LG is a premiere manufacturer of digital signage and room display solutions, combining spectacular visuals and business-friendly functionality. With LG’s UM3DG-H series of displays, large screen signage takes another giant leap forward. 

Most students in the U.S. will be returning to in-person learning in the fall; but the last year has proven that remote learning works. Even if we never see another school year like 2020-21, remote education is here to stay. From elementary schools to universities, students who cannot attend in-person classes full time will be served through remote access to classrooms. And educational institutions will need multimedia tools like the SMART Board 6000S, Smart Technologies’ latest innovation in educational technology. 

There are seemingly a million and one ways to connect with clients and colleagues these days, but the multitudinous options can sometimes bring issues with connectivity. Poly’s new partnership with Zoom Video Communications, Inc. was forged with seamless transitions in mind. Say hello to Zoom Phone Appliances, featuring Poly’s CCX line of desk phones. Engineered to offer the best of both worlds, Zoom Phone Appliances allow customers to enjoy full Zoom meetings and Poly phone experiences in one unit. 

A video conferencing solution offering more than HD video and high quality audio, Pexip Cloud conferencing platform delivers a host of tools and features that use AI to bring adaptive technology to collaborative experiences.

Sharp NEC, the newly minted joint venture of Sharp Corporation and NEC Display Solutions, has announced an exciting new partnership with Avery Dennison and the result is an innovative new display solution called ActiveScene. By combining Sharp NEC’s cutting edge projection technology and Avery Dennison’s Vela Dynamic System window film, ActiveScene transforms windows into captivating displays that can tell your company’s story in a fresh new way. 

As U.S. employees return to the office and get back to some semblance of normalcy, the spaces they are returning will likely need to function differently. According to a recent survey, 70% of executives anticipate a post-COVID workplace that features far more free and unassigned seating, largely because many employees favor flexible schedules that allow them to split their time between home and office. 

The last year of remote and hybrid learning has been incredibly challenging for students, teachers, parents and administrators. The sudden closure of schools and rapid shift into tech-mediated distance learning forced all involved to approach education as a day-to-day experiment in adaptation and flexibility.

More state and federal grant funding sources for technology are available than at any other time in American history. Solutionz is uniquely positioned to help organizations apply for grants to pay for new technologies. Our Grants Program Services (GPS) team works directly with education, healthcare, government, non-profit and for-profit organizations to locate grants among the wide variety of available funds. In 2020, Solutionz GPS team helped our customers win $9,600,000 in awards! 2021 is expected to be a much bigger year! 

We’ve written before about the importance of digital signage in an increasingly dynamic marketplace. The foundation of any public display strategy should prioritize responsiveness and flexibility, and those are precisely the qualities that a digital signage solution will bring to your advertising and customer outreach.

We tend to focus on digital solutions as a means of collaboration between co-workers, and while that aspect of A/V integration is absolutely crucial, screen technology is also an excellent way to deliver powerful messages to your clients and business partners. In such cases, we are thinking about screens as a uni-directional format, less of a conversation and more of an announcement: this is who we are. And there is no better way to show visitors who you are than with a well-designed and inviting lobby or atrium. But instead of the traditional, inoffensive art and decoration, businesses now have recourse to video walls that boast high-definition images and easy content control. Let's take a look at the advantages of such an addition.

When you think about how the majority of people communicate these days, what do you see? Text messages, right? Or some variation thereof: Slack messages, Facebook Messenger messages, Microsoft Teams chats. Text-based communication is understandably popular. For one thing, everyone already has the necessary infrastructure on their mobile devices. In addition, there is something so delightfully low-pressure about messaging--there’s no eye contact necessary, and you can compose your thoughts before sending them out into the world. Messaging is a true gift for anyone who struggles with shyness or social anxiety, but even the most socially adept among us revel in its ease.

The central tenet of customer service is the same as it ever was: keep the customer happy! Which means: keep the customer coming back. ‘Tis the nature of business. But while the foundation of good customer service remains the same, the strategies and tactics you use to reach out to customers constantly shift and evolve. Staying engaged with and responsive to customers in 2018 requires a set of skills and technical interventions that would have been unimaginable thirty or twenty or even ten years ago.

What if we told you there was a very simple way to increase productivity, reduce your company’s real estate footprint, save money and keep your remote employees happy? Sounds too good to be true, right? It’s not. You must simply embrace the beauty and power of the huddle room.

So, you're thinking about adding digital signage to your company's toolkit. Excellent! It's as easy as sticking a screen in your lobby and loading it up with some cool pictures, right? No, sorry. You'll have to ask yourself (and, hopefully, answer) a few crucial questions before committing to such a undertaking.

In a blockbuster deal announced on March 28, venerable communications giant Plantronics will acquire conferencing and collaboration luminary Polycom for $2 billion. The boards of both companies unanimously approved the deal, which will likely close in the third quarter of 2018, pending regulatory approval.

The benefits of video walls and digital signage are many. Such solutions allow companies to eliminate costs associated with printed matter (like posters, billboards and brochures) while increasing brand awareness in such a way that improves business--80% of brands that use digital signage experience a sales increase of 33%. And with digital signage, you can respond to the ever-shifting nature of the market by updating your displays with just a few clicks.

Keeping up with tech developments can feel like an impossible task. It seems like some new innovation is unveiled every other day. It is tempting to throw up one’s hands and ditch the tech news cycle altogether, because the reward for keeping tabs on new developments is too often a feeling of futility and frustration. What’s the point of investing in new solutions if they are supplanted by brighter and bigger and better ones within months? One must strike a careful balance between the past and the future, between the technology that has been working for you and the newfangled solutions that will be necessary moving forward. Finding this balance can be tricky. So let’s take a look at a few of the more glaring signs that it is time for you to upgrade the gear in your conference room.

Anyone with a bullhorn and a bright sign can attract attention. And you could easily turn your digital signage strategy into the equivalent of just such a crass attention-grabbing maneuver. But we’ll assume you don’t want to have to scream to get people’s attention. How can you use your digital displays to attract attention in ways that actually make people want to pay attention? Let’s look at a few key considerations.

Lifesize used the occasion of February’s Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) trade show to announce a host of improvements and additions to Lifesize Cloud. The big attention-getter was Lifesize’s unveiling of new integration features for Cisco and Polycom video systems.

You might think of digital signage as an aesthetically pleasing addition to your design scheme, and you would not be wrong to think this. But digital display solutions are versatile tools that can deepen your relationship with clients while financially benefiting your company. Let’s look at a few ways digital signage can become a vital component of your organization.

With more and more companies realizing that recruitment via video conferencing allows them to save money while widening their employee search, job hunters would do well to modify work on their video interview strategies. The rules of the old-fashioned interview still apply--make eye contact, speak with confidence, express enthusiasm--but video adds a few new demands. Let’s take a look at what you can do to shine on a screen.

Public speaking is scary. When you add video conferencing to the mix, things can get even scarier. Not only do you have to talk to people--you also have to manage, at the very least, the issue of how to present yourself on camera. If you're intent on presenting something people will respond to, you'll also probably have visual supplements (charts, graphs, pictures) incorporated into the proceedings. This can feel overwhelming. But there are things you can do before and during your presentation to pull it off. Here are a few suggestions.

So, you’re finally on board with this whole digital revolution thing. You have decided your office might need a makeover to bring it into the 21st century. Excellent! Welcome! Let’s go over a few key communication solutions you probably won’t want to work without.

Technology changes so fast that making predictions about it can be a fool’s errand, but it’s important to think about where we are at and where we might be going. And in the world of video conferencing and collaboration solutions, one can see a few pretty clear paths into an otherwise uncertain future. If we were betting people, we would definitely put our money on the four following possibilities.

For the last decade or so, the fine folks at System Contractor News have closed out the calendar year with a comprehensive list of the top 50 systems integrators in the industry. Taken as a whole, the list offers a pretty accurate snapshot of the state of the audio-visual integration landscape, and we like to think of it as a picture of where we’ve all been and a sign of what might be to come. Last year, Solutionz landed the number nine spot on SCN’s list, and we are pleased to announce that we have moved up in the world: on the newly released 2017 rundown, Solutionz secured the number eight spot. Another top ten finish!

Choosing a video conferencing solution can be an overwhelming undertaking. That’s why we exist: to help you wade through the options and choose the one that’s best for your company. But whether we’re there by your side or not, there are a few features you should look for in whatever solution you end up choosing. Let’s take a look at them.

The meeting rooms in which you host your organization-wide gatherings and formal video conferences have very specific tech requirements--you must offer employees and virtual visitors alike a fairly convincing simulation of a face-to-face interaction. Which means: large screens, powerful speakers, multiple microphones, interactive whiteboards, etc. You name it--it should be there. But you can lighten up a little bit with your huddle rooms. Don’t get the wrong idea--these aren’t crash pads. They are places of business. But they should be seen as opportunities to save a few dollars while giving your employees access to the same collaborative tools you use on a larger scale in your large rooms. So how, exactly, should you strike that balance between accessibility and affordability? Let us take a look at three key considerations.

We have a tendency to focus our attention on AV solutions that facilitate real time conversation and collaboration between people separated by distance: the boss and her remote employee; the scattered team members working from various coffee shops; the American salesperson and his Japanese clients. In such cases, we are thinking about screens (and speakers and microphones) as tools that can render a digitally mediated experience into something approaching the intimacy and clarity of a “real life” interaction. In these cases, HD displays act as windows onto a world that is still recognizably our own.

The proliferation of conferencing and collaboration technology has changed the way we think about space. With a video solution like Prime Call Cloud UC, anyone with a computer or mobile device can connect to anyone else with a computer or mobile device, no matter where they are. Physical space basically vanishes--you are in the virtual realm, where geography doesn’t matter.

With the rise of the huddle room and the increasing number of employees working remotely, there has been a growing need for compact solutions that won’t dominate a space or prove too cumbersome for travel. A cloud-based conferencing and collaboration solution does away with so much of the infrastructural heft that used to define video and audio communication technology, but you don’t necessarily want your employees relying on the built-in microphones and speakers on their devices. What’s the point of an exceptionally accessible teleconferencing solution if a laptop speaker makes a mess of sound? With this problem in mind, Polycom has unveiled the VoxBox, a low-distortion speaker system intended to supplement your video- and audio-enabled environments. Consider it a power boost for the wonderful system you already have.

We live in a world dominated by visual culture, so it makes sense that most conversations about video conferencing and collaboration solutions revolve around image quality. And while it is surely important to see your distant colleagues and clients in crisp high definition, such visual clarity is utterly useless if you can’t clearly hear what they are saying. This isn’t to say conferencing solutions don’t come packaged with great audio. They do. Audio problems often begin and end with the layout and design of the room you’re in. With that in mind, here are some tips and tricks for ensuring a top-notch audio experience.

Okay, first things first: that headline is a little white lie. Education is never easy. It never was and it never will be. It doesn’t matter what level of schooling we’re talking about. From kindergarten on up through college, the quest to acquire knowledge is one fraught with pitfalls and setbacks and sometimes insurmountable challenges. That’s just the nature of learning and of teaching. The difficulty is itself a part of learning, right? If we all stopped learning when things got hard, well, we’d all be crawling around dad’s ankles still.