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12 minute read
Summary
In this insightful interview, Craig sits down with Josh Blalock, Chief Video Evangelist from Jabra, and Danny Hayasaka, Senior Director of Marketing and Emerging Technologies from CallOne, Inc.
In this episode, you will learn about:
🔶 Jabra and Microsoft Collaboration: Discover how Jabra optimizes Microsoft Teams AI-driven capabilities like Copilot, ensuring a future-proof investment.
🔶Easy Setup & Deployment: Understand how Jabra's audio & video solutions accelerate a better experience for both IT and end-users.
🔶Security and Management: Learn about the critical role of security in Jabra's solutions, including Microsoft's upcoming MDEP operating system, designed to provide enhanced security and management capabilities.
🔶Flexibility and Choice: Explore how Jabra offers a range of devices to meet diverse customer needs and supports partners with comprehensive tools and resources to ensure optimal performance and satisfaction.
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Transcript
Craig Durr
Everybody. This is Craig Durr, chief analyst and founder of the Collab Collective. Thank you for being here. I'm excited to have a conversation today with two really good friends of mine and we're going to talk about the Jabra ecosystem as it plays into the Microsoft teams solution. Joining me today, I have Josh Blalock, chief evangelist from Jabra, and I also have Danny Hayasaka, who is the senior director of Marketing and Emerging Technologies from Call One, a key partner for the Jabra ecosystem.
Craig Durr
Hey, this is an opportunity that I wanted to learn more about what Jabra is doing with Microsoft. Now. You have a lot of AI driven solutions and the way that you integrate them is really phenomenal. Tell me more about what you've done with the Microsoft ecosystem.
Josh Blalock
Yeah, we've worked very closely with Microsoft on the innovation front for quite a long time, And lately everybody knows the name of the game is Copilot, copilot, copilot. Right. But even before copilot was so mainstream, there are there were elements of capturing people in the room, identifying them, putting that stuff in the transcripts. And so we've been working alongside Microsoft for quite some time.
Josh Blalock
A couple of those areas that are finally out in the market or just about to be in the market in a couple of cases, have to do with identifying people from the front of room camera. Right? Right from that from that Panacast 50, you are able to have a certified intelligent speaker that is front of room, not center of table that identifies people if they have opted in because that's important and enrolled their voices and their voice profiles.
Josh Blalock
So we can tell who said what in the meeting and that meeting transcript in the intelligent meeting recaps and in all the copilot actions that come out after that and of course what’s super important there is not that you're identifying them, but that you're identifying them accurately and that every word they say is as clear and crisp and clean as it can be.
Josh Blalock
And that's where you want a leader in audio to be able to do that. And in the very next couple of weeks here, very near future, we'll be expanding that identification story for copilot by being one of the first to be certified with facial recognition in front of room camera.
Craig Durr
I mean, that's incredible. You're right. The DNA that you guys have around audio, you're bringing in the both the audio and video experience. I think you're one of the first front of room bars actually had that certified Speaker. The first. That's fantastic. That's great. So, Danny, I consider you in your role as voice of the customer. You work as a partner in between the vendors and those end buyers as well, too.
Craig Durr
How does a story like Jabra’s resonate within customers that you're working with?
Danny Hayasaka
I think the important thing to note with clients is that while there's a lot of this technical speak going on, right, what really matters to the customer is walking into the space and allowing the technology to work without having an engineering degree to get it to work. They simply walk into the room and the Jabra solutions do what they're supposed to do again, in their partnership with Microsoft.
Danny Hayasaka
It works like it's supposed to without having anybody have to go out and get a degree, right?
Craig Durr
You had a great reference. We were talking about this before and you talked about the wild, wild West coming out of the pandemic.
Danny Hayasaka
Yeah. So yeah, so so during the pandemic, because everyone the shift happened from in-house infrastructure or telecommunications platforms to these cloud based platforms because businesses wanted to continue moving on to include platforms like teams. And so clients went out and of course there was this mad dash for anything that would allow their team members to work remotely. And it became the wild, Wild West because there was a shortage of product.
Danny Hayasaka
Then people went all over the place. And now as we're heading out of the pandemic, organizations are looking at what's going on in their world, and they need the ability to standardize on solutions that provide professional grade audio, professional grade video and that they're able to manage because that's the challenge that they have today, is that you have remote employees all over distributed and you don't know what they're using, and they call in with those helpless tickets and they need help.
Danny Hayasaka
But the devices aren't working and then IT can't help them, right? Because it's not a certified device, it's not connected. They can't see it. And so this is where Jabra Solutions come in.
Craig Durr
You know, I don't I'm hedging away from calling it hybrid work. I'm calling it distributed work because it's just the way we're working. And you're hitting a key point there. People are doing work from home, from office, from remote, from all these different locations. And making that technology work seamlessly seems to be a key element, right? It's a lot for Jabra to consider managing.
Craig Durr
There's a lot of of issues there. How do you manage this in a seamless way?
Josh Blalock
And I love that. Distributed hybrid has been a trap for so long. Everyone's like when are we going to get to the definition of hybrid? Distributed is so much more accurate, so good job on coining that. Okay good, I got that one. There we go. But yeah, so when it comes to this wild, wild West that there was to deal with, right?
Josh Blalock
You have- and that's a great way to put it because you had anything goes. That did the job so I got that device, this thing does what I needed to do for this use case. We were piecing together businesses that were in-person and piecing them together in a distributed way. But there was just a lot of chaos left over.
Danny Hayasaka
Oh yeah.
Josh Blalock
In the aftermath. And so as we begin to build out our portfolio and look at what that was going to look like to help organizations start to solve that problem in a way that made sense and was clean, We, you know, flexibility and choice became the name of the game there. And so the Panacast 50 kind of came out right around the time of the pandemic.
Josh Blalock
So it was just kind of already out there. But then the pandemic hit. And then as time went on, that story evolved to include if you need a Android solution, well now there's the VBS, which is the Panacast experience on an Android bar, right? If you need a USB instead of a Windows based solution, then the Panacast 50 is perfect for the USB.
Josh Blalock
Use it anywhere scenario. So whatever the use case is in the room, we're trying to make sure we're covering all the bases there and providing customers with the way to manage that all centrally. On top of that, we got to think about the distributed workers that are in the room and those workers, you know, they needed headsets for a variety of use cases, which was already something that we we were kind of in that space and doing that already.
Josh Blalock
So it was natural, the transition, how to solve all these distributed anything goes wild wild West problems with a consistent experience. And that's that's kind of where the flexibility choices come along and how our portfolio has evolved to the point that it is now and the direction that it's continuing to go into the future.
Craig Durr
And you're not only investing in the management piece, but that end user piece as well. Yes. That seamless experience that they have, whether they're going from using the webcam at home, for example, to in the room and actually seeing that same type of interface that flow.
Josh Blalock
That it is. And that's important as we think about management, because management is so top of mind. You know, we- any other certified solution in the teams room or Zoom room area, we are working within those platforms. But the ability to be able to manage other things on a more granular level in conjunction with those platforms is something that has been top of mind for us.
Josh Blalock
So we're we're excited to be, you know, having the Jabra plus solution rolling out, and the first stage of that is meeting room management. And that's where these video bars are now. They'll be managed and updated and grouped together for management purposes, but we have not made any secret that the next phase of that is going to be personal peripherals.
Josh Blalock
Right. And that's that's key, is bringing it all under one roof to where you now have visibility into the distributed devices that are out there, not just your rooms. From an I.T. management standpoint.
Craig Durr
The Jabra Plus management platform. Want to get back to that in the second. I want to talk more about that. But, Danny, what Josh just explained is a lot of options out there. We talked everything from Android based solutions to window based solutions. Is that what customers are asking for? Is that optionality in market?
Danny Hayasaka
Yeah, So that flexibility is super important because organizations aren't one size, right? You have SMB, you have mid-market, you have large enterprise, and then everything in between. And how each of those members, team members work varies from company to company, from role to role industry to industry and so the need for a device is going to vary. And Jabra has done a fantastic job of creating a broad portfolio that covers the receptionist all the way to the roving salesperson, right?
Danny Hayasaka
That's out in the streets there. But it's really phenomenal what they've done in terms of the- I mean, I use the Jabra Evolve2 65 Flex myself and the Jabra PanaCast 20 because A) it's portable, it's foldable, and so it suits the way I work, which is from anywhere I work from. I work from anywhere. Yes.
Craig Durr
Hey, so what I hear you saying is they have a lot of optionality for those customers which fits the need, and I'm curious from a partner point of view, talk to me about how Jabra supports you as a partner. Does it bring that same type of fulfillment that it does to the end customer portfolio just to the partner relationship?
Danny Hayasaka
Oh man, partnerships matter. All right. Partnerships matter. So it's really important because there are a ton of device manufacturers that we work with. That's not a secret, but there are folks that we do work with more closely because they have the tools and resources to A) educate our team members, educate the end user, and they continue to innovate and create new solutions and they keep us all aware of all these new things that are coming so that we can share with our customers via NDA roadmaps to share with clients.
Danny Hayasaka
Because some, again, large enterprises have big budgets, sometimes millions of dollars that they need to spend and they need to know what's coming. And so that's very, very important. And the partnership, the relationship, if something goes wrong, it's so it's beyond that. Then there's the support side of it. Yeah. When somebody buys something and it breaks, what happens?
Danny Hayasaka
That's where partnerships really stand out, because if you buy something from somewhere, it's, you know, some e-tail place somewhere out there, you may not get support. Whereas with Jabra, you buy something. They have a phenomenal support team that's ready to help customers set up, whether it's a single headset or a large video deployment, they're ready to stand up and help.
Craig Durr
It sounds like they have your back.
Danny Hayasaka
Oh yes.
Craig Durr
As much as they have the customer’s back. That’s fantastic.
Josh Blalock
We want that to be relational rather than transactional, right?
Craig Durr
That's a great phrase. I love that. I love it. Hey, Josh, let's bring this back to the Microsoft conversation piece now. MDEP, I hear this everywhere. MDEP, MDEP, MDEP. I mean, you guys actually talked about this I think last year even. Yeah. What is this MDEP story? What should I be taking this away?
Josh Blalock
Craig MDEP is security. Security at the end of the day is what you want to think about when you think what is MDEP? The bottom line here? You know, without getting way into the weeds, we're talking it's an operating system, it's an Android operating system that is going to be running on your room. So instead of a OS that is developed by a manufacturer, it's an OS developed by Microsoft.
Josh Blalock
And that's the beauty in there, because customers are not just thinking constantly about manageability and ease of use on the customer side, they're thinking about security. And so this really, really for a lot of people boils down to security and- well to be frank? Well, some of the earlier conversations that were out there were things like where a customer is sitting there weighing, I want to go the Android route, but when it comes to my security team, we've now got to go through and do this assessment and we got to approve
Josh Blalock
you as the the operating system builder. And there is a whole big security tangled mess that starts to.... Right. But then the conversation shifts to what if Microsoft was making that operating system, that Android based operating system? And you see that light bulb go off. All right. They know that that enterprise grade security that Microsoft is well known for is going to be baked in.
Josh Blalock
And and so that is one of those areas of innovation that we've been thankful to be working alongside Microsoft at the forefront. Right. Driving right toward that that MDEP delivery. We're excited for what they're doing in that space. But security is just part of our DNA that goes beyond MDEP.
Craig Durr
So forget the acronym is the takeaway here. Focus on security and management, too, right? Because it not only plays into the Microsoft portal as well to the pro portal. Yeah. But at the same time, this is where I wanted to come back to the Jabra Plus story as well. The management elements that you guys have independent of the Microsoft relationship bring a level of assurance to that enterprise.
Craig Durr
I.T Manager alongside that security, right?
Josh Blalock
It does. And both are big checkboxes for a customer. That's good. They need to know that they can manage all the devices in a meaningful, concise way, but they need to know that it's a secure solution at the end of the day, because no one wants that multimillion dollar front page news of, you know, some sort of breach.
Josh Blalock
So security, security, security is key and MDEP is a key piece of that. You know, whether it's that for us, whether it's our DECT headsets on the engage side, whether it's the way that we are going to be managing devices in Jabra+ and making that a a uniform place to do it. Security is top of mind for not just our customers, but us as well.
Craig Durr
Perfect. Sounds good. All right, let's go ahead and look to the future. I want to hear what's down the road. I don't want to put you on the spot, but you've got a lot of great work that you're doing with Microsoft. Share with me as much you can is my point. Right? What is the future of Microsoft and Jabra’s relationship?
Craig Durr
What should we be looking for next year?
Josh Blalock
Yeah, without going too deep because you already know that we kind of barred you from the whisper room at ISE. But yeah.
Craig Durr
I remember that.
Josh Blalock
As I mentioned a little earlier on, one of the things we've got coming up with Microsoft is that facial recognition piece. So we've got a value pack update is what we call our updates to the PanaCast 50 and our bars that is coming in the next couple of weeks here that will bring that facial recognition capability that Microsoft is now deploying.
Josh Blalock
Right? So the customer still needs to go in on teams and create a face profile and all that stuff, and opt in essentially. Once they do, you update the PanaCast 50, it will have the ability to now identify those people in the room for all that Copilot AI goodness that you are, that you are adopting and building in to your company strategy.
Josh Blalock
So that's the near-term of what we're doing there. And then we've got some cool things that are happening a little bit later in the year as Ignite rolls around. So I will kind of punt to the rest of that to say, Watch Ignite, Let's talk again at Ignite you know. There we go. But we'll talk a little bit more about that.
Craig Durr
I'm going to get an invite to that whisper booth when that time comes. Danny, how does this sound to you? What are your final thoughts of Jabra and Microsoft?
Danny Hayasaka
Yeah, so my final thoughts on Jabra and Microsoft is that they are A) leading the way with the Panacast 50 and some of the innovations they had early on. But they continue to support how organizations, how these companies, how people are working today. Yeah, and that's what it boils down to is organizations need to get their job done, their business is done, and they need to communicate and collaborate.
Danny Hayasaka
Right. How do they do that? You need professional grade devices and Jabra provides those.
Craig Durr
That's fantastic. I love the answer. It's a combination of futureproof as well as eye on the customer going forward. All right, Josh, Danny, this has been very insightful. There's a lot of great information I think you're going to be sharing with both of your audiences. Now, if they want to find out more, where can they go for the Jabra - to find more information about Jabra?
Josh Blalock
Of course, I would say start at Jabra.com. That that's going to be the starting place. Specifically head on over to the video solutions section and you're going to find the latest there. And of course, get in touch with an account executive. You want to go a little bit deeper, look a little bit more to the future.
Craig Durr
Fantastic. Josh, Danny, thank you guys so much for your time. Everyone. This has been super informative. I hope you enjoyed our conversation about Jabra and Microsoft. Take care.
