Christopher Amdi Mark: If you are an end user who doesn't have a, a lot of it knowledge. I think it can be very intimidating that suddenly there's something extra joining that meeting. And I, I really appreciated seeing the news the other day that, you know, third party agents are gonna be identified as they are joining Teams meetings, and you're gonna be able to say, no thank you. 

Because I think that's, that's certainly coming, becoming a, an area now where people don't know what they're. Admitting into a meeting. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Welcome back to the podcast. This is a great insight into a really interesting Teams journey and Teams Rooms journey. We have Christopher at Novo Nordisk and he talks about his journey from. Standard space Rooms into Teams, Rooms, Teams, Rooms on Windows, Teams, Rooms on Android, and really is open about the experience of rolling out thousands of Rooms at scale in a relatively short period of time. 

Many thanks to Christopher for jumping on the podcast and also many thanks to Cisco who are the sponsor of this podcast. Really appreciate all their support of the community. On with the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the show. you know, some of my favorite shows are customer stories and, and real world experience. 

And, this is gonna be a good one with Christopher. We, we did a really good prep call where the ultimate conclusion was that I think we've got like three podcasts worth of insights here. So, no pressure Christopher, but there was a lot of good conversation. Yeah. maybe we could start by, you could introduce yourself and your role. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks and thank you for having me. so yeah, my name's Christopher. I work as an IT Architect for Novo Nordisk. yeah, we'll, we'll get into it along the way I'm sure. But just kind of the, the basics of, of my work is setting global standards for all our Yeah. Unified Communications really, but specifically meeting Rooms, and a few other services here and there. 

And then Novo from a, you know, for those that don't know perspective is a global pharmaceutical company, very much in the obesity and diabetes market. yeah, that's, that's a very short intro. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. That's great. I mean, let's start off with your journey. 'cause you haven't always been customer side. 

You've done consultancy side as well. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, so I started, well. Graduated from, the IT University in Copenhagen in, when was it, 2014. So I haven't been on the, you know, in, in the professional market for that long. Still feel young, certainly. But, 

Tom Arbuthnot: you, you actually, in that timeframe, you've come in a really, a big time of transition actually, which is quite interesting. 

You, you didn't bring a lot of, probably a lot of, legacy philosophy to No, to the last decade. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: I really didn't. And I mean, when, when I hear, well, when I used to be it, where I started was, was at a Danish Telco, TDC, and. All my colleagues were always talking about, you know, how, how they were actually in server Rooms, connecting cables, and to me that just sounded completely crazy, right? 

I'd only ever heard of Cloud computing basically. obviously I'm exaggerating, but, but that was kind of how it felt. So kind of my introduction into that Unified Communications world was very much in enterprise telephony, which. To this day, depending on what type of company it is, is still very much on premise. 

You know, it's your own hardware, it's secured in the basement somewhere. Yes, you've got your gateways out, but it, it is still very, you know, managed by boxes kind of thing where. You know, the strategy that we have here in Novo Nordisk, which I joined yeah. Roughly five years ago, is completely Cloud first. 

certainly in, in this space of our, what should we say, the, the administrative, employees kind of portfolio of services and tools that they use very much in that Cloud space. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And you, so five years. So you joined right around, kind of, COVID time and the, the massive change there, and obviously pharmaceuticals, I'm guessing, I I know you're a big Cisco shop, so presumably on-prem, Cisco was Teams and, and Skype in the mix at that point, where were you then? 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, there was, there was some Skype. Skype was the UC client. there were some. experiments with with WebEx as well, which can't offend WebEx then it must have been. Spark. It was Spark at that point. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Pre, 

Christopher Amdi Mark: pre Jabber. Yeah. Kind of in, but in, in the Jabber kind of era as well. Yeah. but Skype for Business was the, you know, preferred UC client. 

And then the transfer to Teams happened just before kind of Denmark went into a, a COVID lockdown. Which was fortunate, but it also, you know, changed the landscape of how people were using their communication tools on their PC because, you know, suddenly you couldn't opt out, you were automatically opted in. 

and then when people did start coming back to the office, there was a certain. You know, lack of understanding of where are all these smart tools that I've got in my Team's client? Why are they not in the meeting Rooms as well? 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, you are one of those, we, we hear this story quite a lot. 

Interesting example where obviously COVID was a terrible impact for everybody, but the, the adoption thing of forcing adoption change how people work and then they come back to the office and they're like, oh, we're used to. Meetings with sidetracks and, and reactions, and we record them and we do this and we do this, and it's like suddenly the room became interestingly constraining, whereas before, I think it was generally the philosophy that the best experience was room to room and everything else was a substitute. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think, yeah, I mean if, if we kind of dive into that journey a bit, so we had a lot of. And yeah, I mean, basically when I was at TDC I sold some, video enabled meeting Rooms to Novo Nordisk. and they were always, you know, it was Cisco. Even before that it was Tandberg, 

And, and a lot of Rooms were being enabled, but it was still very much the room first and then remote participant second. Kind of give, 

Tom Arbuthnot: give us a feel for the size of the organization and the number of Rooms, because it's quite a big organization, isn't 

Christopher Amdi Mark: it? Yeah. So, employee numbers were, give or take 72,000 ish, meeting Rooms. 

About a 10th. So, you know, we've, we've probably got somewhere between seven 8,000 meeting Rooms where of half of those are then, video enabled in some shape or form, and the rest are either empty Rooms or have. Some form of, you know, of a screen and a drop cable. if you're really unfortunate, you might stumble across, you know, a good old fashioned speakerphone or something. 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah, I, 

Christopher Amdi Mark: nobody knows how to use anymore. Right. 

Tom Arbuthnot: I, I I'm, I, I'm excited to get to your, BYOD thoughts in a bit, but I'll save that. But I mean, that is a, is a sizable, sizable estate, and, and so pre. Pre Skype for Business, or even I guess during Skype for Business, that was, standard space with Tandberg and then Cisco. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yes. obviously some other bits and pieces have come in, because, you know, the need to standardize and, and kind of set some control and some governance on what was being purchased has obviously grown along with the fact that all the meetings are now being Teams enabled. and, and there's this. You know, we're, we're accountable. 

So if somebody comes in and says, well, I was expecting this experience from a meeting room, but I got something completely different, then somebody needs to be able to make sure that the experiences. Similar, no matter which room you walk into, no matter where you are in the world, but also that it can be supported that, that our support organization can actually take care of what might be going wrong in these Rooms. 

So, so there is, I mean, yeah, we could say bring your own device, put in whatever you want, but it would be impossible for us to then guarantee, you know, a, a user 

Tom Arbuthnot: service experience. The service that the business needs. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. Yes. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So we got to COVID, Skype for Business. The, the business came back and wanted more from the room. 

So pick up from there. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah. So, so everyone came back and, I guess so at this point we had, you know, roughly 1500 maybe Cisco RoomOS meeting Rooms, but they were all joining. What used to be Skype for Business then became Teams meetings using Cisco's, Video Interop. and that actually worked really well. 

but again, it, it was, you know, a, a combination of, but I can do some things and I can't do all things and I can't see people's reactions and I can't see any raised hands and someone's sharing PowerPoint, but it's just a blank screen what's going on. and we could sense that okay, there's, there's definitely a need. 

Here to do something else. So it must have been at, I wanna say ISE at yeah, in Barcelona in 20, must have been 22, what was it, 21? I can't remember now. 22. It must have been 22. that we went looking for, you know what, what is gonna be our. MTR bundle. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: And at that point we were quite convinced it was gonna be a Windows bundle, because Windows seemed to be quite far ahead at that point. 

and, you know, we're, we're a big Microsoft house and, and obviously it hurt to leave Cisco in that space, but it felt like that was the only option. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Cisco. Yeah. Going back then, there wasn't a Cisco native option at that time? There wasn't. So there wasn't, there wasn't. So I think that was happening in multiple. 

Places because the business was, as you say, demanding those extra tight integration features. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, and I mean, we, we did look at, okay, so instead of going the Teams Rooms route, should we kind of stay within the WebEx space? Can we see if we can adopt the WebEx client? Because the meeting experience on WebEx was superior to the Cisco endpoint joining a Teams meeting, through CVI. 

Simply because you know of how the meeting is hosted in the Cloud, how it's prioritized, the traffic from a Cisco endpoint wasn't prioritized higher than you know anyone on their mobile connection or wherever they were. So you suddenly had this really a high resolution camera sending a maybe not so good picture, and then it kind of became, yeah. 

A, a, a bit of a, a situation where it, it didn't look good enough. so we figured, okay, if we go, we have to, we have to put all our eggs in one basket here, and it ended up being the Microsoft basket, and that was MTR Windows. At that point. We chose what we felt was. The most, compatible bundle with what we were used to, how we were used to working. 

So we went with, Logitech and Lenovo. so it was a Leno Lenovo Core, and then the Logitech Rally Bar, or Rally Bar mini, depending on the room size. And the initial trials were excellent. You know, we had remote management through Logitech sync that we were used to in the control hub from Cisco. So there were lots of things there that were really good, but it all just happened too quickly. 

We moved too fast considering it was still very early days. Microsoft said, oh, but we're transferring everything to the Teams from Management Portal, so you should start using that straight away. And we did, but there were bit too many, you know, early 

Tom Arbuthnot: days. Yeah. Going back, going back to 21, 22, it was, it was still early days on the management story that we know. 

Story, the Windows story. Did you, did you feel any pain with Windows that. Your team is not the desktop team, so therefore managing Windows kind of, in some organizations I've seen that kind of fall between the, like it's not end user compute and it's not AV UC. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, slightly. Luckily, the way that we are organized, 'cause our department is digital workplace, the whole desktop area is also within the same department. 

So literally there are a couple of tables away. I know them very well. I can go and chat with them and say. You know, the way that we are managing these devices, can we make sure that our policies are separate? Can we make sure that our, you know, conditional access compliance, everything is, is boxed in the way that it makes sense so that we don't accidentally affect each other? 

So we actually had that really well under control. But there were just still some things going on. Teams, app updates that weren't coming through, Windows updates that were coming through at times where they perhaps shouldn't have been. just weird experiences with the devices. I think what we saw the most was, was the resolution suddenly went all wonky on, on the, the touch panel. 

And then you couldn't join meetings, you couldn't do anything. You had to restart the device. Only way to do that was to pull the plug. Too many things that were making it a nuisance for our line of business, and making way too much work for our onsite support colleagues, obviously. Yeah. so yeah, I mean, conclusion was we did it a bit too quickly and perhaps the product wasn't quite as mature as we thought. 

but then, you know, we, we'd finally, I think we rolled out, I mean, it's gonna sound kind of crazy, but we did actually get to roughly a thousand Rooms when then Cisco came out and said, oh, but we're gonna. Do a native Android. MTR. Yeah. And we were like, okay, thanks. 

Tom Arbuthnot: could, could have told us that for 60 

Christopher Amdi Mark: months ago. 

Could have told us that a year ago. But I mean, obviously we knew that that was a chance. but things were happening so quickly and we needed to move on. That kind of momentum of. You know, Teams. Teams, Teams. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: so we just had to go for it when we did and, and, yeah. Then, then Cisco came out and you've 

Tom Arbuthnot: still got, you've still got some MTR Ws in flight now, so like they're, they're, they're still about, 

Christopher Amdi Mark: we've still got. 

About 650. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's a substantial estate. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously we're not implementing any new, Windows MTR because everything is, is now. Cisco is like the, the standard. 

Tom Arbuthnot: so Cisco, Cisco came along, you're a thousand MTR's in, and they're like, Hey, hey, hey guys. 

'cause you've got got quite a good relationship with them as well. Obviously you guys use them for other bits and pieces as well. so tell us, talk us through that. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, I mean, yeah, so, so obviously we had the history with Cisco. We're very big on, on Cisco networking. so when they came back and said, well, we're gonna be introducing our own, you know, MTR Android based, version here, we think you should give it a try. 

Obviously we had a couple of devices to test and, and instantly it was, it, it looked to be a very good product. You know, obviously we had to go through our, our security team and say, Hey, we want to introduce Android. And, and Android has kind of been a, something that you didn't mention. but we, we mentioned it and they said, okay, but if we can set the, the correct level of compliance and conditional access from the accountants and everything else, then let's have a talk about it. 

So, So they ended up saying that that was okay. We went through, did our first trials had, yeah, so that must have been the beginning of 24. Yeah. We had equipped, we moved to a new campus. Everyone in IT was gonna be gathered in the same building, everyone in IT in Denmark, obviously. so we moved to a new campus, 130 ish meeting Rooms, equipped them all with. 

With Cisco. 

Tom Arbuthnot: and what did you go with Cisco Wise? What kit or what combinations of kit? 

Christopher Amdi Mark: So, pretty much everything. we've got Room Bars in, in the smaller Rooms, Room Bar Pros in the medium, larger size Rooms. We've got some EQs in spaces where there's more of a requirement for perhaps extra seating mics or extra cameras. 

Got quite a few Deskpros as well actually, kind of presenter set up. Are 

Tom Arbuthnot: you using the, are you using the Deskpros as a single, like, like execs having an endpoint or using them more as huddles? I see they seem to be moving into more of a huddle scenario now with the G2's. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, that is exactly what they're saying. 

With, with the added camera, it's like bring in more people. but, but for us it's very much been, the product that we would give to. Execs, to have as like a personal or even a home office device. And then we've also been using them as, as like a. Yeah, one or two person huddle room type of device, but they haven't been popular and I think, you know, that is what they're then gonna be solving with adding the extra camera. 

There's gonna be more of an idea that you can, you know, be more people gathered around. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I feel like, I feel like the Deskpro name is a bit of misnomer now. 'cause like back in the day if you had a Tandberg endpoint on your desk, you were the, you were a big deal, right? Yeah. That was like a big thing. 

Dedicated endpoint. And people had them at home as well. Whereas I think again, part of this COVID impact was everybody used to driving a, a laptop and they could, they could share the current Excel they had open at the time. Yeah. Or attach the PowerPoint and suddenly the dedicated endpoint had a lesser, I still think some prestige there. 

but conversely, the huddle room thing, the idea of dropping an all in one in and off you go is, is quite nice. It 

Christopher Amdi Mark: is. It is. And I think, I mean, that's what we're seeing, Microsoft going kind of this express install route. A lot of OEMs coming in on that space. I think there might be something there. You know, the fact that you can have an all in one, drop it in, maybe not even have to attach it to a wall or anything else, that could probably be an advantage. 

But again, it depends on kind of the feeling that the user gets sitting in front of the device. If, if they think it looks too complicated, then they're not gonna use it. And I've kind of got the impression that that's how our users feel about the Deskpro it, it looks a bit too flashy, whereas everything else, you know, it's, it's just a screen on a wall. 

Yeah, there's a touch panel and, and it can be intimidating but not as intimidating. That's interesting. There's, there's, there's. Kind of a, a very fine border there between what do we as end users feel comfortable with and what don't we feel comfortable with. I think the Deskpro is, is in a bit of a tricky spot there. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Interesting. So you guys have got, like, now you've kind of revealed the full estate story. So you've got, how many Cisco MTRs are you up to now? 

Christopher Amdi Mark: We are almost at two and a half thousand just below. and then we've got, yeah, so still. About 600 ish, RoomOS enabled Cisco endpoints and roughly the same with with the MTR Windows bundle. 

Tom Arbuthnot: are you using the Cisco CVI for the roomos to get to the Teams meetings? Yeah. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, still. and I mean, again, that's what makes this complicated. We're not just gonna rip down. Perfectly good equipment because we've decided to go in a different direction, right? So it, it still has to stay on the wall until it goes end of life, from a sustainability perspective. 

And, and that just means that we have to then find a way to make it clear that you might be in one room and then step out, walk down the hall five meters into a new room, and it's a completely different kind of. Look and feel. It's a different solution, but the goal is to end up in a Teams meeting or you know, if you've been invited by an external, it could be a WebEx or a Zoom or whatever, but, but let's say Teams is, or Teams is our corporate standard. 

So that's, yeah. Obviously what we're trying to enable as like, if you can get into the meeting. Then it's a good start. so we, we've done a lot of work with kind of adoption and, and we've got the real estate. You know, you walk into a room, you can put instructions right there on the screen. We've always been very much against the whole laminated piece of paper that sits on the table that can either get lost or get outdated or whatever can happen to, to instructions on paper. 

So we've very much been. appreciated the fact that we could change what was on that background image. Signage, I think is a completely different story, because signage inside a meeting room for me is a bit overkill. makes more sense in the, the coffee, areas, the, the kitchens, you know, that kind of thing. 

inside the meeting room, I want people to be able to join their meetings. And not have any problem with that. So that's, that's what we've kind of worked on is, is making sure that when you enter the room, it's on the screen. You've got two options. Either click a button or use your PC in some shape or form. 

Right? So, I think that's, fortunately it seems to have worked really well. Nice. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And what does your, what does your team look like? Do you sub out any of the support, because that's quite a, that's a big global estate. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, so we've got, an external partner handling all first level support. And then, we've got regional IT managers who handle local IT support, where you've typically got, at least a handful of people who have some AV knowledge, and feel, you know, confident working on the equipment inside a meeting room. 

Fortunately, it's always enough, almost always enough to restart, and then everything comes back online and works as it should. if it isn't, then they go on and create a ticket that that hits a global AV support queue. where we've got some really good people who know what they're doing in Control Hub in all the Microsoft platforms. 

and if, if they don't know what to do either, then typically it ends up with me and then I. Either can work it out or can ask the correct people at, you know, either Cisco or Microsoft or Logitech or wherever it may be. And then we get there in the end. so it's, it's quite comprehensive, but it, it works. 

Very well, I would say. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Nice. And you're using a mix of presumably ProPortal and, well, I guess now the Android stuff is coming into ProPortal. We've got public dates for that. That'll be a, that'll be nice for you. 'cause it'll be centralized. Yes. and then the OEM tooling as well, I guess from Cisco and Logi. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, exactly. So. Especially 'cause we did kind of adopt the Pro Management Portal early on. It's meant that, that we've kind of been used to it. there are still some things there that I, I'm not so fond of. you know, the amount of incidents being created is one I know I can, you know, I. Scale them down so that I don't have to see everything constantly if I don't think it's important. 

But there is a lot. and, and I feel like because of those early days issues we had. Sometimes we kind of don't know if we can trust the signals that are coming from the Pro Management Portal. You know, it might be saying that something's wrong with the front of room display inside a room, but in reality there's nothing wrong. 

It just went into standby when you know the device was expecting something else. And again, from, from kind of a support perspective, is that. Incident worthy, or is that just something that you know, has to. You have to live with and then 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. The fact the actually works. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Is it a transient issue and they're not gonna hit the panel and let fail will come on. 

But the ACCP saying it feels like it's gone. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. So we were very much in that, how proactive do we want to be based on the signals that we're getting? And I mean, it's ended up being a question of, fortunately with, I mean with the Cisco, with, with the MTR Android bundle, we, I, I kind of feel like the. 

The split is if it's a hardware related, if you issue or configuration of the hardware. I'll always look to the WebEx control hub. If it's something with the Team's client, sign in perhaps, or, Yeah. You know, some, something along those lines. Then I would look, still currently Teams Admin Center because, for the, for the Android devices of course, but that will be the Pro Management Portal. 

Yeah. And I think that's, that's fine. And, and I don't mind having to look multiple places. but, but there's still that feeling of, okay, if everything was centralized, maybe the data I would be getting access to would be even more, You know, specific and correct with regards to room usage, utilization, that kind of thing as well. 

So there's, there's always room for improvement in some of the portals, but I feel like, you know, 

Tom Arbuthnot: oh, the, the, the Teams tend to listen into these. So, that, that'll be hearing the feedback, Christopher. That's good, good hear. Awesome. And then talk me through, you, you, huge estate again. What's the BYOD experiences you've had? 

Christopher Amdi Mark: So right now we've always kind of considered the D and BYOD as disaster. and, and that's obviously a very harsh way to put it, but it's because I, 

Tom Arbuthnot: I, I really enjoyed that. It's the first time I've heard that I'm definitely gonna reuse it. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, and I mean, it, it comes from the fact that if you. Have unmanaged devices, then you lose that transparency on what's going on. 

so, so our thought was if we were going to introduce BYOD at some point it would. Preferably still be on a managed solution. So I mean, if, if we took the Cisco product that's relevant in the area, for example. Yeah. Because they, our 

Tom Arbuthnot: last, last, last ISE there BYOD Bar, which again was like traditionally would've been unheard of but now exists. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. But obviously they adapt and, and can see that there is definitely a space here. I mean. It brings some advantages because if you've got multiple meeting platforms or you've got a mixed environment where, I mean, Novo Nordisk is, is very complicated in the sense that we deal with a lot of sub entities. 

we've got Novo Nordisk Engineering, we've got, people who have. Novo Nordisk credentials, but don't use them as their main kind of work, login. Yeah. So if they're in a shared environment with Novo Nordisk colleagues, well then they can't book the same Rooms. They don't have access to see the same Exchange information. 

You know, it becomes tricky. There are. Some scenarios there where, you know, putting in a device that you could just plug into your computer would definitely make sense. As long as I can see that device, I can manage it. I know that it's updated, I know that it's secure. Then, you know, I, I think there could still be some investigation to be done in that space, especially. 

'cause again, we've only video enabled half of our meeting Rooms. We've still got roughly 4,000. That don't have anything at the moment. And when we do surveys, we hear our colleagues saying, you know, we don't have enough Rooms. That's always gonna be the story, right? There aren't enough Rooms. So if we could make four smaller BYOD Rooms instead of one medium Teams Room, then maybe that's a good way to spend your money. 

So that's, that's definitely a kind of, 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah. It's interesting the whole t we're 

Christopher Amdi Mark: considering 

Tom Arbuthnot: TCO story, isn't it? Like the, the manageability versus the business impact of it not working versus lifecycle and supportability. Exactly. There's quite a few variables there. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. I think, I mean from, from our perspective, because we don't own the budget. 

We do a chargeback model, which is gonna change very soon, but we kind of do a model right now where we pay for licenses, service fees, and then we charge line of business back. We don't currently own the budget to purchase the hardware. So again, from a lifecycle management perspective, it's very, very tricky to go in and say, right, we need to replace these devices within the next five years. 

We need to start getting the money in now so that we can spend it later on spend. We don't have that option. So right now we just have to say a year, two years in advance. You've got to know that that device you've got on the wall is gonna go end of life. It will be completely unsupported. It won't even work anymore. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It won't even work anymore is the really key thing because like it's not the best anymore and it won't be supported. I find the, I've certain in conversations I've been in the business can push back on. Yeah. We, we'll roll the dice for six months, which turns into a year. Yeah. Which turns into two years. 

But like I think with the security stuff in the Cloud, one of the blessings is, Microsoft and the other vendors in their Clouds taking a more hard line on that. Because it is insecure and that is a, you know, it's a real technical business risk. It's not just about supportability, it's about it could be a, a security vulnerability. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, we're seeing it right now. Cisco announced that their. The older touch panel, the touch 10 as they call it, was gonna be end of life. And obviously we've let our users know and again, and again and again, we've told them. but there are still some that, that are slow to have them replaced. 

We are very close to having them all replaced now, but it's been a very long process and, and it does require that you kind of say, but if you don't replace them then you know, in the end it could mean. They either won't work or we'll have to disable them, but people don't mind waiting, you know? 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: For as long as they can. 

So yeah, it's, it's, it's a tricky one. But if, If you've got the, the silver bullet for that one, I'd, 

Tom Arbuthnot: well, anybody, anybody listening to the podcast that's in the same situation, I'll have to get you to one of the, customer roundtables we do, Christopher. 'cause that is a common conversation. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: it's, it's, it's 2026. 

We've got the whole way through the pub without saying AI want, and now I'm gonna spoil it, but, like, I'm interested from your point of view, how much has the AI conversation got into the room and collab. Planning conversation. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: quite a lot, I would say. And, and yeah, in the Rooms we don't really refer to it as AI. 

We all know that it is, but I'd say both Microsoft and Cisco are actually very, diligent in that space to not call it AI all the time. With, with Cisco, it's more of a, you know, our cameras are starting to. Have intelligence, they are starting to be able to frame, you know, the, the picture in the best possible way based on what they think is the best possible way. 

Of course, from Microsoft, we've been big users of Copilot for a long time. so now bringing Facilitator into the meeting room is, is gonna be kind of one of the interesting aspects where I think it's. An amazing opportunity to be able to have an assistant that, that can do your note taking and hand out tasks after a meeting as long as they're correct. 

Of course. And I don't get too much extra work, but it's, it's more from a, if you are an end user who doesn't have a, a lot of IT knowledge. I think it can be very intimidating that suddenly there's something extra joining that meeting. and I, I really appreciated seeing the news the other day that, you know, third party agents are gonna be identified as they are joining Teams meetings, and you're gonna be able to say no thank you. 

Because I think that's, that's certainly coming, becoming a, an area now where people don't know what they're admitting into a meeting. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Yeah. And again, pharmaceutical, there's a lot of things in those meetings that are sensitive. Yeah. You don't want some random, bot taking the, the exactly. In the metadata. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. So, so we prefer to keep it on our own terms, of course, but I think facilitator, if, if it does evolve to a point where, you know, you can talk to it during the meeting, ask it to create a task or take a specific note on something, I think that would be amazing. It's, it's such a cool tool to have. 

you know, along with, with the speaker recognition and everything else, that's, that's kind of really close to being there in, in a very, you know. Good and and secure way. Yeah. no one wanted to opt in to the old, I mean, in our organization and, and not even in our department. Lots of people didn't want to opt into face and voice enrollment. 

They thought it was, you know. completely overstepping their boundaries. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Very, very, very, if I may generalize, like a general Europe like philosophy on that stuff is quite cautious, I think. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yes. And, and you know, don't wanna call it a tinfoil hats or something, but, but it is kind of that, this is too much. 

I'm, I'm giving up too much of, of my personal sensitive information here by enrolling face and voice. I think the way Microsoft have proposed that they're gonna do it instead makes a lot of sense because, you know, having all these extra tools, it's just gonna make our lives easier. It's just gonna make us more efficient, is the hope. 

Right? So. 

Tom Arbuthnot: You go in the 

Christopher Amdi Mark: right direction. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. You see a personal upside. I like your, that's a good point on not calling it ai, but like talking about the feature like, like it's ai, who cares, but like actually Facilitator is this agent experience that can help you in the meeting and take your minutes. And I think you're right when it gets to like the level of like. 

It's got to at some point be like a voice mode and then it's engaging, you know, the option to engage with it and correct it and, use that brain in the room to do new things is quite exciting, I think. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. And I think there's, there's gonna be a generational gap there where you've got people who are used to talking to Siri or to Alexa who will find it very natural. 

And then you've probably got some people who would say, there's no way I'm talking to a meeting room. that's just completely unheard of. Right. And I think we'll see a big split there. but yeah, it'll be exciting to see how it gets adopted. 

Tom Arbuthnot: awesome. Yeah. Chris, any like amazing journey story, thanks for giving us so much insight. 

Anything you wanna share with the community in terms of your combined experience on that, on that journey? 

Christopher Amdi Mark: I dunno. I mean, I, I don't want to sit here and say that I think everyone should, should hop on, Cisco's train, but I mean, I feel like they, they have been a very, very valuable partner in this and, and done a very good job. 

I. I think this is just such an exciting space that's evolving so quickly. I, I was completely caught off guard when coming back to ISE this year to see that. Neat. Had in reintroduced, I wanna say, because I thought it was gone. But the, the center of table speaker? Yeah. Or not speaker, sorry. Video, Mike. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, 

Christopher Amdi Mark: absolutely. Hadn't seen that kind of making a comeback. Because we tested it out with Logitech's site, a couple of years ago, and I was even, even though I kind of like the idea, I didn't appreciate the fact that you, it, it gives you the impression that you are talking to the person who's remote just because the camera's between you and the person on the other side of the table. 

So. It, it kind of, it, it can trick the remote participant into thinking, oh yeah, I'm, I'm at eye level and, and I'm included, but actually you are not speaking to me even though you're looking at me. And that's where that whole. Shifting where you are looking has always actually had quite a good effect. 

'cause you know, who's being addressed. and, and so Cisco's alternative approach is to put cameras on the right. Yeah. The outside, in the outside in perspective where you are looking over the shoulder of who's speaking. And I think I like that way of, of doing it better. But we'll see. I mean, again, that is also a lot of added hardware into a meeting room adds complexity, adds cost. 

So we'll see. I dunno who's gonna come out, on top of, of the, extra cameras in the room discussion. But I think 

Tom Arbuthnot: it's, it's cool, as you say, ISE like it was buzzing this year, particularly in, hall two where most of the, you know, the UC vendors are, and it is. It's competitive, it's innovative. Like lo now have the outside in. 

'cause they did the site first and now it's, so I like, and, a lot of, a lot of vendors brought out Multicam this year or showed Multicam for the first time. Yeah. so that plus the AI, it's, it's an interesting times as you say. It 

Christopher Amdi Mark: is. I mean, I, I can't even imagine now what's gonna be kind of the next big thing, next year's ISE, you know, are, are we getting to a point now where you can't put any more technology into the meeting Rooms? 

We're just gonna have to slow down a bit and let people adopt for a while? because I mean, we've, we've been, again, I wanna say we've, we've been quite quick with, with our adoption of a lot of technology. We did. I didn't even get through the whole, Telepresence, the IX5000 systems that, that we had a lot of. 

and they were replaced by an immersive MTR experience consisting of a 21 by nine screen, banana shaped table, front row, active, you know, and people have been. Blown away by how good they feel those Rooms are. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And that, that's amazing. 'cause the cost, I did some of those when I, back when I was at Cisco partner, I did some of that telepresence stuff, like as one of many people. 

And it was, you know, core of a mill at each end. Yeah. Like it was an amazing experience. But now what we can do with MTR for a fraction of that budget is pretty impressive. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Exactly. Exactly. And, and I feel like. Yeah. Okay. I'm still waiting for MTR Android to properly support the 21 by nine format. So again, if anyone's listening, who can give me an update 

Tom Arbuthnot: on, yeah, so Cisco showed that the ISE before last, but it wasn't there. 

That's a good question. I need to follow up on that. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Yeah, that's, it's a bit of a funny one. obviously it's, it's not, hugely important, at the moment and it's, again, it's not like we have a lot of them. But there's, there's still some unexplored space there for, for kind of creating these innovative, different Rooms that, that people actually, you know, are, are impressed by. 

And I think that's, that's part of having fun at work, right? Is, is trying to do something that isn't just a standard basic meeting room. Yeah. But actually give something extra. I feel like we, we have the building blocks to do that now, which is really cool. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, Christopher, thanks so much for sharing the journey, really appreciate it. 

And, yeah, the pace you guys have gone with, the rollout on the number of Rooms, we're gonna have to put something in the diary for maybe, this time next year to see what I'll, what that innovative thing is you brought to the business. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: That'll be cool. I mean, I've really enjoyed, chatting with you and yeah, I mean, if there are any questions that come in, to our journey, I would be happy to, to answer them. 

So yeah, just let me know. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Thanks so much, Christopher. See you again too. 

Christopher Amdi Mark: Thank you. Bye.