HP Skyroom Videoconferencing Improves Digital Collaboration

I work in an off-shore location which means my environment is an outsourced environment and projects and clients I am working on are mostly based in the United States, Europe or Australia. For the past 5 years I mostly haven’t seen the people I am working, talking to for hours during day to day synch-up meeting and calls. While some of the project managers have gone to visit us here in the Philippines, majority of the people are faceless. The common phrase we blurt out on rare occasions we meet the people we are working with is, “putting a face to the name”. What’s fascinating is that after we have put a face to the name, the working relationships seems to improve and some issues and concerns don’t get escalated easily.

Having said that, video conferences are starting to see increased roll-outs and this is where HP wants to dominate. The technology superpower has a massive network of enterprises that has rolled-out their product line and by releasing their HP SkyRoom they are hoping to invade the boardrooms and help boost productivity across the enterprise. HP SkyRoom should provide far better collaboration among workers and could help businesses build relationships, tackle problems, work collaboratively, etc.

The HP SkyRoom is pre-installed and free of charge on HP Z800, Z600, Z400, and the xw4600 workstations. HP indicated that selected premium business personal computers and notebooks are scheduled to be released in the next few months and would be come with a 90-day trial of HP. Those who want to have an HP SkyRoom, they can purchase the software for $149 dollars.

What makes this software better than any other video conferencing software is its multithreaded video engine which enables participants to see each other through a multi-way videoconferencing session as well as see the presenters’ display. Users would be able to see their host or presenters desktop and feel like they are viewing their local machine. The software has the ability to render 2-D and 3-D graphics display in full motion video. The software also allows for faster rendering because it only send changes on the presenter’s system, compress and encrypts the information before being sent. On the receivers computer, the information is decrypted, decompressed and the screen is updated. On the computer of the users, various applications are supported on their PC which includes office documents, streaming video, interactive 3-D applications.

The HP SkyRoom would run in Windows Vista and the minimum requirements are Intel Code 2 Duo 2.33 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, a webcam, and either Windows XP or Windows Vista. The minimum transfer rate needed for its broadband connection is 400 kb/s. Also HP SkyRoom should run on a corporate VPN and able to connect to systems outside the local firewall.

According to Jim Zafarana who is the vice president and general manager for HP, “Finally, video meetings with genuine eye contact and natural human interaction are as easy as starting an instant messaging connection, It takes business productivity and collaboration to a completely new level when we can connect people around the world in a day via HP SkyRoom and let them get home to family dinner and bedtime stories – without the wear and tear of travel.”

As I said earlier, putting a face to a name helps a lot in boosting productivity, working relationships which all lead to better digital collaboration in the workarea.

Image from Ethiopian Review.

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