Announced in January this year, Cisco has officially launched Spark Board in Singapore, with an upgrade of its Spark collaboration platform services. At the center of today’s announcement is still the Cisco Spark Board, and its cloud-based Spark platform has been upgraded to boast of a simpler user interface, more features, and better integration with the company’s wide portfolio of “corporate phone systems, WebEx meeting and video conferencing technologies.”
Mr. Darryl McKinnon, MD of Collaboration Sales, Asia Pacific.
The local announcement was presented by Darryl McKinnon, MD of Collaboration Sales, Asia Pacific, who remarked the Cisco Spark platform is more than the Cisco Spark Board hardware itself.
The Cisco Spark Board.
The Spark platform is positioned as the company’s “cloud-based, all-in-one messaging, meetings, calls and conferencing platform” that is ideal for the workplace, current and future ones. The platform is able to reach out to different market segments at all levels, i.e., at the lower echelons, the open source Spark platform reaches out to system integrators, software and service providers to build solutions using the platform’s APIs.
The different whiteboards that were drawn during the Cisco Spark Board demonstration.
At the higher levels, Cisco has worked with SalesForce.com and IBM to enhance the Spark platform and their respective services. For SalesForce.com, Cisco Spark has been natively integrated into the latter’s software services. With deeper collaboration with IBM, Cisco Spark platform has integrated with IBM Watson to boost its AI capabilities.
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After the presentation, the Cisco team was on hand to give a quick demonstration of the Spark Board and its collaborative services. First, we had to download the Cisco Spark application that is supported on mobile, desktop and web browsers. After a simple email authentication, our Android smartphone was paired with the Cisco Spark Board in the presentation room via the Spark Board’s ultrasound pairing technology. Once paired, our device allowed us to enjoy the software services of Cisco Spark platform, with the Spark Board as the primary hardware for interaction.
The Cisco Spark Board sports a variety of hardware features that sets it apart from the competition, which include the Microsoft Surface Hub and Google Jamboard. First of all, its 4K wide array camera is able to capture high-resolution images, and according to Cisco, due to the open source nature of Spark Platform, third party facial recognition software services are being developed for final deployment. The Spark Board’s “built-in 12-microphone array amplifies sound quality”, and is able to modulate the volume of the speaker’s delivery so that clear audio is delivered to listening parties.
The Cisco Spark Board will be available for sale locally very soon through the company’s channel partners. The 55-inch Cisco Spark Board has a SRP of US$4,990, with a monthly US$199 subscription for its Cisco Spark plans. According to the company, the subscription will cover cloud service, help desk and software upgrades. There’s also the 70-inch version of Spark Board that costs US$9,990, and it will go on sale later this year.
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