How Barco and Logitech Are Redefining Microsoft Teams Rooms

Hello there and welcome back to UC Today. I'm Marcus Law and today we're getting into a question that's sitting at the top of a lot of IT agendas right now. How do you build a meeting room estate that works for the way hybrid actually happens? Not the planned version, but the real one — where the room you booked isn't available, where your guest is on Zoom and your organization is standardized on Teams, where the hardware experience still hasn't caught up to the software. Most organizations have solved the Teams side, but what hasn't kept pace is everything else. And that's what we're here to talk about today. I'm joined by Gauthier Renard, group product manager for Barco ClickShare, and Neil Fluester, senior product marketing at Logitech for Business, whose companies have together launched a certified Microsoft Teams Rooms bundle that genuinely moves things on. Gauthier, Neil, great to have you both with us. Just start with a quick introduction — Gauthier, could you tell us a little bit about your role? Well, hello everyone. My name is Gauthier. I lead the product team here at Barco ClickShare. I've been with the company for many years already, and I'm very excited to now move ahead into this Teams Rooms world with exciting new capabilities of the ClickShare Hub, the newly released product. And Neil, tell us a bit about yourself as well, if you could. Hey Marcus, thanks. Yeah, I'm Neil Fluester. I'm on the product marketing team at Logitech for Business, concentrating on our Teams workspace portfolio. I've had a background in UC, video conferencing and AV for 25-odd years now. I'm a Microsoft MVP, and I've been working on the Teams Rooms and UC space for a while now. Fantastic. So great to have you both with us. Let's get straight into the questions if that's okay. Gauthier, I'd love to start with you. For IT directors watching this video, can you set the scene for us? What does a hybrid-ready meeting room actually need to deliver in 2026? Well, a hybrid meeting room in 2026, I would say, would need to deliver everything it's been able to deliver up until then. So make sure it is equipped with a capable audio video system, that you have the means in place to join and successfully have actual meetings, to invite people, to be able to present content — all these sorts of things are still very relevant today. What is there additionally is that IT managers do need to take into account the flexibility of being able to use this workspace in different ways. Especially with the advances in AI, there is an uncertainty on one end but also a variety of use cases, of tools, of ways people will change and will start working. So that flexibility is definitely something to take into account in the design of workplaces today. And Neil, from your side, what does the current landscape look like? Yeah, I'd echo most of the points that Gauthier made there. I think, you know, as we are in 2026 now, all post-pandemic, there was a whole wild west of different solutions that were kind of put into estates and organizations to try and solve the gap of return to office, you know, and getting people back in as we have the kind of return-to-office mandate. But I think the one real key thing that we need to concentrate on is experience. As an IT director, IT manager, my customer is my employees — who are going to be HR managers, finance managers who are going into my meeting rooms and environment to conduct their day job, their day-to-day job. They don't need to be technical experts. They really don't want to be concentrating on the technology. And it's the value that Logitech and Barco can bring to really simplify that experience — the ability to walk into the room, have that easy join experience into the meeting platform, to be able to share content easily, and for the technology of the audio and video to make sure that they sound great, they look great, and they experience a good meeting experience in the room. But moreover, the people who aren't in the room feel like they're connected and part of that discussion. And I think that's the real main point — the whole point of a collaborative meeting is to make the people at the far end feel more engaged, as if they are part of that room. That's what our Logitech cameras and audio systems, and the great simplicity that Barco brings with things like ClickShare and the rest of their portfolio, bring to really simplify that experience for end users. And you've both just touched on it in your first answers there — thank you — that there's a framework that's kind of emerged around the idea of collaboration technology being simple and smart and secure. So Gauthier, if I could go to you first, what do those words actually mean in practice for somebody who's making a decision around room deployment? For somebody who's making decisions around room deployments, you have to start with your end users first — the people who are actually going to walk in and use this room. What are they trying to do, and how can they do this in a way that they don't need to learn the system, but that it actually revolves around the way that they work today? Right? People don't come prepared to meetings. They don't read the manuals of the equipment that is there. They don't go in and try everything first before they have the meeting. No — everything has to work on the spot in a way that just makes sense and that is repetitive and intuitive to them. They have to be able to walk into one room and the other, be able to use the equipment in the same way and get going. So that is what simple is all about, right? Gone are the days of these menus with 600 buttons and configurators and whatever my parents would like to do on their first computers. No — you walk in, you get to work, it just works and it works around you, it works with you. Obviously, the easiest way to do this is sometimes to open up everything, right? And this is where security comes into play. You can't just open up everything and let things loose, right? There are secrets, there are trade secrets, there is business-critical information being shared in these meetings. So that has to be maintained, contained and make sure that these meetings happen in a secure environment. And then obviously smart, right? You just can't get away without smart equipment anymore. Gone are the days where you had to go and stand with a remote control trying to change your PTZ of the camera. Almost gone are the days where you had to take notes from your meetings, right? So meeting rooms need to be smarter, and not just smarter but smarter and smarter, and be able to evolve with the world around them, which becomes a lot smarter as well — both in the way we work but especially in the tools that we use. Neil, from the Logitech side, how important are those three words to you? Well, smart technology — and AI — is now embedded into the cameras and the audio, you know, to try and get rid of background noise, to make sure that every person can be heard. But moreover, as we move into this world of AI, and again translation, as Gauthier said, and note-taking, the feed and the purity of the audio going in is now more important than ever. Back in the day it used to be just the fact of hearing it with your own ears, but now when you've got AI picking up those tones and those notes, and maybe English isn't your first language and you've got a dialect or an accent, being able to feed really good quality audio into that is really important. Again, RightSound on the Logitech portfolio allows those smarts to do that. And as we said, making sure that you're representing and looking your best to the people at the far end — they can see you and you're not a little postage stamp in a small pixel down the end of the table as you talk, as the meeting flows and different people interject into that meeting. They're brought forward to the people at the far end in a large representation, typical head-and-shoulders shot, and the ability to switch between those automatically is really important. Last thing around security — I mean clearly there's a couple of elements to that. Again, we talked about AI and Agentic AI. There's a big point for the IT director to be able to manage where these secrets, where the NDA material, where the specifics to that organization are going — are they going to a trusted AI large language model to process them? And again, I think that's what Microsoft is doing an amazing job with regards to Copilot. Yeah, we sort of touched on the certified bundle in the intro, so I'd love to talk about that more properly and go into that now. Barco and Logitech have worked together for a while, but when it comes to the certified bundle, Neil, if you could start us off — what made this the right moment, and what does each company bring that the other couldn't deliver alone? Yeah, well, we talked a lot about IT directors and about simplifying the whole estate and the portfolio. And I think this bundle allows them to have that repeatable experience that's trusted. Again, there's a challenge where you can go and get a kit of bits and nail some stuff together and create these different room environments and different experiences and look and feel, but you really want to try and simplify and make it an easy experience for the users when they come in. If they use one room on a Monday, they want to go to a different room on a Tuesday and go, "Ah, it looks the same, it feels the same," and have that confidence that they can drive the meeting and not have to worry about the technology. And I think really that's what we're doing, coming together with these two great organizations of Barco and Logitech, to be able to provide that easy repeatable experience for all those different meeting spaces, and then also with the ability to manage these. So again, Barco and Logitech have got great management platforms and the ability to have that single pane of glass to give you that kind of view of the estate, see what's going on, be able to do things like software upgrades and management and reporting of those estates. Analytics is a huge part of the deployment — so you can see how things are getting used, see adoption and utilization. Again, we've got some very robust tools between Logitech and Barco to give the owners and operators of that estate full visibility of what's going on, what's working, what's not working, allowing them to tweak the configurations and settings to make sure they're getting the best out of the solution. Thank you, Neil. And Gauthier, from Barco's side — could you tell us a little bit about the move into fully certified room systems? Is it an evolution or is it something more fundamental? I suppose it's a bit of both. In the end, Logitech and Barco have always had a very strong relationship. I still remember when we launched ClickShare Conference as a product, as a category — we did that launch together with Logitech. So Logitech's been our partner since day one. We've worked and tested each other's products to guarantee the compatibility, guarantee that they continue to work, since day one. So this takes it to the next level in the sense that now there's a third party involved, being Microsoft, right? Which — on the partnership level it's interesting, although I don't want to say it doesn't add too much to the partnership. We continue to test our devices, we continue to work together in the marketing and so on. But it does elevate the credibility of the total solution. It does elevate the applications, especially since we can now run a native Teams Room system on the ClickShare device and have the integration more closely with the other systems running there. But other than that, for Logitech and Barco it's just another Monday — it is today, right? It's just not a Monday, and this is just how we've worked together since day one. Neil, I'm going to move to the next question and go to you about something we picked up on at the start, around the hardware experience lagging behind software, and the perception coming from certified MTR hardware specifically — the assumption that certified might mean locked down and inflexible. So from your side, how do you push back on that assumption? Well, I think Microsoft have had a certification program since way back in the Lync and Skype Rooms days. This is nothing new — we've had Lync Room Systems, Skype Room Systems, Teams Rooms systems for many years, and Logitech have been part of that, as well as Barco, for the journey. Microsoft's certification process is vast — we have to send our products out to the labs, they'll come back, they'll make changes and they'll put specific requirements on us as a camera vendor, or again in Barco's case with MTR-OS, obviously the operating system — there'll be specific requirements that they have to meet, and we all have to meet, to make sure we've got a repeatable experience. And that's really what we're delivering to the customer — the ability to have this easy cookie-cutter approach, that you can deploy a solution into a meeting room, whatever size, shape or feel, and know that you're going to get a good experience for your users. Again, that's what we're all about — let us concentrate on the technical stuff, because that's what we're great at with regards to hardware manufacturing, and we'll make sure that when you deploy this solution into your spaces it's easy and simple to use for your end users, the far end gets a really great experience, and we can input really great audio and video stream into those AI agents and large language models to make sure you get a really good output process. It's those guarantees that this certification process provides — that really good assurance — that you go and get some cheap device and plug it in and have a bunch of cables and wires and spaghetti in the room and it will probably work. But do you really want to support that? Do you really want that management? Do you really want that security nightmare? We're giving you this compliant solution that gives you that service level agreement — that it's secure, it's simple, it's easy to use, easy to deploy, not just from a management point of view but from an end-user point of view. And if you're going to get phone calls saying "I walked into this room, the video's not working, the audio's not working" — no one wants that. We want that great experience when we walk into the room. The amount of times that — I think Gauthier mentioned it earlier — we come in with minutes to spare to start our meeting. We don't want to be sitting and faffing around. We just want it to work, and work every time, first time, and be easy and simple to use. And that's what that certification process gives us. Now moving from the user experience side to the IT side — Neil, perhaps I could go to you for this one. For an IT manager who is responsible for rolling this out across dozens or even hundreds of rooms, what does deployment actually look like on the ground? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. There's the out-of-box experience — we want it to be a really simple and easy out-of-box experience, whether they're deploying it themselves or they've got an AV or a UC integrator who's coming in to deploy that room, being able to easily deploy these rooms in a new estate or upgrading an existing estate. That's the first thing — simplicity and ease of deployment and provisioning these devices. Once they're up and running and provisioned, then it's the ongoing day-to-day maintenance and management of these devices — things like firmware upgrades, additional features that come out as both Barco and Logitech provide new firmware and new updates to our products to enhance them moving forward. But then also the ability to get analytics and data — how many people are in the room, what's the room utilization, have we got a ten-person meeting room that's only ever got two people sitting in it, and we've always got a lack of meeting rooms — maybe we should put a dividing wall and split it into two five-person meeting rooms rather than one big ten-person meeting room. Getting that analytics and that data really gives you great visibility. And then, moreover, as Gauthier said, the flexibility of these rooms — you can use them as a one-click-join full Microsoft Teams Room experience, but also you could then use them as bring-your-own-device. You can come in with whatever platform you want to bring to the room, on your laptop, on your Mac, plug in that ClickShare device and join that call again with great audio and video. Again, getting that data analytics and view back to say, "Ah, that room over there that the marketing department always used — they're always joining Zoom calls because they're joining external suppliers or agencies, let's go and do something different with that room." Then other rooms that are always on Teams 99% of the time, let's maybe look to upgrade them from a BYOD experience to a full Teams experience, or maybe give them some additional capabilities and options in those rooms. So again, getting that visibility of your estate, how it's being used, is really powerful. But again, that's what the Logitech Sync platform and the Barco management platform, as well as all the Microsoft tools, allow you to get — that really deep level of data analytics and mining about how your rooms are being utilized. Now, we've touched on security a few times throughout this conversation, but I'd love to quickly dig into that specifically if we can. How does security by design actually work in practice, and what does it give IT that a non-certified setup can't? Neil, could you start us off? Yeah, again we've talked a little bit about the fact that this goes through a certification process. So the level of security that we go through to test both the Barco platform and then the Logitech devices as an audio-video peripheral connected to that platform — we obviously test the firmware and software that we provide as a vendor, and Barco provide as a vendor, to make sure there are no loopholes, that they all work together and there are no security flaws. And again, as new security vulnerabilities come up, we'll continue to test and continue to update the firmware and software, again providing that customer the guarantee that that solution is fully secure and tested. And again, because there are two vendors in this relationship, it's obviously making sure that the customer gets that experience with the software that Logitech provide and the software that Barco provide — we test it, certify it, and it's tested through Teams with that. And again, as we talked about, with the new world of AI and sending this data up to large language models, obviously Teams is growing more into the space of Copilot with these additional capabilities, and again we're testing and certifying with that and adding those additional capabilities through there. Brilliant, thank you very much. Just got time for one more question — we've covered a lot of ground today, from the partnership to deployment to security. So to close, Gauthier, could you start us off — for an IT director watching this who's managing a mixed estate, dealing with some of these recurring room issues, trying to build a business case for standardization — what's the single thing you'd want them to take away? One — the most important thing for us is to look at the users, right? Because meeting room equipment has a certain cost, but every minute you lose in the meeting, every minute or percentage you lose in productivity, has a scaling effect on not just that meeting but the entire organization, right? So do your homework — I would say make sure you understand why certain devices are more expensive, or what value they deliver in terms of experience, and make sure to listen to your end users. Look at how they work and start from their needs and how they work first. And final word to you, Neil? Yeah, I think again I agree with all of the points that Gauthier made. I mean experience is second to none. I think as an IT manager or director, you've got to take yourself away from being a techie — and I love speeds and feeds, I'll get way down into the technology and geek out on all of that kind of stuff — but you've got to put yourself in a customer-facing role, and your customer is your users. Right back at the beginning, they're the sales, HR, finance, whoever are going to be consuming these rooms to allow them to do their day-to-day job. And you've got to look at their experience, not only for the people who are in the meeting room but for the people who aren't in the meeting room. And again, I've talked about this at length in many different presentations, but I think you've got to really go into the room as an HR manager, finance manager, go and sit down, see how you would conduct a meeting, be that fly on the wall and look at how it works. But then also go and sit in a coffee shop, go and sit at home and dial in and join those meetings and see what experience that one person who didn't make it into the office today — because they're working remotely or in a different office location — see the experience that they get. And again, make sure that you're giving great audio, great video, and that you feel engaged and connected and part of that meeting, not that you're a second-rate citizen who's a postage stamp on the wall or a static picture on the wall. Make sure you feel engaged and part of that communication, because that's really what we're doing, and if you're not providing that experience then you're falling short. And really that's what we're providing — with the RightSound and RightSight capabilities of the Logitech cameras, and the simplicity and ease of join and ease of content sharing with the ClickShare capabilities from Barco — that repeatable, easy-to-use, simple experience allows users to carry on with their day job, let the technology be transparent and blend away into the background, so you can concentrate on what your day job is and what makes you successful as a user. All right, brilliant. Well, that's a great place to leave it. Gauthier, Neil, thank you both very much. It's been a really useful conversation. Thanks. Thank you. So, thank you to you also for watching this video. Hope you find it as interesting as I have. For more on ClickShare Hub and the certified bundle range, do head over to UC Today where we've got lots more on this topic. But until then, I'm Marcus Law. Thank you very much for watching.