·
6 minute read
Summary
On this episode of Direct from the Expo, the Collab Collective's Craig Durr talks with Greg Baribault, VP of Product & Portfolio Management at HP, live from ISE 2025. They explore HP | Poly’s comprehensive portfolio of collaboration solutions, the company’s AI-driven innovations, and how cloud management is reshaping the hybrid meeting experience.
Their discussion covers:
- Holistic Room Solutions: HP Poly’s full lineup of Android, BYOD, and PC-based solutions tailored for every meeting space.
- AI-Driven Performance: How DirectorAI and VoiceScoreAI enhance video clarity and audio quality in meetings.
- Modular Meeting Rooms: The flexibility of Poly’s new modular solutions for large and small spaces, including the new Poly Studio V12.
- Cloud-Based Management: How Poly Lens and HP’s Workforce Experience Platform enable seamless device management and insights.
Listen to the Audio:
Transcript
Craig Durr: Hey, everybody. This is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of the Collab Collective. And I want to welcome you to Direct from the Expo from ISE 2025. This is the world's largest Pro AV and UC experience. And I'm excited to bring to you some insights taking place from the showroom floor. Right now, I have joining me–Greg Baribault, VP of Product and Portfolio from HP Poly.
How are you doing Greg?
Greg Baribault: I'm doing great.
Craig Durr: This is an exciting show so far, right?
Greg Baribault: It is very exciting.
Craig Durr: Hey, I want to dive in and talk to you about what HP is doing right now in this space. Let's do this. You've had so many new products come out, I think, over this past year. You have a really complete holistic portfolio. Talk to me right now about the breadth and depth of what the portfolio is doing for these room solutions.
Greg Baribault: Yeah, for sure. So this event restored connections. The mantra for this event–it aligns so nicely with what HP believes and that restoration of the authentic human connections that people should have with each other to drive great impact, to have great collaboration. Our portfolio now–last year we launched so many new products–now we have a product now for every size room, every platform, every UC provider to really meet customers where they are on their journey, and really create those great connections between people.
Craig Durr: That is fantastic. We're talking about everything from a holistic portfolio of Android-based solutions to BYOD and PC-based solutions as well, right?
Greg Baribault: That's right.
Craig Durr: What are some of those highlights that came from those two portfolios?
Greg Baribault: Well, for us it's about completion of the portfolio–meeting customers where they are on their own journey. So now with our portfolio, we have what we call a 32, 52, 72 lineup–small room, medium room, large room–and an X and a V series for those. A V is a USB-based device for BYOD or connecting to a PC, and our X series is Android, so native Android devices, appliances hang on the wall and deliver the same experience into every room, regardless of platform or UC provider.
Craig Durr: And you mentioned that regardless of platforms, I think you guys have one of the broadest interop stories with all these different platforms. Key partners for you, right?
Greg Baribault: Oh, for sure. You know, we depend heavily on our partnership–Teams, Google, and Zoom–to really deliver the end user experience. But below that, we bring AI that really delivers a multi-camera or an AI driven director experience that's the same across every room. The last thing anyone wants to do is learn how to use a new room that they've gone into for the first time.
Craig Durr: I can imagine. You've got some really exciting solutions–both for the large room space and the small room space–something that you're announcing here at ISE. Start talking about the large room solution with me, and then share with us what you're announcing here at ISE.
Greg Baribault: Sure, yeah. So at the large room space, we have a 72 series bar and an X and V series, but we also introduced modular room capability. So a modular room will be powered by G62, which is a small Android compute. Deploy it anywhere and connect to your console, speakers, microphones, cameras. And then on the PC side, for our PC-based customers, we have the G9 Plus–Poly Studio G9 Plus, which is kind of unique to HP to be able to provide both the compute and the audio-video, for these larger spaces that need to be a more modular solution. Now, in the small room–
Craig Durr: Right, I'm excited to hear about this one.
Greg Baribault: I'm very excited at ISE to announce the Poly Studio V12. So the V12 is a USB-based device but designed for those smaller spaces–20 megapixel camera, 120 degree field of view to really capture everybody in that small space. But again, with that same promise of consistent user experience–same DirectorAI, same great acoustic noise blocking and audio pickup so people really can connect authentically, from every side.
Craig Durr: Well, let's lean into what you talked about because that's really important, the continuity of experience taking place across all these different room sizes. You guys at HP have invested a lot into the AI performance and technology, especially in the audio video space. Talk to me a little bit about some of the solutions there.
Greg Baribault: Yeah, that's super exciting. AI, of course, is a really exciting space right now. But to deliver DirectorAI, just to focus on video for a moment, we have every camera work exactly the same way and provide things like people counting so IT pros understand who's in the room–How’s the room being utilized? Are people really having an impact? Glass wall detection and ignoring people that are walking outside of a glass wall. We've got things like face framing, and as people are speaking, we can shoot just their face so you pick up those little microexpressions about how people are feeling about the conversation. Ignoring people that are on TV screens or on static images. We have so many customers with brand photography on their walls, and you don't want to see them show up in the meeting. So AI helps us ignore those. And again, it's one experience across every single room.
Craig Durr: That's fantastic. Now, there's also something really exciting you do, which I think is very interesting. Poly Labs–this allows you to actually take some of these thought leadership ideas and start bringing them out to market and see how they impact and work within customer environments. Tell me about Poly Labs.
Greg Baribault: Yeah, so in our Poly VideoOS and our Poly Video Experience, we have a Labs set up that allows customers to opt in to new and emerging technologies, try things out. It helps us learn what customers are using, what they love, where we can still improve, helps them understand how to maybe adapt and adopt some new technologies before they're generally available. So it's really a win-win.
Craig Durr: One that I'm really excited about is VoiceScoreAI. Tell me about that.
Greg Baribault: So VoiceScoreAI actually is able to monitor your meeting in real time and understand, are we picking up echo and reverberant sounds off the wall? Are we picking up noise from maybe an HVAC system and play that signal into our management solution? And it lets IT pros understand– how was the real meeting experience happening? Things that people may not really even notice on their own. We're able to really give them a score, let them go fine tune and adapt that room to the environment that the device is in and deliver perfect, crystal clear audio in every meeting.
Craig Durr: You know, you started talking about something which is a great segue way to talk about the cloud management solutions that you have in place right now. Why don't you talk to me not only about Poly Lens, but how it plays into the workforce experience platform?
Greg Baribault: Yeah, for sure. So Poly Lens is our cloud, our online management solution. It allows all of our devices to be managed, even let IT pros connect in remotely to a device and drive that device from the remote console. These are great new innovations in the Poly Lens experience. Over time, of course, we expect to integrate that deeply into our Workforce Experience Platform with HP and give customers a one pane of glass to get insights about how space is being used, how much impact people are having in their meetings, and of course, monitor and manage all of their great HP Poly devices.
Craig Durr: This is a really, really important part of the Better Together story with Poly. And there are hybrid solutions being part of the HP larger story and what the holistic group brings together to bear, Right?
Greg Baribault: Absolutely.
Craig Durr: So let's recap what you got here. We talked about a holistic portfolio, everything from serving from different platforms to different ecosystems to different room sizes. You've got a great new announcement of the V12. I can't wait for us to have a chance to go in and take a look at that. And then the story of how you guys have played into your thought leadership within the AI, within the group collaboration space and the cloud management piece. Did I miss anything there?
Greg Baribault: Yeah, I think you got it covered.
Craig Durr: Well, why don't you help me with this? Why don't you tell our audience where they can go to find more?
Greg Baribault: All right. The HP booth is in Hall Two, so come take a look. If you're not at ISE, the newsroom.hp.com has everything that I just described and more.
Craig Durr: That's perfect. Everyone, Greg. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate it.
Greg Baribault: Thank you.
Craig Durr: Hey, everyone, this is Craig Durr from ISE 2025. We are Direct from the Expo. I invite you to stay tuned because we're going to bring you some more exciting insights from other thought leaders within the program. Take care.
