It was reported today that—due to the threat from Covid-19, the virulent coronavirus—all of Apple’s corporate HQ employees would be working from home. It’s fair to assume that Apple has the technology infrastructure to pull this off without missing a beat. Could your company do the same?
Meeting The Demands of Meetings
One of the core focuses of our business is specifying and installing teleconference and remote work solutions for major enterprises. Clients are pleased to learn this doesn’t require exotic and hard-to-manage systems.
Since we work with larger companies, our clients tend to utilize Office 365. It includes the Teams online collaboration platform which requires nothing more than a laptop, a subscription, and an internet connection. We also work with the BlueJeans platform which offers similar functionality and is reporting a double digit increase in use of its service since the onset of the epidemic.
Even if you are not an enterprise organization, there are a variety of similar solutions. Some of these providers are offering free services during the emergency for first responders and public health nonprofits.
Depending on the quality of the internet connections, these can be perfectly acceptable solutions for multiple individuals to participate in a shared virtual meeting space. So—if your company decides to have everyone work from home—this could be all you need.
Getting A Room
Whether it’s to cut down on exposure to pathogens during business travel or just to cut travel expenses altogether, having teleconference capabilities in your office makes a lot of sense for companies with multiple locations. There is something about the visualization of people gathered around a table that gives a meeting more significance and can inspire greater team spirit.
You may not be surprised to know that the remote platforms for individuals work just fine in this context too. The only additional equipment required is a large connected flat panel display and a webcam. (This last item is so you can see the whole table at once.) This configuration can be managed from a single laptop. In fact, you will want just the one system doing the streaming to avoid the screeching of audio feedback from multiple laptops in the same room.
We routinely retrofit existing meeting rooms with large displays like this to give them teleconferencing capabilities. It is a relatively quick and inexpensive way to connect multiple geographic locations. A recommended touch is installing over-floor raceways for the cabling, so the room feels “put together” with appropriate professional polish. If the capability is being added as a kind of emergency measure, such touches can still keep the room from looking like an afterthought.
Making Your Point-to-Point
As mentioned earlier, a potential limiting factor for internet-based collaboration platforms is the quality of the connection. We’ve all been in meetings where the speaker’s image freezes, or their voice drops out at a critical point in their presentation. The only sure-fire solution for that is a dedicated point-to-point connection such as a Polycom or Cisco system.
Of course, implementation of a system like this requires more planning; it is not a viable solution to install in an emergency. But, if you’ve been looking at such systems, a sudden critical need may be just what’s required to move the project forward.
A Healthy Approach To Collaboration
At this moment, the ability to conduct teleconferences (and avoid infection) is rightly recognized as critical business infrastructure. After the emergency has passed, it is likely most companies will still recognize the benefits of this capability. It gives companies more operational and financial flexibility. It enables participation by more participants for greater contributions. And it can help any organization feel more like a collaborative team.
What’s more, it’s easy to acquire the basic capabilities. Whether you’re trying to address an immediate challenge, or you’ve finally decided to take the next step, you should be able to move quickly and confidently in your implementation.
And if you need help, we got you.
