Ep.12 - Understanding Unified Communications Today—and Where DTEN Fits In

Unified Communications didn’t suddenly appear during the pandemic—it was already in motion. What changed was the pace, and more importantly, the expectations.

In this episode of Behind the Rack, we sit down with David from DTEN to explore how the UC space has evolved from hardware-based systems and dedicated codecs to the software-driven, cloud-connected platforms we rely on today. The conversation traces that journey—from early interoperability challenges to the rise of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and the shift toward simpler, more accessible meeting room experiences.

DTEN’s story fits directly into that evolution. Starting with interactive whiteboards, the company moved early into all-in-one collaboration systems, helping redefine what a meeting room can look like when everything—from camera to compute—is built into a single platform.

But this discussion goes beyond product design. It looks at how user behavior has changed, why hybrid work exposed gaps in traditional AV deployments, and how expectations around simplicity and reliability are now driving decision-making.

We also explore what’s coming next. From digital whiteboarding and persistent collaboration to the growing role of AI—both in the cloud and at the edge—the future of meeting spaces is becoming more intelligent, more responsive, and more aligned with how people actually work.

For integrators, consultants, and anyone involved in designing collaboration environments, this episode offers a grounded look at where Unified Communications stands today—and where it’s heading next.

Transcript

Cold Open And Smart Audio

SPEAKER_09 0:00

Your uh your power for Chris Neto? Yes. Okay. Yes. He asked me what I'm making for dinner every time.

SPEAKER_04 0:09

Acting, acting. Uh it's a touch and cigars. So the the the dinner thing with Chris for us it's it's gotten cigars. That's what happens.

SPEAKER_06 0:21

Yeah, that's what we discussed what happens after stuff.

SPEAKER_05 0:28

But I really like the the the edge processing that you were talking about. So instead of using audio threshold to steer or to turn on a mic for someone, it literally looked at you. And when your lip starts moving, the aerial microphone is beamforming the mic toward your direction. So that's that's correct.

SPEAKER_06 0:48

Unless you're mining the entire thing and then you're screwing up the entire new electric AI.

SPEAKER_09 0:56

So there are some other use cases. I've got a group in New York, they're putting a 27-inch screen on every floor in their office, and the screen is IT supported. So you walk up and says, I need help with my phone, my cell phone, my computer, my software. So the users on the floor feel like they're getting to the right person immediately, as opposed to where's left Larry? He's never around when you need him. And then when Larry comes over, he looks at you and goes, Oh, I gotta go fuck somebody and walks away.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Did you create a ticket? I think we hear that pretty often.

SPEAKER_09 1:28

30 days so we can try it out. This guy goes, Oh, you have to give one of these to Mark Cuban. Here's his address. And just gives us Mark Cuban's address. Now, we all of a sudden get this random phone call that says, We need 3655 inch boards on cartons, because we're gonna put them inside the NBA bubble. And we all know that it was probably Cuban that said, Why don't you just put D10 boards there? D10s just once you start using them, you want them out.

SPEAKER_06 2:16

David, thank you so much for uh joining us on our podcast behind the rack. It's a pleasure uh having you on. Um really excited um to be talking to you about uh UC products. Um it seems to be like the uh like the I'm not gonna call it a fad, but it's uh it's yeah, it's getting more and more popular, very much so. Yeah, a lot more prevalent. And um uh before we kick that off, just for the audience uh who may not be familiar with D10, can you give us kind of a a brief overview in terms of um uh uh who you are as a company and what you set out to solve, let's say, in the the whole collaboration space.

SPEAKER_09 3:06

So I guess I guess I'll start by saying I I don't know that this is a podcast for D10 because by definition, D10 makes all-in-one solutions for Teens Rooms and Zoom rooms, and we don't need a rack. Everything is built in cameras, microphones, speakers, it's all built right into the screen. The screens are all touch enabled, they're all capacitive touch screens. The idea is hang it on the wall, give it power, give it Ethernet, and you've got yourself a Zoom room or a Teens Room. Where did we start? We actually started there. Well, we actually started by making interactive whiteboards. That was 10 years ago, and then we connected with Eric Yuan from Zoom, who proceeded to say, I'm getting ready to make a new version of software called Zoom Rooms. And if you do these 12 things, you will build the first all-in-one Zoom room appliance. And that's what we did, and we built the first all-in-one Zoom room appliance. That's kind of how we got here today. Since then, we obviously became aware that Microsoft was becoming and has become the number two player, now the number one player in the space. Uh, so we also build Teams rooms, but more than just building a team certified solution, we wanted to have more of an engineering relationship with Microsoft, which is where we are today. And we have built the uh first and only all-in-one certified Microsoft Teams room solution that is running Windows IoT. So that's what's called the MTRW, is the software in their world. Uh, and not only is it Teams Rooms ready, uh, but it is also co-pilot ready. Uh, so when they get all their co-pilot features in, we'll have all the co-pilot features ready as well.

SPEAKER_06 5:00

Very interesting.

SPEAKER_05 5:01

And is this uh it's the the successor of the the D7X, if I'm not mistaken, correct?

SPEAKER_09 5:08

Correct. Yep. So the the original model we created is called the D7. We made a second generation of that. We moved on to the D7X, if you will, which was our third generation. Uh, that's where we started with Teams. So they did Teams and Zoom. The first D7s only did Zoom. Uh, and now the D7X AI board, as it's called, uh, is now the fourth generation in the series. And it does Zoom or Teams appropriately. Zoom is a Zoom is a little more closer to the vest on what it means for AI to be in the conference room at this point. Team, the Microsoft Teams people are kind of uh pushing forward and telling telling people a lot of what's coming, so to speak. But they'll they'll both have AI solutions.

SPEAKER_05 5:57

Is it the so is it the the panel or the the screen you have behind you right now?

SPEAKER_09 6:02

Yep, that's a 55 inch AI board behind me.

unknown 6:05

Cool.

David’s Path Into UC

SPEAKER_06 6:06

Very nice. Nice. Um that's a good uh intro d10, yeah. Uh what about yourself, David? Um, what's your background? How did how did you come to work um in the um in the UC space?

SPEAKER_09 6:23

Um, you know, like everybody else in this world, it was an accident. Nobody nobody really knows that the UC space exists. Nobody even knows the A V space exists. So uh it's hard to find the space, but as I'm sure most people know, once you find it, you don't leave it, you can't get out. Uh so I really started from the broadcast side. Uh originally in television broadcast, that moved me into the A V space, worked for a bunch of people worked for dealer, uh, ultimately went to work for Krechtron for a long time, uh, a couple other places, and that ultimately got me to D10.

SPEAKER_06 7:03

Interesting. Before you even knew about the UC space even existed.

SPEAKER_09 7:09

Right, right. Right. When I was back in the, you know, back in the late 80s, early 90s, you were doing everything via satellite to deliver stuff from one place to another, and then phone banks coming in on the other side. That was your definition of what now we call a podcast, in essence. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_05 7:31

Yeah, ISD end lines and technologies like this. Uh, just curious, yeah, what what what position and uh or what role did you play in the broadcast uh ecosystem? Were you a camera person, uh your guy?

SPEAKER_09 7:45

Or uh actually, um I worked at a I worked at a couple of TV stations doing all kinds of different things, audio primarily. Yes, I did some camera work. Uh I owned a production company for a couple of years. Uh, and then the the local broadcast dealer hired me to be their broadcast salesperson. That's how I got into the broadcast slash A V cycle. And they were just starting with you know three gun projectors and how cool could this be? That was you know, there was a lot of look a comp we can put a big screen in a conference room and light it up with 50 lumens, and people will think it looks great. That's what we had at the time.

SPEAKER_05 8:31

Um and and maybe um uh a couple of questions, like let's get back to um uh to to the actual uh the actual business you're in. Um what uh what's what you think was the main uh driver? I I I believe I have the answer, so I always ask the question anyways, but what do you think was the main driver, Toward, where we are right now in UC? Uh how do you think the pandemic had a role to play in it? And uh what's your opinion about that?

SPEAKER_09 9:12

Um I think the pandemic was an accelerator, but the road, the road to soft codecs was already well paved before the pandemic hit. Right? So certainly certainly when I started, you built the somebody built a piece of hardware that allowed it to make a call. It could grab an ISDN line or multiple ISDN lines, right? Bond them together, get video and audio to go to the other side. It was very complicated, but it was doable. It was expensive, it was complicated, it was doable. But even with that, even with that motion, go back long enough, you know, a Tamberg system only talked to a Tamberg system, a polycom system only talked to a polycom system, right? Uh so eventually there were some standards that were created so everybody could say, Oh, now we can all talk to each other because we're kind of speaking the same language. Everything was still hardware built and hardware dependent, but at least there was interoperability because uh they had the because they had that same standard. As phones moved in, moved from a hardwired phone set to voiceover IP phone systems, right? That opened the door for SIP type calling, and then the video group followed up, followed along and said, Oh, we can put SIP on top of here, get our connections going. But then others came in and said, Hey, we can do video calling with software, whether it be Skype link teams, right? WebEx, Zoom, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, everybody had their own little, right? Ring Central had their own version for a while or still does. That soft that the concept of software being the off your laptop, being the being the codec and making the call different than dedicated hardware built to do that. All that was underway before the pandemic really hit.

unknown 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 11:22

And the pandemic just accelerated it. There were, you know, there were plenty of people using WebEx, had all kinds of WebEx stuff stood up. Uh, I talked to many people who their Cisco servers fell apart during the uh during the pandemic, and they had to do Zoom calls in order to talk to each other to get it fixed. Because back then everybody was still building on local servers. The simultaneous move, the simultaneous motion here was these most of these new software providers were using cloud-based solutions. So anybody who was in the cloud could expand immediately, Zoom being the biggest one. They could take on as many million people as wanted to fire up a Zoom call. Where if your organization had dedicated Cisco servers running WebEx internally, and it was only run in conference rooms, let's say 100, and then you had to add 10,000 users to it, it would melt that it melted down. And there was a lot of meltdown there. That created the acceleration that got us to adoption of cloud-based, software-based codecs today.

SPEAKER_06 12:32

Yeah, I remember that everybody was on the call. Everyone's like, okay, you got to shut off all your cameras because uh everything is like everything was just shutting down.

SPEAKER_09 12:45

Even you know, before the pandemic, most people didn't turn their cameras on. Now everybody turns their cameras on. There were a lot of cultural changes that went along with it.

Whiteboarding That Actually Sticks

SPEAKER_05 12:53

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I remember uh I I was using Zoom before the pandemic, uh, so um, so I knew them before they were cool. Uh so but yeah, at the time, I mean, even then, uh the the executives or the boss were okay, why your camera's not open? You know, it they they wanted us to have the camera open to make sure we were not like doing something else while while listening to them or while having our meeting. Uh so but now it's it's more prevalent. Except when someone's presenting something, sometimes people turn off their camera because they don't want to um disturb anybody. But uh in in general, like everybody has its camera on, and that's the new norm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 13:41

Correct. And the and and I gotta tell you the next big motion that is just coming into play for everybody is starting to add uh whiteboarding features and annotation features into those same calls and meetings. Because that's where productivity is really gonna pick up. If you look at the if you look at how the Zoom software works today, if you look at how Teams works today, uh different than boy, even three years ago, where you could do a whiteboard session and it would you'd save it as a PDF and God only knows where it went. Who could remember where, what, why, right? Now, if you're in the Zoom environment, it goes right into your Zoom chat. So everybody who is in the meeting has a copy of it. You can keep working on it after the fact. You can pre-build whiteboard sessions and bring them in. Zoom uh Teams does the same thing within channels and groups. So all their documents are sitting there, they're all organized. You can find them. Technically, they're in SharePoint, but anybody who is in that meeting can see it, alter it, write on and again, et cetera, et cetera. So that's where productivity really starts coming into play. And we all know, even today, most rooms, especially the smaller rooms, because that's where the real work gets done. There's still a whiteboard, right? There's still a whiteboard, there's still an easel of some kind with a notepad. People still want to write out ideas and think about it and put them up somewhere and park them and then come back to them. And the tools are really there to do that today and to keep us moving forward and do it all electronically. Most users haven't moved to realizing that those pieces are there. I think in the next three or five years, we're gonna see a big uptick on I gotta have a touch screen, I gotta have annotation, I gotta have whiteboarding. Because then everybody knows they need it. Now they're gonna start realizing, hey, it's available and it's in the tools I already use.

SPEAKER_08 15:43

I was gonna say, in terms of trends, we're talking about what people are starting to discover and what they're using more and more of. Uh, out in the marketplace, what are you seeing? You know, there's a lot of talk. We're talking about the pandemic and all that. We're talking about remote work, hybrid work, uh, some industries now, even back to office mandates. What are you actually seeing? What's the reality of what's happening in the market?

SPEAKER_09 16:09

So this is interesting, and it's it's traditional that East Coast, West Coast do things first, and then it kind of moves to the middle of the country as it goes, right? In in the US and Canada the same way, let's be honest, right? Um so what we saw, big biggest adoption two years ago, New York and San Francisco Bay Area, everybody got told go back to work. And everybody said no. The offices are gone. I'm not going back to work. It's horrible. I'll come in one day, maybe two days. So large corporations spent tons of money on video logs. Boy, weren't they the greatest things ever. Rebuild the lobby, all hand meeting spaces, new cafeterias, everything you can think of, jungle gyms, everything you could think of to get people to come back to the office. Right? So these big build-outs, lots of technology for the A V integrator, that's for sure, right? Because they're all big signage, all those kind of things. Then you got now you got to come back to the office. So now people have returned to the office because the office is beautiful, it's all set up, and now those same people are saying, well, I can't come five days a week because I can't do video calls because the conference rooms are no good. There's some webcam that you hung there just before the pandemic or just after the pandemic because nobody knew what to do, and the stuff at my house is better. So I got to be home two days a week because that's when I do all my calls. So now we're starting to see the okay, let's turn all, let's turn all this over. Let's redo all the phone booths there that are in our spaces so people can take calls. Let's redo the small and medium conference rooms so they're so the technology's up to speed and better than what's everybody at everybody's home today. So they will come to the office five days a week. And simultaneously, as I move towards the more towards the center of the country in your world, the you know, the Montreals of the world, the Toronto's of the world are kind of now moving over to the Ottawa's of the world. Uh and Ottawa's just getting ready to put video walls in everywhere, like Chicago's getting ready to put video walls everywhere. This they're a little, the center of the heart is a little behind on how it moves, right? But Vancouver, they're starting to build small rooms, medium rooms, and get their conference rooms back up because they've already got all those uh key spaces done.

SPEAKER_08 18:51

And to your point, you know, those key spaces, whether they were done before the pandemic, during the pandemic, or right after, ironically, most of them required a rack and you know, had a lot of issues with them. And you needed someone on site to go in and troubleshoot, and all of a sudden the PTZ camera isn't following the speaker and the HDMI inputs being switched to a random input randomly. Um so that need for simplicity, and I think that's where D10 comes in, is what people are asking for, right? And you know, I I thought it's no lie that uh the mandate for a lot of corporations or companies is uh get your meetings done, get them done quickly, get them done efficiently. Well, you can't do a 15-minute meeting or a 30-minute meeting if you spent 10 minutes troubleshooting because it's not working, and Hugo's got to go behind the rack and start troubleshooting, right? So I I think it makes perfect sense. And the trends that you're describing, we're starting to see that as well in Canada as well as in Montreal.

SPEAKER_09 19:49

And from a from it's interesting, from a user point of view, you know, we use we use the pandemic as a benchmark, but uh before the pandemic, most rooms, when you walked in, there was some kind of controller on the table and you had to go push the button and get something to happen, right? Yeah, now with touch screens, well, you walk into the room and there's the name of your meeting with a button that says start. You don't even have to look for a controller or figure out how to use it. And for the non-technical user, finding a controller is complicated. That in itself is confusing. A button on the screen that says start, that's it. I can just start it and go. The other thing, and my age is my age, so uh, you know, I fall in the old category, not the not the uh not the young category, right? But if you look at how people executed meetings before, as we were talking about ISDN lines, we used to all get in the room. We everybody here, are we ready? Are we ready? Okay, and then we hit the button and start the call because there were all line ISDN line charges. It cost per minute to have a video call, right? And people worried about that. But the other thing that would happen is everybody would come in the room and you all sit around and have a little chit-chat, maybe a pre-meeting. Okay, let's start the meeting clunk and we start the real meeting, right? In today's world, because everybody's got a soft codec that they're coming in remotely from their laptop or wherever, people jump into these meetings early so they can have a little side conversation before the meeting actually starts. Yeah, so different motion. Now, the first person that walks into the room immediately starts the meeting because there couldn't be their friends could already be on the other side chit-chatting without them. Right? It's just a subtle different motion, but it totally changes how you look at a room and how a room functions.

SPEAKER_07 21:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 21:51

Now I don't have to worry about do I have a controller on the table? I don't. I walk in, I start the meeting, I sit down, and everybody's happy. Yeah. And that, you know, there's nothing easier than touching the screen. I think most two-year-olds know how to do it.

SPEAKER_06 22:11

Do you uh based on your experience in terms of a timeline, where do you think we're at with UC in the space? Like do you think it's uh do you think we're at a level where it's the the industry or the it's quite mature, or do you think there's still room to uh improve and bring new features, expand on?

SPEAKER_09 22:31

Or like I'm even talking about on the user side, uh, you know, like is there a is there a ton of opportunity or the AI, the AI components that are being developed are going to be massive, massive improvements on productivity and uh production and efficiency. And we're gonna see it continuously. We'll see it again and again and again. And it's gonna be astronomical how much more efficient meetings become. And that's one of the that's one of the things that D10 is working very hard on is when you when you throw that word around, you say AI and you throw AI around, right? Yeah. When you're do when you're using AI, is AI something that is going to be handled in the cloud so the hardware manufacturer in the room doesn't have to deal with it? Or is it something where the components in the room need to have a higher level of engine and support to be able to process stuff locally in order to execute better? And I think the answer is really both. Because if you look at some of the things, you know, collectively collectively we're doing. So I'll take my AI board back here. Well, my AI board has not only a center camera, but it has two additional uh AI sensors, and I can actually 3D map the room. Well, why do I need to why do I need to 3D map the room? Well, a bunch of different reasons. One of them is if I 3D map the room, I can see everybody in the room and I can see whose lips are moving. And on the fly, I can rebuild the beam-forming microphones so they're pointing towards the people who are speaking. And now you don't you wouldn't have to have a physical microphone stuff in front of each one of you, but it would sound like you have a physical microphone in front of each one of you. Yeah. So these are the kind of AI components. Once I have enough of a processor locally or what my team likes to call on the edge, we have edge processing to handle stuff that's going on in the room, and then centralized AI, where, as Microsoft points out, um, they want it to be kind of almost an entity in the room. They kind they kind of intend, as we're sit sitting here talking about nothing, a voice is going to come in and say, hey, there's 15 minutes left in this meeting, and you still have three more agenda items. Should we move on to the next one?

SPEAKER_03 25:04

Pretty cool. Creepy, but pretty cool.

SPEAKER_09 25:10

Wow. And but when we but when we start talking about talking about corporate efficiency, whoa, that is definitely corporate efficiency.

SPEAKER_07 25:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 25:19

If we're all if we're all sitting around here, right? And let's let's say we're part of a team's chat or a team's channel, right? We're all sitting around, somebody says, Hey, when is when are your AI boards going to be shipping? And I go, Oh, well, I don't know. Sally's not on the call today, she she's got the exact date. I should be able to go, hey, co-pilot, when are these AI board shipping? And co-pilot should be able to come back and say, according to the document in the team's channel that you're part of, Sally said they would be shipping on May 22nd. And when you start looking at those kind of motions, where I can have, if you will, an assistant. Co-pilot is designed to be your personal assistant, but now we need an assistant in the room to help everybody all at once. Very interesting. But but and that that's more of a far end, but again, and then we're just scratching the surface on how efficient, how productive are we going to be.

SPEAKER_05 26:20

Yeah. But I really like the the let's call the edge processing that you were talking about. So instead of using audio threshold to steer or to give uh to to to basically turn on a mic for someone, it literally looked at you. And when your lip starts moving, the the area of microphone is beam forming the the mic toward your direction.

SPEAKER_09 26:45

So that's that's you and if you and if you get up and start walking around, I know the direction you're walking. I know where you're going, following you, I know where the walls are, so I know if you're gonna turn left and right when you get to the end of the table, right? So I can have that beam form right on you the whole way.

SPEAKER_06 27:02

That's amazing. Unless you're miming the entire thing and then you're screwing up the entire new thing. You're trying to trick AI.

Standardizing Rooms Without The Burden

SPEAKER_09 27:09

I mean, the the other thing that I can do, and we're we've done a lot of this already with this a with the AI board, is now when I start looking for people and cutting them out and putting their own box. Now I know there's a glass wall that's going into the hallway. I don't cut, I don't need to cut those people out. I don't need to include them. I I can look for real people in case there are pictures on the wall. I don't cut the people the pictures out and put them in. Right? So there's a lot of real AI. Once I know the room, everything becomes much more proactive in the environment than reactive. And especially speaker tracking, we've always been reactive. Somebody has to move and the camera's gotta chase them. Yeah, we now kind of know everything that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_08 27:56

David, because of all these unique benefits and features, are you noticing that when a deployment is is commissioned or a corporation decides to change one, two, three rooms and they've got, let's say, eight or ten rooms? Are you noticing that standardization is becoming very important? I mean, I can speak personally where there's a couple of rooms that we have in the building uh that were built at different times that have different systems. I always book the same room because yeah, the latest room or the room that has the best features or the one that's easiest to use. Uh so are you noticing that where standardization is also becoming a priority beyond simplicity? I mean, I think we all understand now D10, you've got the maximum amount of features while being one of the simplest systems to use, which is an incredible selling point. But are you noticing standardization being an absolute priority for corporations and companies?

SPEAKER_09 28:58

Uh absolutely. And it's it's not exactly the way you think. We always we always have this approach where we needed things needed to be standardized because you know, I only I have one guy and he only knows how to program Crestron, so not all my rooms are gonna be Crestron. So you ended up with 10 Crestron rooms, right? That now we're talking about a hundred rooms. And if we don't have a standard, because every every small room, every medium room, they all need technology to be able to remotely communicate and collaborate. So now that I've got a hundred rooms, without a standard, the burden I'm putting on my support stack is tremendous. There has to be a standard, the same way you know, every corporation buys everybody the same laptop. Right? I kind of look at it the same way. The entire building will be D10, except all those big rooms, they're gonna be crushed on at something else. Just like everybody in the building is getting Lenovo, except the marketing department, they're getting Max.

SPEAKER_05 30:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_09 30:14

It's it's that kind of approach. We we say, yes, there's got to be a standard, but we know there's flexibility to those standards. But within the within the same space, we need to have the same thing so we can resolve issues faster, and users get the same experience in every room. That way they're not going to different places to use different technology.

SPEAKER_08 30:35

Are we seeing sorry? I have a lot of questions. I'm like it's no, it's go ahead. Um I'm gonna tell you my personal experience with D10 because uh we we currently have the the SFM Roadshow that's going across Canada and we've got uh a D10 product there, and we we had shipped it with the rest of the product. I didn't have a chance to open it up and play with it beforehand. So when we got to our first location, I was the one personally setting up you know the table with the D10 product on it. And I I had no idea, like zero clue how to set it up, what I was getting myself into. You didn't read the manual, did you? I did not read the manual. Sorry, David. I don't read manuals.

SPEAKER_05 31:12

That's that's uh uh uh basically a joke here. Nobody reads the manual on the key.

SPEAKER_08 31:16

No one reads the manual, but you'll like where this is going because when I said Oh wait, I'm gonna hang on, I'm gonna take you even farther.

SPEAKER_09 31:24

There are no manuals in D10 units. There you go.

SPEAKER_08 31:28

That's where I was going. There was no manual in the box number one.

SPEAKER_09 31:32

There's a piece of paper with a QR code, and that's it.

SPEAKER_08 31:34

Yeah. And number two, all I had to do was plug it in. I just needed an outlet, which I had an outlet next to the table. It was a 27-inch, I believe 27-inch monitor screen. And I set it up within five minutes. I didn't need an external computer. I didn't have to know what I was doing beforehand. It was, I did not read the manual, and there was no manual. Thank you, David, for not putting a manual in the box. And it was just so easy to set up. And and where I'm going with this is are we noticing that we're putting some of these products in unconventional locations or places where maybe we would have never even thought of putting you know uh an all-in-one screen or touch screen somewhere. Are you are you starting to see that as well? Because I I had asked another manufacturer at one point, you know, I even at home, you mentioned you know, some of us have even better setups at home than we do sometimes in our corporate settings or environment. I'm very, you know, I'm I'm a nerd. I've got my three screens, I've got my 4K webcam, I've got my microphone. Like, I love my setup at home. But I'm always thinking, like, man, it'd be crazy to have my own little like boardroom one day or to have a display dedicated just to the video calls. Are you starting to see that where people are saying, hey, all I need is a plug and I can set up a you know a remote video conferencing room or whatever it may be?

SPEAKER_09 32:56

Um, so we have a number of executives and celebrities who have purchased D1055 inch streams or 75s for their house, for their home office, so they can do video calls. Uh there was actually there's actually a big influx during the pandemic, and the pandemic didn't have anything to do with it, but uh one CFO, I don't even know what company he was from, uh he went on the Jim, the Jim Kramer show, you know, the money money thing.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

NBC.

SPEAKER_09 33:32

And he happened, and he happened, yeah, he happened to have a D10, uh, and he started annotating on the board and circling stuff for people because he was on it, he was on a D10, he was on a Zoom call and he was annotating and making notes. And we got this influx of I need one of those, I gotta get one of those, because all his friends called him and said, How did you do that? It's really kind of what spun it into this crazy thing. Um, actually, right at the beginning of the pandemic, uh, we had a we had we had a company that ordered five boards for their for their uh C-suite. And lots of C-level people put 55 in their office so they can do local conferences. So anyway, the pandemic hits. They uh long story short, they asked us if we can ship them to the executives' houses. We do that. One of the executives had a question on how to use the whiteboard, and Zoom was a little busy at the time, their phones were kind of backed up. So he called us to see if we could help. We helped him solve this whiteboarding question, whatever it was. He was so impressed, he wrote a letter to our president saying how impressed he was with the support team. President wrote him back, thank you very much. Would you be willing to do a case study? He said yes. Uh, as he was doing the case study, and the guy's name is uh Buster Copley. Uh, as he was doing the case study, the mark, my marketing team said, Oh, yeah, we do these programs where we do a try and buy. We loan one, loan a board to somebody for 30 days so they can try it out. And this guy goes, Oh, you have to give one of these to Mark Cuban. Here's his address, and just gives us Mark Cuban's address. Now, Buster Copley happens to own a little company called Dave and Buster's, uh, which Cuban is a major invest was a major investor in. Uh, so ultimately we gave one to Cuban. We gave one to Cuban, he put it in his house. We're deeper into the pandemic. We all of a sudden get this random phone call that says we need 36, 55-inch boards on carts because we're going to put them inside the NBA bubble. Because remember, when the NBA did come back, they had a bubble where the players were on the inside and everybody else was the outside. I got pictures of LeBron James on a D10 board doing video, doing interviews with news media on the outside. And we all know that it was probably Cuban that said, why don't you just put D10 boards there? It wasn't like there was a big sales thing going on. The point of this story is uh D10s just once you start using them, you want them everywhere. You try you find other use cases for them.

SPEAKER_08 36:21

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 36:21

As the user, you go, why isn't it that? Why is it why isn't it easy as my office? Why isn't it as easy as this? So that's the real motion with D10. We know it's easy to use. We know anybody can use it, and users really like it because we get so many referrals from other people. And yes, there are lots of unique use cases. Uh, one of the things we strive ourselves on is once you've configured it, once you put your Zoom license or team license in it, uh, when you plug a board in, it takes roughly 48 seconds to boot up and it boots into that environment. You'll never see any pre-optive screens. You don't have to get in there and push a button. It goes right into the environment you use to make a call. Uh, and that advantage is now I could put it on a cart and roll it from room to room and plug it in.

SPEAKER_06 37:09

Interesting.

SPEAKER_09 37:10

You could take it on a roadshow and go from city to city, and it's still gonna fire up and run the same way.

SPEAKER_06 37:16

Would you say you're you're you're getting more requests from people who are looking into the UC space and getting that technology, or are you still educating people in terms of teaching them what what they don't know they don't know?

SPEAKER_09 37:38

Uh I think it's a little bit of both.

SPEAKER_06 37:40

Okay. And it's like a 50-50, you would say, like from your experience?

SPEAKER_09 37:45

Yeah, there are there are there are two things. There are there are plenty of people that don't really know about, if you will, D10 or even all in one solution.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 37:58

And they've been hodpodging stuff together, and it hasn't been a good experience. And they're looking for something better, but they don't know where to look or find it. Okay. And then there are other people, specifically more on the Zoom side than the team side, but both, that want to take advantage of some of the other uh Zoom type tools that are available, like Contact Center, for example, uh, where uh you can use a uh 27-inch screen as a virtual receptionist, as a visitor check-in station, all those kind of additional feature features. Um you can do contact center stuff, so you can you know have a pool of people in the background, and somebody can walk up to it, hit a button, and it'll call somebody in the pool to get an immediate response of some kind. So there are some other use cases. Uh I've got a group in New York, they're putting a 27-inch screen on every floor in their office, and the screen is IT support. So you walk up, it says, I need help with my phone, my cell phone, my computer, my software. And then, based on the button you push, in the background, it does a Zoom call to that expert. So the users on the floor feel like they're getting to the right person immediately, as opposed to where's Larry? He's never around when you need him. And then when Larry comes over, he looks at you and goes, Oh, I gotta go talk to somebody and walks away. Yeah, right, because that was what IT was like for.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

Yeah, did you create a ticket? I think we hear that one pretty often here. So turn it off and turn it back on. You create the ticket.

Beyond Conference Rooms New Use Cases

SPEAKER_09 39:36

Yeah. Right. So lots of lots of different kinds of use cases there, certainly outside of the conference room as you think of it. Uh, but the opportunities are there. Uh, there's certainly wayfinding, uh, workplace reservations, hot desking, all those kind of things are now also part of those solutions.

SPEAKER_05 39:55

And circling back in that that same kind of topic, um for for integrators and and resellers that are let's let's call new in that in the UC space. Um, what would be uh one of the um what would be one of the the uh door opening conversation or questions they should start with to to propose D10 products and or get the the end user in the in the uh aware that there's some UC solutions that can help him to achieve his meetings and or his communication uh between his offices and his customers.

SPEAKER_09 40:37

So what I like to tell everybody is start with, as everybody calls it, the low-hanging fruit, right? When you go into somebody's office and you're gonna talk about video production or building out the big conference room, whatever it is, right? Whether you're seated in a small room with them or you walk by a small room, and the magic trick is if you see one of those old polycom starfish phones on the table, they need a technology upgrade quick. And just stop right there and say, Oh, yeah, by the way, I know we're talking about this big project, but these rooms have to be upgraded. You need to do better for the for your customers in these spaces, they need video support, right? Let's talk about that next. And as an integrator, now you get the big job, as well as once you're doing the big job, to go in and hang 50 boards and little conference rooms, that's just cash money, baby. Right? To go to a customer and install one D10 board might not be the most profitable. But as long as you're doing another big job and you've got 50, 60 rooms rolling behind it, let's go, or even five, right? Take it and go with it. That's where the start is. And yes, you'll have to do a POC, they'll have to do one or two. But again, once they get going, people start using them. They come from other floors because it's easier to use. That's and that's where the users really start to see the demand. Well, I think also don't I know there are a lot of I know there are a lot of challenges, but I don't see a lot of IT teams using a lot of annotation and whiteboarding like their users do, like the engineering group does, or like the marketing group does. And sometimes it's hard for the IT purchasing manager to really understand what their people do in the rooms or what they need in the rooms.

SPEAKER_08 42:41

Well, well, that's that's what I was about to say, David, is we often talk about how the AV world and the IT world needs to do a group hug and just communicate more and make sure that everyone's on the same base. I feel like with D10, there's a lot of obstacles that are removed. The infrastructure needed is a lot simpler. Uh you know, we're joking about the rack, but I mean, you don't need any of that. You need a mount on a wall, you add power, and you need uh an Ethernet port, and that's pretty much it. Um so I I I think already that conversation becomes a lot easier to have, and you're breaking down a lot more barriers due to the simplicity again, like we're talking about, with uh with the product. And to your point, you different departments within a single building are utilizing different features very differently. And I think that's where all-encompassing product that has multiple uh benefits but that are applicable to different departments, that's where the product is going to start to shine because then you're not finding these niche solutions for specific departments. You're deploying a solution that has multiple benefits that are available for the different departments. Right. So I think I think that makes a lot of sense to what you were saying about the IT purchaser and all that. It's a lot simpler.

SPEAKER_09 44:07

And and I also think we as AV professionals need to realize when we move into the UC space, we can't control everything. We have to rely on others. If I built a hardware connected room, I do it all. Other than the phone company giving me a ISDM line, I kind of do it all, right? But in the UC space, if I want to have the whiteboard working or not working in the room, I need a Teams admin to turn that on in the background. And that's not going to be me, the A D guy. Nobody's letting me, the A D guy, into their Office 365 portal and adjusting everything. Here are the feature sets they want, and at least give them the basics of this is what we sh this is what you should turn on for these rooms so the so the users can have what they're looking for. Because for the guy that's the person that's deploying Office 365, for example, they got a lot of other stuff on their mind, and what happens in the conference room is probably not high priority. So you can certainly be an advocate as an A D person, you can be the advocate for the people using the room, but it's not going to be you that's going to build it all out.

SPEAKER_06 45:30

That's very well said.

SPEAKER_09 46:16

Yeah, me, like I said in the beginning, um you know, we build all-in-one solutions for Zoom rooms and Teams rooms. And that's the key. The idea is to make everybody as efficient and productive as possible inside their meeting room or outside their meeting room. As a result, everything's built in camera, microphone, speakers, touch, uh, and it's a really fast touch-enabled screen. So you can get true whiteboarding as you're looking for what you're looking for, uh, because it just makes you more efficient when you can have a room that you can just walk right into, start a meeting on time, and go do your next productive steps. And the technology kind of fades away into the background for you. That's ultimately our goal. Okay. I mean, it's it's disappointing that everybody in the world does not know who D10 is. But I think part of our goal is most users shouldn't know who D10 is because it should just work for it. Yeah. Yeah. Other than you know, seeing our logo on the screen, there shouldn't be much of a register. I I never want to hear, oh yeah, we always use D10, because then that's always a negative response to hearing that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_05 47:24

He's right though. He's absolutely right. I mean, a transparent technology is the best technology. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And because it's a I mean, I I'm I'm the geek. Yeah, I actually we're all geeks, but I'm the geekest. The geekest. The geeky, yes.

Beamforming Mics And Better Cameras

SPEAKER_08 47:41

Hugo takes the the the crown for that one. We'll give it to him.

SPEAKER_05 47:45

Uh can you talk a little bit about your your microphone, Ari? Because I had the chance to try it. I had the chance to dismantle it and look at it. Like uh, I know there's a bunch of microphones over the the the screen. Uh and I've I believe it you did a a YouTube video, right? That you were walking around the room. That's you. Okay. Very nice video. I think we should put the the link in in our uh in the podcast. Um yeah, we're gonna put the link right there. Yeah, yeah. There you go. Right. Can you talk about it?

SPEAKER_09 48:17

It's our YouTube and all appropriately, yes.

SPEAKER_05 48:20

Can you talk a little bit about the about the technology of the microphone? Which is it's it's basically it's stunning. Because I remember in the YouTube video that that's gonna be linked above here soon. Um you were literally walking around your room, uh, and like you were as far as I think maybe 25, 30 feet away from the 25, 30 feet away.

SPEAKER_09 48:41

Yeah, perfect.

SPEAKER_05 48:42

Can you talk a little bit about uh that technology? Because uh at the core, uh I'm a no-zio guy and I I like to hear about microphones. We had a we had a couple of podcasts here just talking about microphones.

SPEAKER_09 48:53

So yeah. Um so uh we use a 15, we use a 15 microphone array. It's a complete beam forming microphone. Uh so what we're doing, what we're doing is as part of the beam form, uh, you technically technically analyze all the sound that comes in, and then you look in then you look for and find the enhanced sound. We specifically look for uh specifically human voice frequencies. That's where we start and say, oh, that's really a person. Let's hone in on that. Then we amplify that portion and then you know tone down the other pieces that go with it. Uh but the second, but the second part of it is, and we spend a lot of time on this, and remember it's all digital these days, even though I'm kind of using analog definitions for you. Um, the other thing that we work pretty hard on is different people are in different places in the room. So all of a sudden, I have one person that's sitting, you know, three feet from the board, and I have another person that's sitting 10 feet from the board. And leave the AI board out of it because it knows. Uh, but the the current generation V7X is there is no camera, it doesn't know where you are in the room, the beam form doesn't know where you are in the room, but it picks everybody up. Then the next thing it does is it balances everybody so their volume is the same no matter where you are. The other thing we run into, and we put a lot of work into this. Some people pace when they're in a room, they're walking around, they like to walk around. Uh, it is an interactive whiteboard. Sometimes people walk up to the whiteboard and want to write on it. Now they're pretty, now they're really close to the microphones. Of course, somebody asks a question, they turn around, now they're facing the other way. Uh, so we're prepared for all that to happen. And internally, we're adjusting everything in terms of gain and support structure. So everybody's kind of even across the board, is the idea.

SPEAKER_06 50:42

Wow. Thanks. I I was really impressed with the side cameras as well. Yeah, that that was a cool feature that uh and it's the littlest things like David was saying about you know, even the thing, all the things that they're thinking about, like turning around and they're not their backs to the to the microphones, those side cameras is another thing that I was really impressed with, which you don't normally don't normally think about when you're in front of the whiteboard. How do people see you on the far end? You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 51:09

Yeah, it's true because if you're walking up to the screen and you're writing and you're blocking, let's say, the front camera, those that's where I guess the the a wide field of view from the side camera comes in and is able to to get you actually writing. Is that where those cameras come in?

SPEAKER_09 51:24

Uh yeah, so you you can see the side cameras, they're up here on the corners. Uh and there are two cameras on each side. Yeah, one camera is a short throw, so it does one to five meters, and then the second camera is a longer throw and it does five meters and greater. Uh, and they're designed for both Zoom and Teams. The software has different names for them, uh, but the concept is the same, and that is when you get a bunch of people around on the table, as a remote participant, I want to be able to see everybody's face and I want to see their facial expression, even if they're not speaking. So the software tells us we have to go find people, we have to look for people's heads and shoulders and cut them out and put them in their own box so all the remote people can see them. Right? That's step one. We created ViewPro cameras, so those ViewPro cameras optically have a smaller footprint, so I get much higher resolution when I start cutting people out. Center camera is going to be in the wide shot to see the whole room, somebody 20, 30 feet away. There are sure to camera, but there still aren't a lot of pixels left when I go that far and try and cut somebody out. So longer distances, I can definitely pick up people better. The other thing that happens is my center camera is either a 120-degree view or a 95-degree field of view. When I put on the B-Pro cameras, they can get up to 160-degree field of view. So if somebody does walk up to the whiteboard, that shirt throw camera can still get their face, even though they're facing away from everybody in the room. And maybe it's a you know hive shot.

SPEAKER_05 53:04

Yeah, their dual purpose, they basically enhance the resolution of the whole plane. And also, if you're closer to the board, they can get your face like what while you're drawing on it. Yeah, pretty quick. Right, very quickly.

SPEAKER_09 53:17

The smart people, if you will, you know, when we were only building 10 video conference rooms in a building, the smart people just said it is what it is. Now that we have a hundred, the smart people have gotten involved and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. More than half of how half the conversation is non-verbal. So speaker tracking cameras make no sense because I need to see everybody's response. And that's why teams both have the ability, force us, to cut people out and put them in their own box so you can see them the whole time. Right. Yeah, your sales manager can be standing up there giving you the best, giving the best sales pitch he's ever given in his life. But you know, the CEO is sitting in the corner going, and if you can't see him and you're a remote participant, you're kind of out of the conversation. Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_03 54:08

No, it's true.

Signage Virtual Reception And Zoom Calls

SPEAKER_06 54:11

I had a I had a bit of a question outside the UC space because uh while you while um you were talking about the 27-inch, have you guys explored like um signage at all? Like, especially on the virtual assistant side. Um the virtual uh like receptionist, I guess, or yeah.

SPEAKER_09 54:31

Yeah, so so the answer is on the Zoom platform, digital signage is built in.

SPEAKER_07 54:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 54:37

You can use either somebody else's digital signage feed, or you can build your own digital signage within the Zoom platform. Uh the Microsoft platform doesn't do that today. They rely on third-party type software to do those things, okay, including virtual receptionists, wave binding, et cetera. Uh, probably the number one claim in that space is somebody called App Space.

SPEAKER_06 54:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 54:59

Uh so our D7X27 runs App Space as well.

SPEAKER_06 55:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 55:03

Uh, and we're talking to several others, JL, etc., all the other uh uh uh signage, wave binding type providers that are out there.

SPEAKER_06 55:12

Okay. And you can use your bigger panels too, and maybe even a in a portrait um or is it all landscape or basically reserved for 20 cents?

SPEAKER_09 55:25

It's all landscape, but we do have a 55-inch panel. We call it the onboard. Uh, it has no camera or microphone stack on it. Okay. Uh, but it's just a touch-enabled screen, again, running, you know, whatever it needs to run for wayfinding, mapping, digital signage, those kind of things. Uh, it can also be used as a companion whiteboard in the Zoom environment.

SPEAKER_06 55:48

Okay. Okay. Okay. And and on the 27, um, if if let's say you're doing a signage at uh as a virtual receptionist and uh they they want to call a cab, let's say and they're they're getting sponsored by a cab company local and they're getting a kickback, whatever. Is that using Zoom to call out, or is that like a SIP thing that they have to connect to?

SPEAKER_09 56:13

Uh it'd be a Zoom call to do that.

SPEAKER_06 56:15

Oh, okay. So Zoom can take care of all of that.

SPEAKER_05 56:18

Zoom can call landlines, right?

SPEAKER_06 56:20

Am I correct? Right. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 56:22

Yes, that's great.

SPEAKER_06 56:23

Very cool. Very, very cool. Cool. Well, that uh we're at the top of the hour. Um just had one last question for you, David. What are you having for dinner? I'm kidding. I'm just sorry. What are you having for a drink after dinner? True that. Good job.

SPEAKER_09 56:46

So I can certainly second question, which is I will be having red wine after dinner. There you go. Because I have red wine with dinner and after dinner. I know that much. Very nice.

Why AV Integrators Can Lead UC

SPEAKER_06 56:56

We're on the same team, by the way. Yeah, I was just gonna say Hugo's uh aligned with you. Uh no, but what do you wish uh more integrators just got about the UC market? Is there anything that you uh that you'd want them to know more about, especially on the AV space, them pushing that uh or or educating customers? Is there anything uh particularly that that you'd want them to know about or that they should be spreading the gospel?

SPEAKER_09 57:25

Uh yeah, I think the UC market is a huge opportunity for the traditional AV integrator. Because the traditional AV integrator is certainly more focused on the customer than maybe some of these IT integrators that come along. IT integrators are more about moving boxes, getting them in, getting them out, and away you go. Uh AV is certainly more focused on the customer, what their experience is. It's a prime motion for them to step into that space and and take it over. Right? Which is why, which is why in my head, the you know, the starfish sitting on the table or or the TD hanging on the wall with the webcam that's tanging halfway down off by the wire is a perfect example of somebody who didn't really care about these rooms, and A V people certainly care about the people using them.

SPEAKER_06 58:19

Yeah. That makes total sense. And I never even thought of it, but you're right. IT guys are more, and I don't want to generalize on IT, but from my experience, it's been more, you know, they have to conform to a certain type of technology or whatever, and they kind of put the the UX, like the user experience in the back seat, whereas the AV guys are more on A V experience, because if the AV experience is crap, nobody's gonna buy the system or the the solution, right? So that is uh I think you you hit the nail uh on the head there.

SPEAKER_09 58:51

Yeah, but the the the other the other point of it is uh I know I know A V seems like it's very complicated. We do a ton of different things, everything from you know video walls and stadiums to live concerts, etc., to boardrooms. But at the same time, if you look at what an IT person has to deal with, yeah, everything from phones, laptops, security, software, there are just so many different components that fall under the IT realm. Yeah, it's hard to become an expert in any one of them. And here we are as the AV person. We are person, we are the experts in A V. We might as well just bring that right into UC and help that out.

SPEAKER_06 59:33

Yeah. That makes total sense.

Closing Thoughts And Farewell

SPEAKER_08 59:38

Well said. Well said, David, thank you for your time today for uh presenting D10 and Caldox, and it was a great conversation. And uh, whenever you want to come back on the show, it'll it'll be our pleasure to have you, and hopefully one day in person too.

SPEAKER_06 59:50

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great if ever you're able to come into the studio. Yeah, that'd be fun actually. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, David. All right. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:00

Thank you, everybody. Thanks, David.