Tag Archive for: Video Conferencing

Nureva appoints PPI as an authorized dealer in metro New York area

CALGARY, Alberta — June 4, 2018 — Nureva Inc., an award-winning collaboration-solutions company, announces the appointment of Presentation Products, Inc. (PPI) as an authorized dealer in the metro New York area for its visual collaboration and audio conferencing solutions. PPI is a full-service audiovisual design and integration firm specializing in visual collaboration and unified communications products and services. With its head office and showroom in Midtown Manhattan, PPI is well-positioned to introduce Nureva’s products to its extensive customer base in business and higher education.

PPI has a 30-year track record of providing customers with reliable and cost-efficient technology solutions for their collaboration, presentation and communication spaces. The company has built its reputation by introducing industry-leading solutions to its customers while building long-term relationships based on professionalism, honesty and trust. PPI brings a focus on understanding customer needs, a relentless drive to deliver customer satisfaction and a team with deep experience in all aspects of design, delivery and support of audiovisual systems.

“Great companies provide great tools to their teams to stay ahead of the competition,” said Orin Knopp, PPI’s president and CEO. “After extensive internal testing of similar solutions on the market by our R & D team, we have selected the Nureva solution as best of breed for local and remote participants to collaborate and keep every member of a team engaged; it does what no other product in its class can do.”

“We are delighted to welcome Presentation Products as an authorized dealer in New York,” said Nancy Knowlton, Nureva’s CEO. “The PPI team shares our passion for delivering simple, powerful solutions that deliver meaningful customer value and we look forward to supporting them in growing the market for our products.”

About the Nureva™ visual collaboration solution

The Nureva visual collaboration solution combines Span™ Workspace with the Nureva Wall. It is designed to support highly collaborative activities that benefit from visualizing and interacting with information on a large surface, including structured processes such as agile, lean and design thinking.

Span Workspace provides an expansive cloud-based digital canvas that can be tailored to suit virtually any collaborative activity. It draws upon familiar, simple and flexible tools including sticky notes, sketches, images, templates and screen sharing. Participants contribute and interact with the content using their personal devices, whether a computer, tablet or smartphone, or directly on the Nureva Wall or interactive display. The Nureva Wall transforms collaborative spaces by creating large, ultrawide interactive surfaces that turn walls into expansive digital workspaces with high-performance multitouch and inking capabilities. The Nureva Wall is optimized for use with Span Workspace and can incorporate users’ preferred applications, including Microsoft® Office, Adobe® products and AutoCAD® software. For more information, visit the Visual Collaboration section on the Nureva website.

About the HDL300 audio conferencing system

The HDL300 audio conferencing system resolves the frustrating and persistent issue of poor audio pickup, especially in dynamic environments where participants move around the room. When combined with the Nureva Span visual collaboration system or other interactive display, the HDL300 system can also be used as the primary source for audio and video playback. At the core of the HDL300 system is Nureva’s breakthrough Microphone Mist™ technology, which places 8,192 virtual microphones throughout a room to pick up sound from any location to ensure that everyone is clearly heard regardless of where they are in the room or the direction they are facing.

The system uses sophisticated algorithms to simultaneously process sound from all virtual microphones to provide remote participants with a high-quality listening experience, enabled by continuous autocalibration, simultaneous echo cancellation, position-based automatic gain control and sound masking. The HDL300 system is optimized for small to mid-sized environments and is designed to work with Skype® for Business, Zoom, Blue Jeans, Cisco® Spark, Cisco WebEx®, GoToMeeting™, Pexip® Infinity Connect and other common UC&C applications. For more information, visit the HDL300 section on the Nureva website.

About Nureva

Nureva Inc. is a multiple award-winning private company that imagines and builds solutions for tapping the creative and problem-solving potential of diverse teams around the globe. For businesses, that means enabling the group creative processes that are used to solve problems and develop breakthrough ideas that drive organizational advantage. In education, it means enabling the student-led, collaborative activities that deepen learning and equip students with the skills required for future success. A passion for deep customer understanding and a commitment to innovation drive the company’s product road map. For more information, visit Nureva’s website.

Top 50 Systems Integrators of 2017

It was a huge year for Presentation Products, Inc. (PPI) in 2017. The icing on the cake was continuing our run in Systems Contractor News Top 50 Systems Integrators annual industry compilation!

As always we delivered outstanding audiovisual solutions and managed services throughout the year, while working toward an office and warehouse move to Midtown and Long Island City locations respectively. Both locations give PPI the opportunity to showcase new and emerging technology to clients and partners.

PPI CEO & President Orin Knopp said the company worked hard to position itself in 2017 for major growth in 2018. “Our revamped managed services offerings now includes remote monitoring, ultimately giving our clients piece of mind they will have an immediate response with minimal down-time,” Knopp said. “Expanding our service and support systems greatly expands what we are able to offer to our clients, and frees us up to develop into new markets.”

PPI has positioned itself for great things in 2018. Thanks to SCN for including us in the list, and a big thanks to our project partners for helping to make 2017 a success!

Click here to read more.

 

Interesting installations completed in the past year include:

Kimpton Everly Hotel

Horizon Media Expansion

Viacom Sky Square

Lyrical Asset Management

56 Leonard

Kimpton De Witt Amsterdam

Innovative AV at Horizon Media

PPI brings new solutions to office buildout

High ceilings, oversized windows, panoramic views, and sprawling terraces. Those are the first things you’ll notice on the new floors at Horizon Media’s 75 Varick St. location. The second points of note are the innovative communication and collaboration technologies throughout the space.

In the spring of 2016, Presentation Products, Inc. began a year-long audiovisual consulting process, culminating in a design/build contract for Horizon’s latest office expansion. PPI once again teamed up with architect A+I Architects and client representative VVA to create state-of-the-art collaboration and presentation spaces on Horizon’s 11th and 12th floors.

In addition to standard Huddle Rooms and high-end Boardrooms, PPI had the opportunity to design and install innovative solutions requiring meticulous coordination.

The Garden

The Garden – a theater-style training room – features five displays installed inside of a ceiling mounted pentagon shroud. The unique display solution maximizes the room’s usable area and audience size in a challenging space.

Kyle Balkcom, a Principal at PPI who manages the sales and design team, said the 270 degree audience area required unique video solutions to allow functional lines of sight and viewing angles at all locations.

“We also needed to create an open, free-form area where a speaker could present without the hindrance of screens,” Balkcom said. “Along with frequent partners, A+I Architects, we designed a custom steel structure and millwork piece to seamlessly integrate five displays – each one facing a section of the audience.

Social Distillery

The Social Distillery features a 6×2 video wall with extensive presentation flexibility and advanced control capabilities. This space is used for internal creative sessions, as well as a tool intended to present social media platforms and programs to clients in a large dashboard format, with multiple preset viewing options.

The Local

The Local serves as an employee gathering and town hall space. This multi-purpose event area is designed to accommodate a broad range of uses, including staff meetings and after-hours events.

The Garden, Social Distillery, and The Local are routed and controlled from a centralized AV system, allowing for live event overflow by sharing video content and audio to or from the other spaces. Additionally, the ability to live stream or connect through live video with Horizon’s LA office, other floors in the New York location, or anywhere in the world allows simple communication and collaboration between partners, employees, and clients.

PPI has been Horizon Media’s AV partner since 2014. Jesse DeMarzo, Director of AV, Technology Service and Support at Horizon says the quality of work, the industry knowledge, and the reliability that PPI brings to the table puts him at ease when dealing with major expansions and day-to-day managed services.

“From the inception of this project, Presentation Products has been an outstanding partner; Kyle was in constant contact with us through every step of the discovery and design phase, making it painless even through our many changes,” DeMarzo said. “Once we entered the build phase, it was a seamless transition to our project manager Sean.

“Every technician and engineer on the project was extremely knowledgeable and reliable. Even with our custom spaces and unique buildout, I never felt like they were unable to meet our needs.”

PPI successfully delivered this project in the Summer of 2017. One full-time PPI employee is on call for managed services to assist Horizon with the operation of audiovisual systems on five floors.

From the Portfolio:

Horizon Expansion III

Horizon Expansion II

PPI joins forces with Zoom

The way offices are configured is evolving and has changed dramatically in the last decade. Seventy percent of companies who have repurposed their space have changed to open collaborative spaces, and 50 percent have shifted space so they have more conference rooms. (Source: Herman Miller).

Allowing teams to work in small spaces ignites ideas, engages employees, and gives companies a competitive edge. These spaces need to include systems for video, audio, screen sharing and white boarding for teams working in multiple locations. Meetings are the real work of our age.

With all this in mind, Presentation Products, Inc. is adding one of the fastest growing cloud solutions to our portfolio as a Zoom Reseller Partner.

We know your time is important and your online meetings need to work all of the time, every time.

“Our clients are looking for turnkey solutions. Along with our design and integration services, with Zoom, PPI can now also provide market leading video and web conference services,” said PPI Director of Sales, Kyle Balkcom. “With PPI deploying Zoom in meeting rooms and at the desktop, our clients can have an easy-to-use, consistent conferencing solution, all from one trusted provider.”

Founded in 2011, Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with a secure, easy platform for video and audio conferencing, messaging, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms.

Key Features:

  • High quality video and audio conferencing with up to 200 interactive video participants or 3,000 webinar viewers can join.
  • Supports scheduled and ad-hoc meetings. See your schedule of upcoming meetings and start your meeting with a single touch on your iPad.
  • Integrates with your Google or Microsoft Exchange calendar so you can instantly host or schedule a meeting from your browser.
  • Support for multiple screens and split views
  • Wireless Content Sharing
    • Zoom Rooms is the only solution that allows you to share high-resolution content over Wi-Fi or by direct HDMI connection.
    • Share iOS and Mac devices via AirPlay mirroring
    • You can even share a video clip with audio.
  • Personal room ID
  • Supports BYOD – participants can join from desktops, laptops, mobile devices, telephones, traditional room system and Zoom Rooms.
  • Multi-layer security
  • Admin can easily monitor use and validate ROI.

So clean up your conference room, broaden your reach, and never drop a conference call again. Contact a PPI Account Manager to learn more about the simple versatility of Zoom and happy conferencing!

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Presentation Products, Inc. (PPI) is a full service audiovisual design and integration firm headquartered in mid-town Manhattan. Since 1988, PPI has provided thousands of clients with reliable and cost-efficient technology solutions for their collaboration, presentation, and communication spaces.

 

Changing Technology of the Huddle Room: Our InfoComm Takeaway

Huddle rooms are nothing new, but in the past few years we’ve worked on a ton of office build-outs with a new emphasis and dedication to these little collaborative work spaces. According to research from Gartner, the proportion of video systems purchased for huddle rooms doubled from 10 percent in 2015 to 20 percent in 2016. This same research predicts a 400 percent growth in group video conferencing usage by 2019 (1).

A quick trek around the InfoComm showroom floor confirmed suppliers are stepping up their game in the world of huddle rooms, and there is a lot of new technology for adding high quality, software-based codec video conferencing features to these rooms.

Audio
For high-end audio installation solutions, many small Digital Signal Processors (DSP) are making their way to the market. Here are some products we’re excited about:

Biamp has a new 4in/4out DSP with a broad selection of audio components, routing options, and signal processing. It can handle the open standard Audio Video Bridging (AVB), or Audinate’s proprietary Dante. Plus, it supports Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) audio codec – Available October 2017.

Shure has an affordable Dante enabled 8in/4out DSP with Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), made to pair with their ceiling array microphone, or two table array microphones. Shure also has a 4in/4out for soft codecs that supports one table array mic, however, this unit does not have AEC built in.

Application of either of these products allows a broader selection of microphones and speakers for installation, and for precisely tuning a room for the best audio performance. This can create a no-compromise professional audio experience in huddle spaces as they become a larger part of the day-to-day work experience.

The Biamp and Shure products operate as standalone DSP deployments. Meanwhile, QSC Audio Products is encouraging integrators to centralize DSP resources and allocate portions of large DSP servers to support several rooms, which may be more cost effective in certain deployments.

For mid-range installations, products like Biamp’s Devio and Sennheiser’s TeamConnect are designed to add quality audio into Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) spaces with minimal fuss by reducing connection requirements to a simple USB cable.

Finally, for quick, simple integrations, products like the Yamaha CS-700 and the Logitech Meetup integrate cameras, speakers, and beamforming mic arrays into a soundbar-like USB device that mounts below the display.

Video
On the video side, Atlona showed their new small presentation switchers for huddle rooms. Crestron and Extron are well established in this space, but Atlona is a new player, bringing an interesting perspective to the fold.

Atlona’s HDVS-300 incorporates a USB hub to allow BYOD equipment shared access to installed webcams and other USB hardware — a feature that’s typically anchored to a fixed PC. It also eliminates the need for a separate USB extender in more conventional builds. Additionally, Atlona’s UHD-SW-510W attempts to remove the need for wires entirely by incorporating AirPlay, Google Cast, and Miracast into one device; this allows wireless display mirroring without the need to install an extra application or driver. The unit is also one of the first – if not the first – to feature a powered USB-C port, which can be used to charge laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Solutions for huddle rooms should be easy to install and cost effective. As always, Presentation Products is here to help you wade through the changing trends in AV conferencing. Contact a PPI Account Manager to take the conversation about your business’s huddle room implementation and strategy to the next level.

PPI Huddle Room Portfolio Examples
BuzzFeed
Horizon Media
Viacom
Dropbox

Related articles
An Analysis and Comparison of Software-Based Codecs Against the Landscape of Video Conferencing 

 

(1)     Gartner, “The Rise of the Video-enabled Huddle Room in the Digital Workplace,” December 2015

Product Evaluation: BlueJeans Network

Product Evaluation: BlueJeans

The Challenge of Successful Video

Building a successful video collaboration environment for your business is not easy. Thanks to a workforce rich with young, tech-savvy workers used to good quality video in the consumer world, expectations are higher than ever. Yet due to a rapidly changing landscape over the past few years, many businesses feature a patchwork of solutions, leading to confusion and inefficiency rather than increased collaboration.

As the person in charge of your company’s video solution, where do you turn? The article in our knowledge base covers a variety of options: hardware-based endpoints offer high quality video but are expensive and still lack key features including mobile and desktop integration; infrastructure-backed hardware systems, while more feature-rich, are extremely expensive and complicated to deploy and manage; and software-based systems are affordable and come with many collaboration features but lack the reliability and security a business situation demands as well as interoperability with other systems.

An ideal video solution, then, would combine the “best of all worlds” mentioned above:

  • High-quality video
  • Collaboration features
  • Mobile & desktop integration
  • Interoperability with other systems
  • Easily deployable & manageable
  • Reliable, secure & professional
  • Cost effective

A Single Solution?

BlueJeans is a video collaboration service that offers multi-party bridging as well as its own software-based conferencing platform. Let’s take a look at how it fares in those seven key categories (and for reference, here’s a link to our matrix comparing other popular software-based solutions):

  1. High-Quality Video: BlueJeans offers 1080p video, which is as high a resolution as is offered by any video conferencing platform today. Hardware solutions from companies like Cisco and Polycom often offer a “high resolution upgrade” to get to 1080p – with BlueJeans, it comes standard.
  2. Collaboration Features: BlueJeans provides many features that enhance efficient collaboration with other users.
    1. Multipoint: 25 users can join a meeting (an upgrade is available to allow up to 100), and the most recent 9 speakers will be shown on the screen. Skype and Hangouts max out at 10 users per meeting, and a even a 10-port multipoint control unit (MCU) from Cisco or Polycom would cost around $50k. The upgrade option provides easy day-two scalability, a rarity in the AV world.
    2. Recording: BlueJeans offers the ability to record meetings and store up to five hours of downloadable, mp4 video in the cloud as part of its basic package. An upgrade provides unlimited storage and other features.
    3. Content sharing: BlueJeans offers the ability to share content, including videos, to the far end of the call in a separate 1080p stream. While content sharing is pretty standard across video collaboration solutions, high definition video sharing is not.
    4. Advanced collaboration: BlueJeans also offers other collaboration features that are generally only seen in products focused more on data conferencing like Webex. These include chat and moderator controls.
  3. Mobile & Desktop Integration: BlueJeans is fully compatible with desktop, tablet, and mobile use. If users have previously-installed desktop or mobile systems, they can simply dial their BlueJeans number and use BlueJeans as a bridge. Or, they can use BlueJeans’ own software, available on browsers and as mobile apps.
  4. Interoperability: BlueJeans rose to popularity as a cloud-based meeting host and bridging service, providing transcoding that enables any platform to talk to any other. This is its number one feature, and it’s the only major service available that allows true “any-to-any” collaboration. H.323 codecs like those made by Polycom and Cisco, consumer-level codecs like Google Hangouts, and many more can all join BlueJeans meetings and communicate with one another (see the full list here). This in itself made BlueJeans an attractive product before many of its other features were deployed. Many businesses have come to feel pigeonholed after choosing a proprietary video conferencing solution; with BlueJeans, your business is free to communicate with virtually any other video platform available.
  5. Easily Deployable & Manageable: Traditional video conferencing systems require a months-long lead time: hardware needs to be ordered, on-site installation needs to be scheduled, technicians need to do the installation, and the system needs to be configured. Since BlueJeans is hosted in the cloud, no hardware purchase or on-site installation is necessary. BlueJeans systems are up and running in days or weeks, not months. Once deployed, they are easily manageable with Command Center, a management platform that comes with BlueJeans. Command Center comes with usage data and historical meeting analysis, so that IT Managers can easily monitor who is using BlueJeans, when, and where. An upgrade is available for more statistics.
  6. Reliable, Secure & Professional: BlueJeans also comes with a branding option, adding your company’s logo to your BlueJeans landing page, email invitations, and to the in-meeting screen. This makes your company look more professional and gives an impressive meeting experience to video participants. BlueJeans also offers a high level of security: participants are required to enter a nine-digit meeting ID number and a meeting password; an “encrypt meeting option” restricts the meetings to endpoints that use encryption; and “lock meeting” and “expel participant” options are available once the meeting has begun. As BlueJeans meetings are cloud-hosted, all meetings are outbound, meaning no participants ever dial in through your company’s firewall. This “dial-out” style routinely meets security standards set by financial institutions and other high profile BlueJeans clients.
  7. Cost Effective: BlueJeans’ pricing structure varies based on the size of the business. BlueJeans is certainly in a higher price bracket than free options like Skype and Hangouts, but is priced competitively with other enterprise focused collaboration platforms like Webex and GoToMeeting, and provides many more features and capabilities than these competitors. BlueJeans’ feature set is simply unrivaled for its price – a six-figure traditional videoconferencing infrastructure investment is necessary to even come close to its wide range of features. BlueJeans is no small investment, but its effect is profound enough for it to often be purchased as an annual capital expenditure. A free two-week trial is available to evaluate BlueJeans.

bluejeans1

Statistics available from BlueJeans Command Center

bluejeans2

A BlueJeans meeting utilizing the recording feature

An Enhancer More Than a Competitor

It’s important to realize that BlueJeans can be utilized in two different ways. Scenario one is a company unhappy with their video solution, or a start-up looking to enter the video world for the first time. In this case, the company can use BlueJeans exclusively, both as a multi-point bridge and as a software platform for conference room, desktop, and mobile use.

The second scenario is a company with an existing video system that works, but that is limited (as many of them are). Perhaps company A uses Skype, but wants to communicate with company B that uses Lync. Company C has five conference rooms with Cisco hardware and wants to have a call with all five at the same time. Company D might have Polycom infrastructure, but even that won’t allow them to talk to Company E who uses WebEx. A BlueJeans subscription solves all of this, allowing companies A-E to talk to each other using all of the features described above.

In this way, BlueJeans is not a strict competitor to the other video conferencing platforms out there: its actually more of an enhancer. BlueJeans can be the catalyst that spurs the strong utilization of existing systems that were previously only being rarely used.

BlueJeans in the Conference Room

Despite being a well-rounded offering, BlueJeans does bring challenges to the table (as virtually everything in this industry does). Whereas pre-configured Room Systems for Lync and ChromeBox systems for Google Hangouts are available, no pre-configured systems for using a Blue Jeans browser client in your conference room exist.

There are two things to consider on this topic. First, BlueJeans works with virtually any video system you may have in your conference room, so any pre-configured room systems, or any custom video conferencing system you may have in your conference room already, are more-than-likely already BlueJeans compatible. Secondly, if your conference room isn’t outfitted for video yet, this allows AV integration firms like PPI to design a custom a system based on your individual conference rooms with BlueJeans usage in mind.

bluejeans3

The Interoperability of BlueJeans

Conclusion

Unlike hardware manufacturers usually do, BlueJeans offers a free trial before any purchase is made. Contact a PPI Account Manager today to discuss your company’s video environment, and to see how BlueJeans fits in.

 

 

Tag Archive for: Video Conferencing