*Work From Anywhere
By now, most in the industry know that Crestron Electronics, the widely renowned luxury residential electronics systems manufacturer, is also a large major supplier of high quality and mission critical solutions for the corporate commercial and industrial markets. Today, the company is announcing that their two divisions worked together to create a new product called the Flex MM – a unique, flexible, unified communications solution that is just about perfect for the new Work From Home…or as Creston likes to call it…the Work from Anywhere…remotely distributed workforce.
See more on this new solution from Crestron…
Crestron appears to have really pulled from their two parallel, power bases – corporate and residential – to create what may turn out to be a truly transformational product. Although based on an existing tool already extremely popular with their corporate customers for conferencing and collaboration, the company has cleverly redesigned it for the changing work environment – including more home office-based workers – in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
How is it transformational? Consider this – is the Flex MM…:
- …a corporate huddle space AV or video call interface device?
- …a residential audio or audio/visual communications tool?
- …a sophisticated corporate boardroom/conference room unified communications device?
- …an easily operable audio or audio/visual Zoom or Microsoft Teams one touch interface to join various-sized team meetings from your home office?
Well, for the first time in describing just one device, the answer to all of these is YES.
Designed to Facilitate Team Effectiveness in Today’s Remotely-Deployed Workforce
As Creston notes in their announcement, the workplace is evolving in a way no one could have imagined even just nine months ago as a result of COVID-19. This evolution is presenting fundamental and unique challenges…as well as offering compelling opportunities.
Crestron is uniquely positioned to address these challenges, thanks to their years of experience developing mission critical solutions designed to facilitate everything from offering an easy AV interface for small work groups in a company huddle space…to providing full control of large conference or board room intra-or international group conferences.
Crestron’s Prodigious Research & Development Capabilities
I have seen firsthand Crestron’s prodigious research and testing capabilities – and even took Strata-gee readers on a photo tour of their research center in Rockleigh, NJ. As many Strata-gee readers know, I have been a top executive in manufacturing companies in my career, and what I saw at Crestron was world-class research and development capabilities.
Flex MM – and I’d guess the “Flex” is short for flexible, because it appears to be an amazingly flexible product – benefits from Crestron’s years of research and experience to offer a new type of solution for your remotely deployed team. The Flex MM is equally comfortable in a home office, a small regional satellite office, or a main location conference space.
Flex MM – A Compact Design with Powerful Capabilities
Users will find that Flex MM offers them a compact desktop device that facilitates video conferencing with simple one-touch operation. The company says that the Flex MM is about 40% smaller than it’s corporate big brother – but with no sacrifice in the quality of its performance.
The Flex MM offers native support for Microsoft Teams and Zoom Rooms for a simple, one-touch interface. (Crestron is a certified partner with both Microsoft and Zoom.) If you’ve ever struggled with getting in on a Zoom meeting as I have, you’ll really appreciate the one-touch feature. This easy operability dramatically enhances the user experience.
The Way We Work is Changing, Flex MM Keeps it Efficient
The device also offers: a 7-inch touch screen, a 10-foot microphone pick-up range, an HD camera with a wide 150° field of view, and enterprise-grade network security. It can also be remotely provisioned, controlled, and managed.The pandemic has dramatically shifted the way we work and the spaces we work in. Microsoft Teams and Zoom are household names, huddle rooms and conference spaces are being redefined to team units, and our desks are overrun with migratory devices that are never ready for the next video call. Creston is quickly engineering preocuts to solve these problems. The future of work is in Crestron’s DNA and solutions such as Crestron Flex MM demonstrate our continuous innovation in enterprise technology that allows people to work efficiently and effectively from anywhere.”
Andrew Gross, Crestron’s Director of UC Enterprise
Crestron Flex MM Availability & Pricing
Crestron’s Flex MM is being offered in three versions:
- UC-MM30-TA – an audio conference only version for Microsoft Teams selling for $750
- UC-MM30-T – an audio/video conferencing version for Microsoft Teams priced at $3,000
- UC-MM30-Z – an audio/video conferencing version for Zoom priced at $3,000
All three versions will be available from Crestron starting August 31st. See more details on the Crestron Flex MM by visiting: crestron.com/flex.
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