Demystifying Project Rigel - One push of a button conferencing

What is Project Rigel? = The idea to simplify a meeting room with just one push of a button.

There’s still a bit of confusion around this new initiative and what it means for businesses like yourselves. Basically Microsoft has partnered up with 2 vendors, Polycom and Logitech to provide a meeting solution that will fit into over 97% of meeting rooms that you may have today!

The idea behind this is to use and extend existing equipment that you may already have such as projectors, flat screen TV’s and then expand their use into a more fully fledged conference room solution.

Logitech has announced a range of products that will interconnect with an external projector and a Surface Pro to provide the same experience as a Skype Room system today. Allowing you to book this resource into your next meeting and have the facility to join a conference using their centre of room, ‘smart dock’ that contains a normal touchscreen Surface Pro tablet.

Polycom on the other hand will have their Group series in-room video conferencing solution qualified to work on Skype for Business and be supported on Office 365. They will have a new, redesigned user interface and will suit different size board/meeting rooms that will also inter-operate with Skype for Business.

The picture above shows the Logitech smart dock that contains a Surface Pro 4, connected to a Logitech ConferenceCam Connect and flat screen. Including a Polycom Trio device for different types of meeting rooms.

To bring the concept back and demystify what Project Rigel is: The facility to leverage a wide range of partner devices that will work seamlessly with Skype for Business as a cohesive collaboration and meeting environment.

“Uniting Skype for Business in Office 365 with Polycom’s high-quality audio and video solutions gives customers the most complete collaboration toolkit for the modern workplace,” said Zig Serafin, Corporate Vice President, Skype for Business.

This new initiative will be available the 2nd half of 2016.

The full Enterprise Connect announcement can be found here.

More information can be found related to Project Rigel here on Office Blogs.