that full field of view. Because in this case, quite often, Craig, is that the table is right up to the wall in a smaller room, and it solves that problem very well. And our customers really enjoy that.
Craig Durr: I was about to talk about that. I mean, in many of these rooms that I see, it's almost as if that video system is sitting like the fourth person at a round table. Or there's even those totem tables right where it actually abuts right against the actual table in itself. So my understanding of what you're saying is this 180 degrees field can pick up those people right there in the peripherals, almost against the table, against the system.
Olly Henderson: Absolutely, you know, literally perpendicular to the device. So, you know, it's a full panoramic view, something that, as I say, is near and dear to our value prop, but not only what we're known for, you know? It's one of the many benefits of using Jabra video products as well, right?
Craig Durr: Okay. Now the other thing I think that is really, really interesting here is the price point you guys are approaching this. Tell me more about the price point. Let's just dive into there a little.
Olly Henderson: We worked super hard on the price point. We were aggressive on the price point. We see the opportunity to be a disruptor here. And you know, we can't ignore that value for all the way along the chain is key. And you know, for $1499 for the bar only SKU in the U.S., probably around $2100 with a new touch controller as well, I think that's compelling. You're getting a premium video bar that has all the benefits that you'd need, multi stream, great audio quality, the 180 degree field of view, multiple ways of deploying–whether it's BYOD on a Windows platform, ultimately, or as an Android bar straight away, you're getting a lot of functionality straight out the box, and it's covering a whole load of use cases. And it's key to that customer centricity that we've got of how you can digest the video bar, how you want to do it, how it works in your environment.
Craig Durr: Okay, and we're going back to the idea again of referring to, “Look, we can deploy it as an appliance-based solution, running your favorite UC platform as an application, or you can also utilize it as a BYOD, as kind of a starting step in deploying those rooms and getting in them ready, it sounds like. That's very compelling.
Olly Henderson: And we're seeing a lot of that. Look., people are still in a difficult time, in a difficult space. People are still adjusting to employees coming back into the organization, how runs are being utilized, and the usage of the runs so it just gives the customer that flexibility. They can maybe start it in a BYOD mode and then turn it into an appliance mode, or, for that matter, they can maybe use it as a Teams Rooms for Windows device more towards the end of the year, and then when they were ready to potentially flip the Android, which is another path that we see, then you just got all of that ready in the bar just to turn on.
Craig Durr: Okay, so we covered affordability, we covered the performance. But there's a lot of great, favorable features that I like, and I want to talk about those a little bit. So for example, one of the most interesting ones to me–let's talk about the stand, for example, and how the mounting of this works.
Olly Henderson: As you can see from the graphic and the images, we've got a new stand that the device is on. So this is a new universal table stand, and it's universal because it will fit the PanaCast 40 VBS, the PanaCast 50 VBS, and the PanaCast 50–so one stand to kind of rule them all. It makes ordering easier, makes skew proliferation less. So super straightforward to mount as well. Out of the box, it also comes with this great U-shaped bracket that you can see here, that allows you to wall mount it. It's got a three-a-quarter inch screw thread in there as well, so it allows you to put it on a tripod mount, as you can see on the image. And you can also use the existing Jabra VESA mount back of a TV as well, but it gives super accessibility on this angled mount so that you can mount that onto the wall, flex the product down, and you've got easy access to a larger cable copy that we've actually put into here.
Craig Durr: Well, actually, that's the other thing also. So we're talking about the use case. We're talking about our device being very close to the end users, and a device being very close to the wall. This mount is one great idea that I think really supports that. But you just hinted at the other one. Show me that back area again, about the...
Olly Henderson: So also a side point, about the mount. We're ADA compliant as well. Straight out the pulse, which is super important in North America, and something that we've struggled with historically. And speaking of historical struggles and learning from where we came from, maybe on the PanaCast 50 and the PanaCast 50 VBS, we didn't give our users quite enough room as much as we would have liked. Yes, it passed all the certification. Yes, Microsoft and Zoom were happy with it, but really, we listened to a lot of our install partners. So we've given everyone a huge cable box with cable mountings here and cable holdings, and then all of your cables can insert smoothly down the left hand side of the device as well. So we're giving people a lot more accessibility, and it also forms into the device.
You know, Microsoft have got their new Express Install rooms as well, where the idea is that you can bring a device into the room and get the whole room set up within an hour. We're focusing very heavily on how quickly you can deploy this device, not only from a virtual or digital standpoint, but also from a physical standpoint as well.
Craig Durr: You know, I don't want to get too far into speeds and feeds, but when we're thinking about that cover, I'm thinking of a couple of things. Is this a single monitor device?
Olly Henderson: This is a single monitor device? Yeah, if you were looking at a dual monitor device, you'd step to the PanaCast 50 VBS.
Craig Durr: Okay, and then tell me about the Ethernet connectivity for this device.
Olly Henderson: Yeah, you've got both Ethernet hardwired and also Wi-Fi. So there's two ways of running that device. So you've got all of the expected connections, including orgs out, which is really important for the Australia market. So you can come out of this aux port into an audio hearing aid loop for compliancy of assisted listening, which is mandatory in the Australia market as well.
Another nice feature, Craig, which a lot of our customers enjoyed at ISE, is we've got removable colors on the device, and there's a reason for this. It's not just cosmetic. So the other cover, this is the fabric cover. The other cover, which I don't have to have, is a solid, easy, clean cover as well. And again, we listen to a lot of market data and feedback, a lot of our big healthcare customers, a lot of our education customers, and the ability to have a hard cover that you can spray with antibacterial protectors, wipe it down, clean it down, keep it hygienic was a really big ask, and we're delighted that we're going to be able to deliver on that with PanaCast 40.
Craig Durr: Again, it delivers on the use case, if I can say this, because you're going to be where people are closer to the device to in itself, and there's probably more likelihood that someone's going to probably touch it and move probably touch it, move it, or adjust it, or something along that lines, too. So I think that's a helpful feature.
Olly Henderson: Exactly, and what we try to do is on so many of the features, Craig–yes, speeds and speeds are cool. They're nice. Everything has to be technically strong. Yeah, that's table stakes. How do these devices make your life easier? And I think another area of innovation is on the packaging, on the boxes. We've actually got, like a small opening trap door. What does that mean? That means that you can open the trap door on the device, plug in an estimate cable, plug in a power cable. And for those integration partners that have got multiple devices to pre stage, ready to go in client environments, they don't have to pull, you take them out the box. So that's just another nice little nugget that we've got in there.
Craig Durr: All right. I love it. All right. So you sold me on this device. I like this. But let's take a step back and let's try and talk about this a little bit more holistically right now. So beyond just that individual device, I want to be able to feel comfortable partnering with Jabra in this space. How is Jabra playing in the other parts of the office? What should I be thinking about in terms of what Jabra can provide to me as a solution provider?
Olly Henderson: This is a great question. Let me start by answering that with a non product and non technology standpoint. Firstly, it's the people. We're really proud of the people that we have. You know, since I came to Jabra, our customers enjoy working with us. We pride ourselves on support. I think our sales teams are excellent at being super responsive. Our sales engineers are some of the most knowledgeable guys in the business, so that gives people that comfort and support infrastructure that they need from a people's standpoint, right?
But when you start to move into the expanded portfolio again, let's talk about use cases. We can help organizations in so many other areas. You know, if you look I'm at HQ at the moment, everyone's at their desks. We've got our extensive range of headsets, just ranging boom arm wireless without boom arms, all sorts of different ways of doing things as well. Then you've got our Speak2 75 range, our speakerphones and pucks, which, again, a lot of people service in a lot of runs, the P20 personal camera, you know. So lots of different use cases, lots of ways that Jabra can support you on your collaboration journey, whether you're at home in the office, and you need some private audio space, whatever it might be. You know, we really, in my opinion, have a very good soup to nuts portfolio to support businesses.
Craig Durr: I agree. You know, one of the things I really appreciate is the Jabra brand and the brand promise. Having coming up at what? It's like 100 years in the audio space…
Olly Henderson: A hundred and fifty
Craig Durr: 150! I'm sorry. Yeah, you're a teenager. You're not just an adolescent, so you're a teenager in this process. But I think that brand Halo has played over to what people have expected and received from the video portfolio as well. There is a sense of trust. There's a sense of solidness about the products that are coming out of the group there. I think it plays strongly into that. So I am seeing the beginning of what I would call this single-vendor portfolio opportunity, and I think what you're doing is you're addressing the needs as you're seeing them from the customers.
Olly Henderson: Pretty much. That's exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to take an aggregation of customer pain points. You know, we've got some great feedback systems where all of our sales engineers, all of our sales people, all of my product management team, aggregate all of the customer feedback on an almost 24 by seven basis. We're able to vote up and vote down features that we put into products. We're able to get really granular and analyze what is hurting our customers, what's stopping them from coming on the Jabra journey, and what can we do to improve that. So these are the first steps that we're seeing. And to your point, Craig, again, one of the reasons why I'm here– Jabra has got such an excellent heritage in the audio space. We have our customers in the audio space who are willing us to bring the video space to completion and to market as fast as we can. And that's really rewarding. It's really nice that they're on the journey with us, and they're excited to help us build.
Craig Durr: You know, I want to hit one thing here, which I think is worth calling out in terms of your team, both the product management and the engineers, is that you have been cautiously on the leading edge of a Microsoft strategy known as MDEP. And that's something I think that Jabra has actually released the first MDEP Android products into the market, correct?
Olly Henderson: That's right.
Craig Durr: And how does the PanaCast 40 play into that strategy as well?
Olly Henderson: Let's talk architecture for a second, and what we're trying to do is we're trying to build, in our opinion, the most stable, secure architecture that we possibly can. And Microsoft, we're doing that on two fronts. Okay? One is by teaming up with Microsoft on Ender, which is their new Android platform, Microsoft device ecosystem. And that, in our opinion, in a world where a lot of clients wanted to move to the Android platform but were struggling because of their own InfoSec and compliance teams, the argument suddenly changed.
It's like, “Well, if Microsoft's looking after all of your other services, your Active Directory, the entire organizational IT–all of the above. How about if Microsoft were to look after the Android layer on your devices? Would that help you to migrate to an Android Play a little quicker, and undoubtedly the answer is yes. And we're working with Microsoft and with some of our largest customers as well to bring them on the Android journey through Ender.
The other architecture thing, which I think is important to mention at this point, Craig, is we chose, we chose Qualcomm as our chipset part. So in all of our Android devices, we're using that red thread of Qualcomm. And why is that important: because we've got something called AVA that we talk about internally–Android video architecture, right? And that means when we make a feature or something new, something shiny, something really useful to our customers on one device. It's very easy to architect it on that Qualcomm architecture and under MDEP architecture and drop it onto the next device. So it becomes a very repeatable process, so that our engineers could operate at a greater velocity and bring more great features to customers.
Craig Durr: So to understand this MDEP strategy, Jabra is still working within a standardized Android platform, but it sounds like you're still able to innovate on top of that and bring some unique Jabra goodness to your customers.
Olly Henderson: Absolutely. We keep that secret sauce. Craig, yeah, we've got the MDEP platform as the base layer, and then Jabra operating system goes on top of that, and then we can still continue to innovate. So even though someone might want to manage their device fleet through the Teams Admin Center or Zoom Device Manager, we're working very hard on Jabra Plus as well in the background.
Jabra Plus is going to open up all sorts of solutions and services for us in the future, but really, this is our new cloud platform where we will be able to have customers manage their entire video fleet–all of their personal devices. We're moving, over the course of the year, into having API and cloud API, so cloud to cloud infrastructure so that biggest partners can speak to our devices through the cloud, and they can integrate them into their own management platforms. So we're doing a lot of architecture work at the same time as bringing new devices to the market as well, just making things easier and more tangible for IT admins to work with.
Craig Durr: Hey, now we just spent the last three five minutes talking about Microsoft. What about the Zoom shop? Talk to me about certifications of this device across other platforms.
Olly Henderson: Well, we're super close with Zoom. Really enjoyed the relationship. There are some very clever people doing very clever things as well. And we're actually delighted that we've got an industry best six independent streams on Zoom multi stream. That's on PanaCast 50 VBS. We expect it to be a little less, maybe on the 40 VBS. But again, that's ones for the meet, ones for the medium room, ones for the small room. But what does that mean on PanaCast 50 VBS? It means you get your six independent streams, so one could be the room context stream, and then five independent people being picked out in the room. Within each of those five streams, you could technically get split into a quad, so you could have 20 people, which is a bit of overkill, I would agree. But the technical capabilities in the devices are there being able to pick up that many streams. We see Zoom being a key adopter of the PanaCast 40 VBS at that price point and that sort of hubble and smoke small room that they will focus on as well.
Craig Durr: All right, so let me ask you this. I'm gonna be a director. I'm an IT decision maker, and I'm comparing the job or portfolio to other options that are out there in the market. What would you share with me about why I should choose Jabra in terms of bringing them into my environment, my estate, for my solutions?
Olly Henderson: Yeah, I think it's a great question, and it's a pretty simple answer. We design our devices very much with premium components, premium chip sets from Qualcomm. Why is that a benefit to a client? That means that we can continually return good investment opportunities from your first time purchase of your device. There's loads of headroom in these devices. They're very powerful. That means we can continue to bring great feature sets and change the way that you can use the device, so it feels like you're getting a new device every time we bring out a large value pack or a major firmware release.
Craig Durr: But I think it shows a good history of continuous improvement. You're not just launching the product and then letting it sit in the market. This is as much a software development story as it is. It's about hardware coming to market.
Olly Henderson: Absolutely, and I would put it the other way around. It is more of a software development story than it is the hardware coming to the market. Again, the hardware is all well and good and. Deliver excellent hardware at great quality, but the software is really where the differentiation can take place.
Craig Durr: Well, then let me bring this back around. So I think I like the product. I like what you tell me about the product I like, what you're talking to me about how it plays into the Jabra portfolio. Help me understand how Jabra sees the future. Where are you going forward as a company, and what ride would I be on with Jabra if I choose to bring you into my estate?
Olly Henderson: Yeah, it's very clearly defined. We are going to round out the small rooms, maybe with some additional offerings in there. And then very much, the teams currently are working on how we move into large spaces and larger ones. And we're looking at some interesting technologies. We're looking at some IP-based technologies, and we're having some fun figuring out what will be the simplest and most stable way to deploy large room solutions for our clients at scale. I think the key target area is from 2 to 22 people. We want to look after people in those spaces. Once you get past that, we're probably very happy for you to speak to your integrated partner or your channel partner to make a customer of bespoke room.
Craig Durr: I want to go back to one of the opening topics we talked about as well, which is your approach towards BYOD. This continues to be a growing area. It sounds like what you've got is almost a hedge strategy that people can buy into currently. An intelligent BYOD device–is that a fair statement there?
Olly Henderson: Yeah. I think if anyone's moving into the BYOD space. BYOD has changed, right? Obviously, you had great devices like Poly Studio and Logi MeetUp, the first iterations that sold numerous quantities. I think the market and the expectation from the customer has moved on a lot since those early devices, and now BYOD devices have to be intelligent, so you have to be able to manage them. You have to know what's going on in the room. They have to be able to give tangible feedback of what's happening in that room. So I think any way that we look forward to a BYOD strategy, which we certainly will be, we were first into BYOD. That was our first step into the market with PanaCast 50, the original guy. You know, we don't see that market going away. In fact, it’s only growing with different use cases. So as video rooms become more accessible, and there's more rooms available BYOD is certainly filling up those smaller spaces.
Craig Durr: I got it. All right. Well, you know what, Olly, I think I've gone through my list of questions here. There's a lot of good stuff here. Like I said, I think I like the product in itself, the PanaCast 40 VBS seems like a solid product. You guys announced it. When is it going to be available to market?
Olly Henderson: It's going to be with us in summer 2025.
Craig Durr: Okay, and in terms of UC platform certifications, what should I expect?
Olly Henderson: It'll come to market with Teams and Zoom straight away. We're looking at some other partners, maybe in our Asia market as well.
Craig Durr: I got it. Now, I'm interested in it as an IT administrator, so I want to learn more. How can I see this product? Where can I learn more between now and that summertime?
Olly Henderson: Well, we're going to be showing it off at Enterprise Connect as well. And then, we will be bringing it to InfoComm in the summer. But before that, reach out to Jabra. You know, you can sign up to the list. We'll keep you updated with the latest and greatest information that's coming on the product. We're excited to show it, show it off as much as we can in the next few months.
Craig Durr: All right, this sounds good. So Olly, I gotta ask you something. Did I grill you hard? Do you feel like you still have some skin left on your knuckles after this?
Olly Henderson: You did. It's always a pleasure, though. It's always friendly sparring, Craig.
Craig Durr: Well, to let people know, I mean, we are in some mighty different time zones right now. It's afternoon for you. I'm still working on my morning coffee right now, so hopefully we had a good conversation for our listeners here. Olly, before we go ahead and wrap up–any last thoughts, any last ideas you want to share with our audience?
Olly Henderson: No, just bear with us. We know we're still relatively new on the video journey. Great sentiment, great people around the business, bringing in some leaders as well, especially on my product management team, bringing in some great industry knowledge. So I can only see the future looking very rosy for Jabra video, significant investment going on. So please stick with us as we continue to build up the portfolio, which we know is moving in a very good direction.
Craig Durr: I think you guys have an excellent track record here, and I'm looking forward to this product coming to market as well. Again, it fills a niche that was needed with a very solid product at a great price point. So kudos to you and the team.
Olly Henderson: Thank you, Craig.
Craig Durr: All right then, well, let's do this, everyone. I'm going to wrap up this episode of Decision Point. Hopefully, we asked some of the questions that you're interested in hearing from Olly Henderson, who is the Lead of Video Product Management for Jabra.
Olly, thank you for your time.
Olly Henderson: Thank you, Craig. It's been a pleasure, as always.
Craig Durr: Yeah, everyone. We will see you on the next episode of Decision Point. Take care.
