Nearly a year to the day since announcing its acquisition of Polycom, Plantronics has unveiled its latest evolutionary leap. The company formerly known as Plantronics will become Poly, and with the new name comes a renewed commitment to collaboration solutions that bridge distances and eliminate distractions.

According to a report published by Frost & Sullivan in 2018, there are over 32 million huddle rooms in the world, but only 2 percent of those rooms are currently video-enabled. With more and more companies hiring remote employees and adopting informal collaboration models that rely on unified communications, it is only a matter of time before those millions of huddle rooms will need simple and seamless video collaboration solutions expressly designed for small spaces.

With the rise of the remote workforce, successful management of virtual teams has become a crucial skill. Managers who don’t understand how to motivate and oversee a group of distant employees won't be able to help those in the increasingly dispersed world of work. So let’s take a look at a few ways you can support and manage your virtual teams.

Cloud conferencing pioneer StarLeaf, which powers Prime Call Cloud UC and aims to make video collaboration accessible to everyone, has just announced the arrival of a brand new meeting room solution called StarLeaf Pronto. With nothing more than a simple USB connection, Pronto eliminates the clutter and confusion that plagues too many meeting rooms.

There is no such thing as a future-proof unified communications solution. Technology advances and mutates with mind-boggling rapidity, and not even the most forward-thinking IT department can make any airtight predictions about when and how video conferencing and collaboration tools will be different two or three years from now. To stay competitive, you must offer your employees (and clients) access to cutting edge communication solutions that respond to the shifting needs of a physically dispersed but increasingly interconnected world.

Last year, Lifesize introduced the compact and intuitive Lifesize Share, a wireless solution for presentations that made it virtually painless to get up in front of a group and share ideas via screens. It was a great start. But the modern meeting is, ideally, an omnidirectional exchange of information and images, and Lifesize is taking this into account with its new enhancements for Lifesize Share, which is poised to become the go-to solution for companies looking for a simple collaboration tool for smaller meeting rooms.

With video conferencing, content sharing and whiteboard capabilities, Cisco WebEx already seemingly did it all. But now, with the introduction of a digital signage feature, Cisco is taking their all-in-one communication solution to another level.

Plantronics, which acquired Polycom last year, has just announced its first foray into the huddle room market with Polycom Studio, a plug-and-play video bar that aims to deliver high quality video and audio to smaller meeting spaces.

The new year is a month old already, so you've probably just about gotten used to writing "2019" on your checks, but there's still plenty to figure out about the coming months. You might not have had "think about digital signage" on your list of New Year's resolutions, but that doesn't mean you should let yourself off the hook. We're here to help, though. So let's take a look at the ways you can revamp your digital signage over the next year.

We have written quite a bit about the ways companies can attract the cream of the millennial crop by providing employees with easy access to video conferencing and collaboration tools, but new arrivals to the workforce aren’t the only ones for whom video tools are an enticement. With more and more retirees reentering the workforce, companies would do well to think about the ways video conferencing and collaboration solutions can bring unretired employees into the fold.

This isn’t exactly breaking news, but the rapid rise of video conferencing solutions is showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. A recent Polycom-sponsored survey of 159 IT professionals in the US, Germany and Australia offers us a detailed breakdown of just what this A/V boom looks like right now.

Soon after completing its acquisition of Polycom last July, Plantronics threw its weight behind Microsoft Teams, promising a range of solutions for the Office 365 communication platform and heir to the Skype for Business throne.

Cloud-based services are making it easier than ever for businesses large and small to get up and running with conferencing and collaboration solutions, and soon we will all be conducting our affairs in the cloud. For now, though, there are plenty of companies still weighing the pros and cons of a cloud-based conferencing solution. It is for those companies that we have compiled this cheat sheet of pressing concerns. When you are looking for a cloud-based solution, consider the following four things.

If you’ve strolled through a bright and blaring electronics store in the last couple years, you’ve surely noticed that 4K televisions are becoming the industry standard for home theaters. With a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels--that’s four times more pixels than your average HD set--4K televisions boast a level of picture detail and clarity that no other technology can match. While these displays are becoming increasingly common in the consumer electronics realm, the video conferencing world hasn’t quite kept pace with the 4K revolution.

 You want your company to have industrious collaborators and innovative wiz kids, but to have a company like this you have to work for it. You have to create the conditions for such a culture to take root. Let’s look at the three most crucial ingredients for a company intent on improving collaboration and communication.