Prior to March 2020, video functionality was nearly seen as a ‘nice-to-have’ feature by many in the industry and end-users. Events of the past 18 months have now made video a ‘must-have’ for many organisations as they adopt hybrid working. 

This is backed by recent research from analyst house Gartner, which revealed that nearly 80 percent of workers are using collaboration tools for work, a rise of 44 percent since 2019. The research also revealed that workers worldwide reported spending, on average, 63 percent of their meeting time in-person in 2019, with this number dropping to 33 percent by 2021 as more meetings took place over video.  

Gartner predicts that in-person meetings will drop from 60 percent of enterprise meetings to just 25 percent by 2024, fuelled by remote work and changing workforce dynamics.  

To make the transition to hybrid working easier for organisations of all sizes, Kandao Technology has released Kandao Meeting S, the newest addition to its flagship line of conferencing cameras.  

The Meeting S offers a 180-degree field-of-view, five-metre audio pickup, integrated AI, and easy set-up. It has an adjustable camera cover, offering a degree of privacy for meeting participants, and is mobile so it can be used anywhere. It also offers a view-lock and zoom function, which enables meeting participants to concentrate on the focus point of the meeting, such as a whiteboard presentation, and enlarge it if needed.  

Kandao CEO Dan Chen told UC Today that the 180-degree limitation came about as a result of customer feedback. 

“Some of our customers asked for a camera that didn’t offer a 360-degree view of the meeting room [like our other cameras] for privacy or because they only used one side of the room,” he explained. 

“It also caters to smaller conference rooms, which do not need a 360-degree field-of-view to cover the whole room.” 

The Meeting S also has an SD card slot for users to record the meeting and offers multiple screen configurations to ensure every attendee is visible during the meeting.  

“It enhances the hybrid meeting because it automatically highlights the speaker while simultaneously showing the other attendees,” Chen said. 

“One customer told us that his organisation has multiple branches and holds remote conferences regularly. He said that the video solution he was using before didn’t allow him to gauge the reactions and facial features of the other attendees to what was being said by the active speaker. Now that he has equipped the Meeting S he has a clearer idea of what his team really thinks about decisions because he can see them all on-screen at the same time.” 

Meeting S is compatible with most of the major collaboration platforms, such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, but its key differentiator from its competitors is its plug-and-play capability, according to Chen.  

“Our differentiator in the market is the operating system inside the device,” he stated. 

“Other products need to connect the camera to the computer and open software to start a meeting, then download the conference software they are using for that meeting.   

“But because of this product’s internal OS, it connects directly to the screen and users can download the software directly onto it. Once they do that, they don’t need to do it again.” 

Link: https://www.uctoday.com/endpoints/improving-video-conferencing-with-kandaos-newest-camera/