Florida is home to more than 267 cities and over 21 million people. Situated within Florida’s southern Atlantic coast is a large municipality, known as the Venice of America. The particular municipality is at the center of marine, manufacturing, finance, real estate and tourism industries along the Atlantic coast. It is establishing itself as a world-class international business center and one of the most desirable locations for new, expanding or relocating businesses.
Situated within the municipality, the City Hall serves as a meeting facility for staff members, elected officials, advisory boards and committees. The City Hall utilizes Cisco Webex Room Devices for intelligent video collaboration within the meeting spaces. “We were challenged with creating an agnostic solution for our conference rooms,” explained an engineer for the Florida municipality. “Our staff members participate in meetings on different platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. It creates a challenge for IT professionals to provide staff with the ability to join non-natively compliant meetings with Cisco endpoints.”
The engineer added, “After reading about their partnership with Cisco, I became interested in Lightware and their solutions. Enabling the Cisco endpoints to be on USB components is a great solution. Lightware has taken the step further by creating a simple, easy-to-use solution that eliminates the traditional heavy programming required to set up a system of this nature. Lightware’s Webex-enabled bundles do not require the IT professional to write the code to support capabilities and functionality. Users can simply plug in a cable or two and press a button on the touch panel to start their meeting. It’s as simple as that. It eliminates typical maintenance calls to set up a room for a meeting and the typical downtime while maintenance is performed.”
Webex by Cisco is the leading enterprise solution for video conferencing, online meetings, screen sharing and webinars. The embrace of consumer technology is impacting the workplace, though. Technology users now expect simplified connectivity and ease of use, as they experience at home. Today, collaborating teams might wish to connect more presentation sources to their Webex Room Devices, including their personal laptops, tablets or mobile devices, to host meetings in Cisco-powered rooms. Lightware provides increased functionality and user experience for Cisco Webex users through bundled systems that promote engagement through collaboration and enhanced user experience.
“Many manufacturers require specialized training to utilize their solutions, but Lightware has a very unique approach,” explained the engineer. “It’s easy to set up a system and make changes later. Traditionally, programming changes can often be difficult, if not more difficult, than the initial setup of an AV system. Lightware simplifies the job. They are very open to collaborating and providing information to streamline system operations. The Lightware site includes instructions to create a file and import into your system. It’s incredibly detailed and user-friendly.”
Lightware has created a dedicated community on Webex Spaces, named Ask Lightware. Ask Lightware connects Cisco’s vast network of active users all around the globe to create a forum for insightful discussions between fellow industry professionals. Ask Lightware was established as a platform for industry professionals to discuss how the recent developments in collaboration technology can allow users to unlock the full potential of their Webex Room Devices.
“Lightware is willing to go the extra mile for their customers. Their dedicated forum, Ask Lightware, is a great space for asking questions and communicating with other Lightware customers to expand knowledge of the resources, solutions and products,” noted the engineer. “I asked a question on the forum and I was immediately contacted by someone at Lightware that was able to help. I appreciate Lightware’s openness and willingness to collaborate with customers, especially in an open forum. Ask Lightware has made a big difference by providing a space to communicate with Lightware and their global customer base.”
In addition to Lightware’s dedicated Ask Lightware forum, Lightware has a dedicated team of customer support specialists that listen to the driving force of the AV industry – the engineers, system designers, integrators and AV experts – to create solutions that will deliver AV technologies for the future. “Lightware’s customer support has been really great,” said the engineer. “Their team is very responsible and helpful. I recently met with one of their engineers. He is helping me design a room for our city manager’s office to ensure everything will operate smoothly. It’s nice to have a second set of outside eyes to view the system design and provide suggestions to create a more efficient space.”
The engineer added, “Lightware has been a really great solution for us. As an IT professional, the biggest testament to the technology is that no one complains or comments on the new experience. That’s the best compliment that we can receive!”
Lightware has simplified expanding, extending, and controlling Cisco Webex Room devices by providing a pre-configured appliance. With Lightware, users can expand the number of inputs and outputs of a system, extend the connectivity over longer distances, and empower the user to natively control the entire solution via the Cisco Touch10 and Webex Room Navigator. Lightware adds intuitive controls to the Cisco Touch10 and Webex Room Navigator and enables a consistent user experience to deliver dynamic controls in the same way in every room.
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