As a global provider of IT products and services, Insight supports its own operations by choosing tech that reflects best-in-class solutions based on their extensive partner relationships. Such was the case when the company decided to outfit their conference rooms with interactive displays.

“Skype is our internal communication standard,” said Steve Berenter, PMP, Insight senior IT manager. “So, when we first began adding interactive displays to our conference rooms it made sense to select the Surface Hub.”

It proved to be a solid choice, said Berenter. It was an all-in-one device and it interfaced easily with Skype, their internal standard for audio and video conferencing. It simplified the user meeting experience by offering system consistency.

“Our legacy conference systems were all over the place. We had rooms with Cisco, Polycom, and others. Some had projectors. Our goal was to standardize the majority of our rooms,” he said. “The Hub offered a great way to accomplish these things and we started down the path of standardizing. However, as Microsoft began the transition to the Surface Hub 2 there was a shortage of the original Surface Hubs. For almost a year we were unable to procure any new Surface Hubs.”

It was a significant predicament for the growing company. New offices were about to open. Buildouts and remodels were planned. The project management and sales teams wanted to begin weekly touchpoint meetings and needed a reliable, user-friendly system to connect teams in Arizona, Texas and Montreal.

The IT team concluded that a new solution was needed to support the growing company’s needs.

“We were happy with the Surface Hubs, but we needed immediately available solutions in these conference rooms with video and audio conferencing, whiteboarding – the full spectrum of meeting room communication and collaboration capabilities,” said Berenter.

The IT team began a comprehensive search that included all the major players: HP, Logitech, Lenovo, Polycom, and more. Then, at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando, Berenter came across the ViewSonic booth, and the path to finding a solution took a sharp turn toward the end of the journey.

“ViewSonic was presenting on an 86” ViewBoard® display and I was very impressed with its capabilities and the user experience,” said Berenter. “It’s very ’Surface Hub-like,’ in that it’s an intuitive, all-in-one solution.”

Insight’s IT team brought in 4 units to test out. Based on the good things he’d seen so far from the ViewBoard displays, Berenter’s only concern was security. ViewSonic rep Jeffrey Erb, who Berenter had met at Insight, provided the answer.

“The system was publicly facing but running on a Windows® 10 PC, so my biggest question about the project was, how do we secure it,” he said. “Jeff suggested that we try the Quicklaunch application by UC Workspace. It secures the device and adds one-touch capabilities to start and join meetings.”

Quicklaunch added security on top of the already-robust ViewBoard security features, with password-protected complete lock down. It also added the benefit of a transparent interface with Exchange and Google Calendar, as well as the ability to customize with brand elements like colors and logos.

The ViewBoard interactive displays continued to impress throughout the test period.

“The usage flexibility was phenomenal. Although we’re standardized on Skype, because we do business with Cisco, some of our team members like to use Webex,” said Berenter. “We needed a platform that easily integrated with both of those conferencing solutions. Sure, we could do it on the back end, which we’ve done before, but that’s clunky and has a less-than-optimal user experience. With the ViewBoard displays, we were able to load and use any conference solution – the device is completely agnostic.”

The ViewSonic ViewBoard displays even won over the most diehard Surface Hub proponents, said Berenter. Based on the overwhelming positive feedback during the demo process, the IT team purchased 22 ViewSonic ViewBoard displays ranging in sizes from 55” – 98”, as well as with VPC Slot-In PCs, to deploy across multiple locations.

A streamlined, all-in-one solution, deployment of the ViewSonic ViewBoard displays was a breeze, said Berenter.

“So many other solutions are modular. You buy their device, then you have to piece together other components,” he said. “With the ViewSonic ViewBoard, you get the display with the interactive capabilities and the slot-in PC. It’s a single solution that delivered 99% of what we needed. The only other thing I had to source as an add-on was the camera.”

For that, Berenter settled on the Poly Studio camera, which delivers speaker tracking and eliminates the need to manually pan, tilt and zoom as different users take the floor.

“It delivers a nice 18 feet of coverage with audio and visual,” he said. “We can accommodate up to 16 seats without needing any other equipment.”

Berenter was able to easily load Skype, Webex, Zoom and more, delivering the outstanding flexibility that he noted as one of the many reasons Insight employees have become big fans of the ViewBoard displays.

“Skype is our primary, but the ViewBoard is flexible and can be used with several communications applications. With Microsoft and Cisco as our two largest partners, we also use Webex for some business needs. Some of our clients prefer Zoom for their meetings. With the Viewsonic ViewBoard we can accommodate them all – without delaying meeting start up.”

To help facilitate the transition to the ViewBoard conference rooms, Berenter’s team held open-door training sessions at each of their locations.

“This was very helpful to the rapid adoption of the devices,” he said. “Feedback from those at the sessions was extremely positive.”

Evidence of the popularity of the ViewBoard displays came early in their time at  Insight.

“Every month we pull a report of all Skype-enabled room devices – we still have a mishmash of 4-5 different configurations,” said Berenter. “The very first month after deploying six ViewSonic ViewBoard solutions at our headquarters and three at each of our two offices in Tempe, they became the number one devices used – more than any other system. They instantly became very popular.”

Quick startup is one much-appreciated advantage of the ViewBoard-equipped conference rooms, said Berenter.

“With our other systems, we still fell prey to that industry metric: 10 minutes or so to start a meeting,” he said. “Now, with the ViewBoard displays and Quicklaunch, users see a menu of scheduled meetings, tap their meeting, and away they go.”

Embedded within ViewSonic digital slot-in PCs, Quicklaunch PE by UC Workspace creates a user-friendly interface, with fast access to preferred apps from a single dashboard. Users can choose from Exchange and Google Calendar to create meeting rooms, with support for virtually all preferred meeting platforms.

Each ViewBoard display appears as a resource in Microsoft Exchange, said Berenter, letting users choose and schedule in Outlook. Once meetings are in session, users enjoy the wide range of interactive whiteboarding capabilities ViewBoard displays deliver – from across the conference room table or across the country.

“It doesn’t matter which office users are in,” said Berenter. “If they’re each in a room with a ViewBoard they can whiteboard together. That’s a great thing for productivity.”

Last but not least, Berenter mentioned the terrific value offered by the ViewBoard solutions.

“Jeffrey offered us a great price and the ViewBoard displays deliver a quality conferencing experience,” he said. “It’s a perfect fit for us and the deployment has been a great success. We continue to get very positive feedback the more people use them.”

Next on the agenda: Deployment of 10 or more to continue the process of standardizing on the ViewBoard interactive display solution.

“This is an outstanding solution for us,” said Berenter. “We plan to standardize on ViewSonic ViewBoard displays for any new conference room upgrades or build outs in our future.”