Spotlight on Hybrid Work | ChannelDrive.in
The ongoing pandemic era has triggered huge uncertainties as different economies went into lockdown mode. And in this scenario, ensuring business continuity becomes extremely critical and important. This is where WFH (work from home) is enabling new wave of digital transformation and driving great level of productivity for individuals as well as organizations.
With its innovative hybrid meeting room solution, ClickShare Conference, Barco provides best-in-class wireless conferencing experience and enables teams to work together and share insights in real time.
Ashish Gupta Vice President – Software Development, Barco India speaks with Zia Askari from ChannelDrive.in about the company’s focus in India and how it is becoming a catalyst in driving digital transformation in this pandemic era.
What are key priorities for Barco to enable digital transformation for customers?
Covid-19 triggered huge uncertainties as world economies went into lockdown. Ensuring business continuity became important, and WFH (work from home) was ubiquitously adopted. It is now part of everyday lexicon. Hybrid work will eventually become the norm. The question now is no longer if we can work remotely, but how to efficiently run hybrid teams. For that we need proper technology. We are leaders in providing technology for the smooth and interactive collaboration amongst hybrid teams.
Our hybrid meeting room solution, ClickShare Conference, provides best-in-class wireless conferencing experience. It enables teams to work together and share insights in real time. Hybrid meetings enable an efficient and productive way to collaborate with remote colleagues and we are working closely with organizations to help them pivot towards the hybrid workplace in the new normal.
To quote a few other examples, SecureStream is for remote media streaming in a control room, weConnect is a transformational teaching and training solution for virtual classrooms, and for the Healthcare segment we have NexxisLive – a cloud-based solution for remote surgical collaboration. These solutions transform organizations across different verticals by enhancing productivity and continuity for businesses. Our video-conferencing and live streaming solutions are adopted by many organizations to ensure business continuity and at smart cities control centres for active monitoring of the Covid situation.
Digital enablement has become very important for SMEs/large enterprises as well as verticals such as education. What are some of the key trends that are redefining this space?
There is no going back on the digital transformation that has taken place on account of Covid-19. Innovation and technology upgradation has to be a top priority across all businesses. Many small businesses languish or take time to take off due to lack of proper infrastructure.
Digital Enablement or transformation has been the priority of both SMEs/Large Businesses and for sure Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace. And I see there are couple of trends which is shaping up the digital enablement now.
First obvious trend is that Hybrid and Work from Home is going to stay even post pandemic world as well which will drive more adoption of technologies enabling productive hybrid and work from home environments for example, adoption of better WFH devices at home, better connectivity in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, much improved hybrid learning solutions for students, better collaboration and meeting room solutions etc.
Second is more focus on Security and Secure Hybrid Environment and both SMEs and Business will continue to invest in cybersecurity infrastructure.
Third key trend, I see is faster democratization of new age tech including AI, Hybrid Cloud, IoT, Data technologies. All these technologies have been in existence for quite some time but were clearly not utilized well enough by most of the SMEs as well as Medium Business. But in the coming few months I see accelerated adoption of these.
We at Barco have a state of art software technology center internally called as GEAX (Globally Empowered Team for Accelerated Experiences) in Noida, Delhi-NCR. It is Barco’s largest global Centre of Excellence for software innovation and R&D in India and we have been working on software solutions with the all the above trends in focus and which will enable organizations to become digitally enabled in post pandemic world.
For example, our weConnect solution supports upskilling efforts by creating quality interaction and in-depth collaboration among learners, while training remotely. The intelligent tool enables trainers to keep audience attentive by allowing sharing of content such as videos, polls and quizzes. Learners can ask questions, chat with peers, answer polls and quizzes easily as in a normal group activity.
How GEAX (Globally Empowered to Accelerate Xperiences) Software Lab initiative is bringing innovations to the market?
At GEAX, we are committed to explore solutions for organizations and societies which are relevant and in line with the future business and the technology trends. We are fulfilling the needs of the workforce of today that’s looking to steer away from the tried and tested in all three focus areas of Barco: Healthcare, Enterprise collaboration and Entertainment. The software development team at GEAX works on cutting-edge technology with diversity in tech stacks, from embedded to multi-cloud, such as Azure and AWS and on new age technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Internet of Things.
Our hardware plus software and hardware-software services provide the best of breed solutions to customers. We are giving our customers an innovative experience which is much ahead from the market standards.
The two-level facility with an advanced lab and R&D centre is designed to build 360-degree solutions’ capabilities leveraging hardware, software and services. The floors are divided into silent work areas, experience and demo centres, the lab zone and a creative collaboration section. The software and R&D segments get a clear boost to enable Barco’s commitment towards refining hybrid workplace solutions and offer employment opportunities in niche skillsets.
What kind of innovations you can expect from the company in the future?
Innovation is driven into our work culture. We have added two new additions to the award winning ClickShare wireless collaboration solution that is enhancing work environments globally. These two new additions, part of the ClickShare Present range, are equipped to provide an even better hybrid meeting environment. This is important to quickly move to the next normal with brighter outcomes.
On account of Covid, in Healthcare space there has been a growing interest in the domain of diagnostic imaging, surgical imaging and remote surgical collaboration, teledermetology etc. and we are developing innovative capabilities and solutions utilizing new age technologies in these domains..
Our extensive line-up of high-precision medical monitors bring accuracy and efficiency to a broad range of healthcare disciplines. Our healthcare solutions consist of display systems designed especially for various disciplines, including radiology, mammography, surgery, dentistry, and clinical review imaging.
Similarly in Learning experience space, we are continuing to provide best in class and hybrid and our product weConnect, a virtual classroom software that is dedicated specifically to distance learning in real-time without giving up on class engagement and contact between teacher and customer.
A lot of innovation is happening at Barco around pressing issues of today, viz. hybrid work, remote learning, data and insight sharing of medical teams, smart cities management and so on.
