Unified communications giant RingCentral has expanded RingCentral Rooms with new hardware offerings and feature enhancements. The upgrades comes as more people return to the office.

RingCentral Rooms extends RingCentral Video. It allows customers to have the same video experience in a conference room that they already have in a home office or on the go. Now they can select among several new hardware partners to enhance their conference rooms. The technology includes high-quality, intelligent audio, and video and whiteboard.

RingCentral’s Kira Makagon

Kira Makagon is chief innovation officer at RingCentral.

“Strong relationships with strategic hardware partners are important as we strive to address the complex challenges around fostering collaboration in modern hybrid work environments.” Makagon said. “When paired with our partners’ advanced hardware offerings, RingCentral Rooms can unlock the full potential of today’s hybrid workforce and enable equitable collaboration for workers wherever they are.”

The company offers several new features. For one, users can share content from a user’s mobile device among meeting participants in a room. And Whiteboard for RingCentral Rooms allows users to co-create and collaborate with other participants. This is regardless of whether they are in a room or home office.

New Hardware Partners

RingCentral has partnered with three additional hardware vendors to create the most advanced rooms solutions, the company said. First, there’s Avocor, a global provider of touch-enabled interactive displays. This will bring RingCentral Rooms For Touch to market. Customers will be able to join and end meetings with a simple touch. Through a new series of Avocor Collab Touch hardware displays with RingCentral Rooms for Touch software built in, customers can access digital whiteboarding and on-screen annotation. RingCentral Rooms for Touch will be compatible with Whiteboard, a virtual collaborative canvas. It is now available to customers in beta.

Audio brand EPOS recently announced a new line of meeting room solutions using EPOS BrainAdapt. A group of technologies were designed to support the brain’s natural way of processing sound. It enables users to easily adapt to a hybrid meeting sound environment, the company said. It also reduces cognitive load through a video bar device. With support for RingCentral Rooms on EPOS Expand Vision 5, customers will be able to leverage EPOS audio and the latest collaboration features for meeting rooms.

Finally, by partnering with Jabra, the provider of personal sound and office solutions, RingCentral Rooms can harness advanced on-board AI. Jabra’s PanaCast 50 intelligent video bar is certified for RingCentral Rooms. PanaCast 50 can automatically detect who’s speaking and adjust the picture to focus on them. This puts the most important content front and center.

Meetings for Creativity and Inclusivity

RingCentral’s longstanding hardware solution providers, Logitech, Poly and Yealink, still give users RingCentral Rooms-enabled, all-in-one video conferencing solutions.

Frost & Sullivan’s Roopam Jain

Roopam Jain is VP of research at Frost & Sullivan’s Connected Work Practice.

“As businesses adapt to the hybrid work model, one thing is clear – investments in office meeting spaces will continue to grow,” Jain said. “RingCentral’s new features, including Whiteboard, are designed to enhance team creativity and inclusivity with the goal of narrowing the effectiveness gaps found in most hybrid collaboration environments and better connect today’s dispersed workforce.”