I recently had the opportunity to take a tour of Logitech for Business' video labs to get a view of their product development process. Logitech for Business is a group within Logitech focused on unified communications, and is developing video conferencing devices, headsets, and other tools for UC users. Its initial product is the ConferenceCam, a very cool device aimed at small team collaboration in UC deployments, developed in partnership with Microsoft to optimize Lync (you can see the ConferenceCam in the photo).
During the tour, I got an in-depth view into Logitech's design and modeling process, and saw how a prototype model was created on a 3D printer. 3D prototyping lets Logitech make adjustments and changes quickly, at a much lower cost than would otherwise be possible. Logitech claims that it's the only video conferencing vendor that gets directly involved in sub-component development of its products, and we got to see its optical design equipment. Logitech is also different from some competitors based on its manufacturing processes – the company owns its factories in China and builds its own machinery, which reduces quality assurance issues and lets the company have more control over the manufacturing process. We also got to see Logitech's audio labs where the audio systems for the conferencing systems are tested, and learned about Logitech's testing process, which includes Logitech’s own research on the psychology of videoconferencing and cultural differences.
In this video podcast, I spoke with Ziva Nissan, Senior Global Manager, Product Marketing, about Logitech for Business.
Transcript for Ziva Nissan Discusses Logitech for Business Products
Blair Pleasant: Hi, this is Blair Pleasant, and I am at Logitech for Business. With me is Ziva Nissan, and she’s going to tell us a little bit about what Logitech for Business is, and then about their products. Welcome, Ziva.
Ziva Nissan: Thank you very much.
Blair: So who is Logitech for Business?
Ziva: Logitech for Business is a group within Logitech that is dedicated to the needs of professionals working in different types of businesses, whether it be small-medium businesses, large businesses, education or government. We work on products that specifically fit the needs and solve pain points for professionals.
Blair: So what kind of products do you produce?
Ziva: We produce a range of products: web cams, audio products, mice and keyboards, that again, are catered to the needs of professionals.
Blair: So what would our audience, that is interested in unified communications, be most interested in?
Ziva: We produce, for instance, the highest quality both desktop and small group conferencing devices, so your video conferencing will have the quality as if we’re sitting here talking in the same room. We also produce the highest quality audio devices, so for headsets, speakers, those types of things you want to get that high quality acoustics with echo cancellation and noise cancellation. And for the UC user, or the person working with UC, these are going to be great peripherals that you’re going to want at your desk, in your office, or in a small conference room.
Blair: Do they require any kind of specific software platform or are they agnostic and work with Lync, Cisco, or whoever?
Ziva: We pride ourselves on delivering broad compatibility, so all of these are plug-and-play. You just plug them into your PC or your Mac and you’re ready to go. Also, the solutions all work very well together, so using one of our Logitech webcams with a headset will all work very well within any application that you use.
Blair: There are a lot of video products on the market today, what would you say are some of your competitive differences?
Ziva: We again pride ourselves on the high performance of our quality. For instance, video, we have the best optical footprint that is on the market, so you’re going to not only get that great image resolution and that image quality, but also the performance that you need. When you’re on a video call, for instance, you don’t want to be bothered with latency issues, or a lot of noise, or things like that. We offer not only the highest quality components, but they are also tuned to this broad range of applications that we support. And goes for our audio devices as well.
Blair: What do you see as far as the future of video? Do you think it’s really going to take off, or do you think people are still a little hesitant to be seen on video?
Ziva: I think it is definitely going to take off. I know personally, and my colleagues as well, really benefit from a video conference over a phone call. You get that feeling of direct collaboration, you can do a lot more, you can share documents, you can whiteboard together, and just to be speaking face-to-face over video, with the high quality that we offer in our webcams, and in our newest product, the ConferenceCam, is going to give you that level of collaboration as if you’re in the same room. I know personally, I work with many offices around the world, be it in Europe, Asia, or in other areas, and being able to talk face-to-face and also share some of these documents is really crucial. And I think that this is really taking off with the betterment of video, both with software platforms as well as hardware platforms. And in another place, again introducing the BCC950 ConferenceCam, we’ve also offered a device where you can get a small group together at any moment, and just go into a room and have a small group conference, and have that quality video and the acoustic quality of the audio, and have that real time or real life collaboration over a remote connection.
Blair: Thank you very much.
Ziva: Thank you.