Phil Edholm

As we emerge from our pandemic isolation into the new normal, the challenge of hybrid meetings has dominated the business communications market. As some workers return to the office and meeting rooms, how do we take the virtual meetings and productivity gains and integrate it together with rooms and facilities. In meetings, the hybrid goal is to get a group of people together at the same time in both individual and shared spaces to integrate with one another around a specific meeting topic.

Microsoft last week announced the Operator Connect Accelerator program, which shifts the integration of service provider / Microsoft APIs for Operator Connect integrations from the service providers to the SBC vendors. This program has the potential to significantly simplify the configuration of a Teams PSTN access through a service provider, while enabling a wider range of service providers to participate in the Operator Connect program.

At Enterprise Connect, I try to identify one new product that innovatively meets an emerging need. This year, I found a room system usage display that does not require power to be installed, resulting in much lower costs to enable room availability indications. One area of office life that many organizations are trying to resolve is how to manage conference and huddle rooms.