Henry Levak: It's not just about the conference room. It's what happens outside the conference room. You know, where do people work? They might work at home. They might work, again, at a flex desk. They might have a private office. And the request is, make that a better experience. So we think about it as workplace experience.
And we think of that as just as important for us to solve as it is for us to make a great video bar.
Tom Arbuthnot: Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Excited for this one. We have Henry, who's been a supporter for a long time in what we've been doing, and we've had some great conversations offline, but this is the first time I'm getting you on the record on the pod, Henry. So thanks for taking the time. And maybe you could just give a bit of an intro and a little bit about your role of VP of Product at Logi.
Henry Levak: That's awesome. This is my first time. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for the invite. Yeah, so I'm Henry, I lead product for Logitech for Business. And of course we make solutions that enable work wherever people work, whether it's at home, at the office, or somewhere in between. We make really beautifully designed products that are simple to deploy at scale.
That enables work from anywhere.
Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And I'm going to start off with award winning products because I just saw literally the other day you got a Time Best Innovations of 2024 for the Logi Sight as well.
Henry Levak: That was a big surprise and a, well not a huge surprise because it's an amazing product, but of course a huge honor for us all.
You know, the amount of people that spent a lot of effort to make that possible from engineering, design, and operations, Sales, like the whole work. It's a big honor for everyone at Logitech to have received that work.
Tom Arbuthnot: So let's talk about that because I feel like Multicam, Multistream, it feels like it's coming together now, both because of what the platforms are doing, but also what you're able to do in the hardware.
What was your thinking around that device and what's your thinking in general about Multicam and Multistream?
Henry Levak: Definitely. Yeah, I would say, uh, this is actually a project that we started, um, actually long before COVID. We've been thinking about kind of how do you build a better than being there experience.
And we quickly realized that the answer to that question, uh, would probably result in multiple different, not necessarily cameras, but multiple different viewing angles. And obviously that means multiple different cameras. Um, so some of the early prototypes were actually, you know, putting a bunch of cameras in the front of the room and we quickly realized that just the, the perspective is not that different if you put too many cameras close to each other.
Maybe the image quality is better. But what you really want are different perspectives in the room, um, to give you that more natural, uh, viewing experience. So we started working on this type of idea, quickly realized that you know, you need a front, you need a center, and you need a front and center experience to come together.
It's kind of what we built. And once COVID hit, very quickly, kind of what you said, the market's expectations for video quality is immediately Uh, even more video experience skyrocketed, right? Overnight, people wanted that webcam like experience that you and I have working from home, but they wanted it in all different shapes and sizes of rooms.
Um, and I think you said it well, which is, took a little while, but I think a bunch of us in the industry, us, our partners, have worked a lot together. to get the technology to meet up with the demand and hopefully soon surpass it. And so Logitech's site is one of our answers to making a fundamentally better video experience in, you know, traditional shape rooms where you need multiple different camera angles.
Tom Arbuthnot: I'm really excited about it because it's one of the areas where you and other OEMs are able to really innovate, particularly with the kind of AI processing camera choices. And it, it feels like you've got a really good experience going around choosing the right face. I was, uh, Randy and I did a demo on LinkedIn and it's, I worked quite hard to walk around the room, try and sit at odd camera angles.
And it was very, very good at picking the right choice, whether it was front of room camera, looking back at me or the center, like cameras looking outwards.
Henry Levak: Definitely the technology, I mean, I think when, uh, when we have conversations about multiple cameras and choosing who to detect and when to switch, you know, the legacy devices were always audio based and audio is super important.
But the technological innovation, if you think about drones and self driving vehicles, there's so much technology innovation happening globally. That really is multimodal, right? So you want to look at the video, you want to look at the audio, and soon you're going to hear more context driven. So when people say certain things or have nonverbal sort of head nods or cues or smiles or eye rolls, um, so I think that's going to expand.
But yeah, the technological capabilities of today versus the past has allowed us and. Um, to innovate in a, in a much broader way where we look at not just audio, which is good, but can be also fragile, but coupling it with video. And so as you're walking around the room, even if you're not talking, we can actually still track you because we know that you're that person, the same person that recently spoke.
Um, so yeah, definitely.
Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. And you, of course, support all the, all the big platforms. What are your thoughts on kind of going to genuine multistream? Because at the moment you're certainly on the Teams side. You're pulling together a choice of single stream, but we're just on the verge of certainly MTR Windows getting multistream.
Henry Levak: So that's a great question. So for us, multistream is really about getting to the end state of allowing people who are At home or on the go to control kind of their own experience for the video room. So today I've always found it interesting that the people in the room decide how the camera frames. Are we framing the group, the speaker, are we doing multi tile, multistream?
It's kind of like if I was working from home, you wouldn't order my lunch for me and tell me what I'm eating, but for some reason you're choosing my camera mode, right? And so to change that, like, to solve that, ultimately what we have to do is provide, you know, all the above to Microsoft. Uh, and then for Microsoft to allow people at home to basically choose whichever mode they want.
So if they want a speaker tracker, if they want a presenter tracker, um, so to do that, you really need multiple streams. So you're, the question here answers multistreams is a huge investment from us. We've been working with our friends at Microsoft for a while on this. We've actually showcased it at InfoComm earlier this year.
And what we showcase is that RallyBar and RallyBar Mini will be able to do multiple simultaneous streams with Teams Room on Windows with just a software update. And that will allow us to give Microsoft essentially multiple different separate video streams and then for them to innovate in terms of the interface that the person would have at home.
Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I like that perspective on the value of the home user and also different home users being able to choose their own personal choice of how they engage with the meeting in the video.
Henry Levak: For sure, for sure.
Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome.
Henry Levak: And then maybe I'd add, uh, the part that moment of time I'm really excited about is where we will combine Sight with RallyBar in multistream.
So then you're talking. Multi camera, multi angle, with multistream. Uh, and this is also coming relatively soon. Uh, quick follow up after we release the multistream experience. And I think that's going to be kind of like the next level, uh, remote video viewing experience.
Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I'm really excited. This, coming into 2025, it's going to be, there's a lot of innovation happening in video, which is great.
Henry Levak: Absolutely. And I'd probably even throw another one in that I know we get asked for a lot, uh, is the daisy chaining. So, uh probably one of the most common pieces of feedback we get about Sight.
This is great, but I want to put it in even bigger rooms, even more high profile rooms. So, give me coverage across a much wider, uh, much wider space. Um, so I got one of my first, uh, live demos in the office a few weeks back where we have two simultaneous Sight's working together, which will cover a much larger space.
And we've obviously, uh, physically built the product to enable that. That's why there's that additional port underneath Sight.
Tom Arbuthnot: And then that's going to be choosing the right camera angle like it does today with two cameras or two systems over three. So it has all those choices to make of what the right angle is for that individual.
Henry Levak: Exactly. The way I always like to think about it is it's kind of like our mic pod system. So in a room where you need to extend audio, at some point you say front of room audio is not enough. I need mic pods. Then you say how many? You can have one, you can have two, you can have more. And then you lay them out on the table, and then these mic pods intelligently just talk to one another to figure out who has the best, essentially, not view, but I guess, uh, proximity to the active speaker, right?
We're doing the exact same thing with Sight we're making Sight, uh, intelligently connect. You can deploy one, you can deploy two, and they will automatically detect where the active speakers are, detect them, and then show them in multiple streams.
Tom Arbuthnot: It's a great scenario for that retrofit of the, you know, old school long table scenario, which is the reality of a lot of rooms. And it's not a huge lift to add those center of table units compared to potentially kitting out external outside in as well, which I think is really good for companies that want to do this sort of scale.
Henry Levak: Absolutely. You know, and we, we generally think both approaches make sense and it really just depends on the environment and kind of the room shape and design and the expectations.
But I would say what, what, what more and more people are asking for is globally is we want this really nice experience. Uh, we want, uh, minimal IT involvement, meaning we can't have somebody sitting behind the scenes curating, uh, you. We can't have, you know, you can't have assigned seating areas, you know, sir, ma'am, please sit here.
This is the best view of you in the room. It just needs to be completely. Automatic needs to be simple to deploy, and so the outside in approach works, but people who are opting in for the simpler solutions. Um, you know, they've given us really good feedback about what we already have, and we have some good ideas on what we need to do to make it even bigger and better for them.
Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. I think loads of people know you from the beautiful hardware, and I could talk about the new Brio's, which are really nice. The Meetup 2, super impressive as well. But you've been doing a lot on workplace experience and kind of thinking through the whole experience. Maybe you could take us through some of your thinking there and what you're doing.
Henry Levak: Definitely, if you look at the journey that, you know, we've been on and I've been at Logitech for almost seven years, you can kind of, you know, we started at a kind of a component based experience, like we made a really nice meetup or a really nice group. And then if you listen to the feedback from your partners and your customers, they're just, they're kind of like, hey, zoom out, you know, solve the room problem for me.
It's not just about the video bar. It's about, you know, the controllers, the schedulers. And then I think we're in a pretty good place. We do a lot of that now. And then again, if you listen to the same sort of feedback, it's, it's again, it's, it's zoom out. It's like, it's not just about the conference room.
It's what happens outside the conference room. You know, where do people work? They might work at home. They might work again at a flex desk. They might have a private office. And the request is make that a better experience. So we think about it as workplace experience and we think of that as just as important for us to solve as it is for us to make a great video bar, which I think we do that pretty well.
And so we've been building a lot of hardware and a lot of software. Some of the software we've announced recently over the last few years. We, of course, we started with Tap Scheduler that makes it easy to just really deploy room panels so you can see from afar for rooms available. We built Logi Dock Flex, which makes desk reservation as easy as it is for reserving rooms.
Of course, both are Teams certified. We partner with Microsoft in both of those configurations. And then we started building out software experiences. And the one that we just recently announced, Uh, of course it's auto, book and auto release. Uh, and this is a really nice feature because what it what we do is just with a software update to a Rally Bar, Rally Bar Mini, we're able to use the intelligence in the device to detect in room presence.
And if someone is there. and they never reserved the meeting, we can actually automatically book the room for them. Uh, or if they didn't show up to the meeting and they were supposed to, we can actually release the meeting automatically after X minutes. And of course, IT sets the exact number of minutes.
And then to push it one inch further, we said, okay, well, if you, if this meeting, uh, isn't, you don't show up for your meeting, like I say, three times or four times after, uh, and we release it, you have these ghost meetings. After so many violations, we'll actually release all future meetings. Uh, for that room as well.
So we're basically automating that clearing of ghost meetings for you on your behalf, and we did it in a very flexible way. So our service supports pretty much every service provider. So if you're a Microsoft Teams panel user, you got a Teams room, whether it's Windows or Android, as long as you have a Rally Bar, Rally Bar Mini, we will actually automatically detect presence.
And we'll auto book or release either that meeting or the series.
Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So you're working alongside the Exchange booking if it's a Microsoft shop in that case.
Henry Levak: Exactly. We talk directly to Exchange, so we're not creating like a separate thing that you have to manage. And, uh, if something on the Microsoft side books it, our system's aware because They are the source of truth.
Um, the second thing we announced, and that was actually kind of lined up, I wanted to show you this, if that's okay, I want to show you the demo.
Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, yeah, let's do, I love a demo.
Henry Levak: Perfect, and I know some people are probably listening to this and not seeing this, but hopefully they'll maybe rewind later and look at the demo.
So let me do a quick demo. Um, the second thing we announced is, boom. Uh, Logitech View, and this is really extending that, uh, how do I find a room when I need it? So, the schedulers, of course the panels is one great example of how one can do that, but sometimes you just want a more centralized mapping like experience.
Um, so right now I'm showing you is Logitech Sync. This is our space and device management, uh, portal. I already have my room pre filtered. So in this particular space, I have a Logitech Roommate, which is a little compute box. I'm going to hit this one button right now, and I'm going to remotely dial into that device.
So what you're seeing right now is a remote UI access feature. I'm in real time in my browser, able to see exactly what's happening in that space, in that room. And in this room, of course, it's configured for a Logitech View Experience. This is a mapping experience. Um, so this is actually our San Jose headquarters.
Um, so by the way, if anybody on the call hears this and wants to kind of stop by and visit us and check out our, uh, Experience Center, I'm inviting everybody, just reach out to me. Uh, and, uh, what we're showing here is, uh, this, this is a real time map. Uh, you can see all the desks, you can see all the rooms.
You can zoom in, you can search, and what you're able to do is you're able to see in real time all the statuses for rooms. So, of course, this is Silicon Valley, it's Friday, there's not going to be a lot of people in the office, a lot of us probably working remotely. But you can see from the desks, a lot of the desks are being utilized, you can see plenty of the rooms are being utilized as well.
So if I was in the office right now, I would say maybe I want to book Yosemite, so I'm going to book it right now for 15 minutes, and that should reserve it, uh, or if maybe I'm new to the office, I could say, uh, where is, uh, Diablo? So right now I'm actually typing on my keyboard, but I could actually just touch on the display.
And so there's Mount Diablo, and Mount Diablo is located right there. Super simple, and I guess, just like the auto book and auto release feature, this is available for Teams panel users or other service providers because it has that Exchange integration.
Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. And you're bringing together the hardware with the panels, the Roommate and that software solution.
And is that, how's that work? So I know you've been doing a lot of kind of freemium models with some of the offers you have around things like desk booking.
Henry Levak: Yeah, definitely. A lot of the device management stuff that we have is included in our basic plan. Some of the more advanced things like the remote UI access or the kind of the calendar exchange requires the Logitech Essential or the Logitech Select.
Uh, bundles. Essential is kind of like the advanced tool tier, or if you want the kind of dedicated support, the 24 7 support that is available through Select. Um, so we try to make as many just standard features available, uh, for free. And then, of course, we like to innovate and build some of the new advanced things like the ones you saw today as part of the kind of the, the higher tier packaging.
Tom Arbuthnot: That's really nice. And, uh, appreciate you sharing us that nice and early off the press. Is there anything else as we look kind of forward? I mean, we're nearly the end of 24 into 25 now. Like I know you can't go into details of exactly what's coming, but where's your mind at in terms of where you're innovating and where you think the focus is?
Henry Levak: Definitely, I, I mean, it's, it's, uh, I think the, the multi-camera experience, I think we've done a lot, but there's a lot more to do. So you're gonna see things like the multistreaming, you're gonna see name tags, you're gonna see multiple, uh, Sights. Um, so that's the multi-camera, multi uh, angle experience.
There's a lot of work for us there. Workplace experience. Again, we've shown a few nice examples, but this will continue. I think one of the big trends and one of the big area of focuses for my team and I are insights and analytics, you know, so I being able to see all this being able to book this automating is great.
Can I get more insight into how and when and who are using these spaces and what's, you know, what devices are you, are they using? So I would say insights and analytics will be a big theme from us as well. And we will never stop innovating on devices, so we think about where people work, what do they need, and we will make sure we build purpose built solutions for those devices, so certainly expect new devices from Logitech, as you might be an obvious statement.
Tom Arbuthnot: That's what I like, need new toys.
Henry Levak: We have some very exciting ones, and I can't wait to show you some of the next couple of ones that we're soon ready to announce, but those will be great. But yeah, innovating on multi camera, making sure the video experience is exceptional, workplace experience, insights and analytics, and of course devices to outfit all people in all spaces wherever they work.
Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, I'm super impressed with the, uh, the portfolio, what you've been putting out lately. It's really, really cool stuff and really, particularly the center of room and the multi camera stuff, it's really pushing boundaries. That's great.
Henry Levak: Awesome. And maybe I can come back when I have those new, uh, things to show off and we can do some more live demos.
Tom Arbuthnot: That would be good. Yeah. Always love a live demo. Awesome. Well, thanks for taking the time, Henry. Really appreciate it. And, uh, yeah, appreciate you giving us a view of that hot off the press and I'll, uh, no doubt see you up and coming at one of the shows. Um, for people that I guess everybody probably knows where to find you guys, but if they want to find out more information about any of those solutions, what's the best thing to do?
Henry Levak: Logitech. com.
Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Thanks so much, mate
Henry Levak: Thank you so much.
Bye Tom.