As hybrid work practices continue to mature, the role of huddle rooms and small collaboration spaces keeps growing for meetings involving both remote and in-office participants. Research reveals that 68 per cent of companies plan to invest in AV technology for small meeting rooms and huddle spaces. But what actually drives this growth in smaller collaboration spaces?
The increase in hybrid meetings with people from different locations has a role to play. Participants are rarely gathered in a single room; some join meetings in person, while others do so remotely or from distributed offices. So, why occupy a large meeting room? At the same time, commercial office space in the UAE is in high demand. In the first half of 2023, Dubai experienced a 23 per cent rise in office demand over the same period last year. Abu Dhabi’s market is also sending out similar signals. However, since higher demand translates into higher rents, some businesses may have no choice but to downsize their offices and meeting spaces. The problem is that these smaller offices and their meeting rooms often lack the advanced video capabilities that are essential for effective hybrid meetings.
Traditional approaches are no longer sufficient
From an IT standpoint, video conferencing solutions for huddle rooms and small spaces have historically been equipped with minimal or no AV equipment. This was due to their primary use being for in-person meetings, lack of cost-effective options, and the urgency to equip them as employees returned to offices after the pandemic. This equipment is usually missing centralised management, constraining the ability to scale and manage them efficiently.Â
Modern video conferencing hardware and service providers are constantly improving hybrid meeting experiences; legacy devices and standalone laptop cameras are unable to capitalise on these innovations and updates. What’s more, legacy equipment may require manual on-site management capabilities, which may cause a higher risk of downtime in meeting rooms and can negatively impact a team’s productivity.
What makes a video conferencing solution suitable for huddle rooms?
Modern solutions for huddle rooms and other small spaces should be all about enabling video collaboration from any meeting space, overcoming many of the historical challenges, and allowing organisations to scale video conferencing capabilities efficiently.
This new breed of solutions must be simple to install and set up either standalone or paired with touch controllers. Certifications for Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet are equally important since they allow for interoperability so rooms or even meetings can be switched to a chosen platform as needed. In addition, their hardware should be intelligent, cloud-managed, and updated on an ongoing basis with video conferencing innovations like smart focus and framing, advanced controls, and multiple streams. They should also offer IT teams centralised control for monitoring and managing devices remotely, maintaining system health, and orchestrating updates across large deployments.
Those exactly were our strategic goals, here at Logitech, when we began working on our latest solution for smaller spaces, with deployability, a fundamentally better experience, and manageability in mind. We took inspiration from our existing Rally family of solutions for medium to extra-large rooms and included many of their innovative features while also upping the game in integrated design.
The Rally Bar Huddle brings smaller spaces to the age of seamless hybrid collaboration
Launched just a few months ago, the Rally Bar Huddle continues the legacy of Logitech’s renowned all-in-one video conferencing solutions. Designed specifically for huddle rooms and small spaces, this video bar delivers more intelligent, effective, equitable, and productive meeting experiences. Rally Bar Huddle raises the bar with features that offer flexibility for setup and better integration into conference rooms, no matter their layout.
Compact, affordable, and powerful, the Rally Bar Huddle is the easiest way for organisations seeking to video-enable their huddle rooms and small spaces. Starting with high-quality and intelligent audio and video, Rally Bar Huddle ensures employees can communicate and collaborate with remote team members seamlessly. It delivers crystal-clear video through a 4K camera that focuses and frames participants in different AI-driven view modes, while its microphone array, which is the same as in Rally Bar, captures voices in the room with exceptional accuracy and clarity.
The Rally Bar Huddle can be flexibly deployed and easily configured in various modes. For instance, as a video conferencing appliance, Rally Bar Huddle is capable of running Zoom and Microsoft Teams on Android. When paired with a computer, it can be used like a PC-based solution, like those made for Google Meet or Microsoft Teams on Windows. Rally Bar Huddle can also be deployed as a BYOD room peripheral.
But there’s another significant reason to be proud of our newest video conferencing solution. The Rally Bar Huddle was designed with sustainability and circularity at its core: it’s Logitech’s first video bar made from next-life plastics. What’s more, the Rally Bar Huddle easily integrates into office design aesthetics, from flexible mounting options, and clean cable management, to customisable cover options.
Employees, IT and AV managers, and administrators can all benefit greatly from the Rally Bar Huddle. To get a deeper analysis of huddle room requirements and the capabilities of Rally Bar Huddle, download the detailed report of Wainhouse Research. Then see how you can video-enable small spaces with ease with Logitech solutions. After all, the most ground-breaking ideas can be born in even the smallest spaces!
