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Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

arstechnica.com

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Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#81

Post by agumonkey »

xzel wrote: post #76
agumonkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did watch 2 videos of ~10min. It didn't seem as amazing as I imagined. Most of the features are remote + ink then mail. Nothing that revolutionary. Maybe I missed other demos (I can't find a video on MS website, I used youtube, various sources) I think my comment was too easy to interpret as lazy sarcasm, I'm just trying to get a picture of what was the setup before.

I didn't say it did anything amazing/revolutionary. At the end of the day its just a giant TV with touch features. The key bit is they got 95% of "it" right, the "it just works" factor is huge. The integration with remote desktop, the feel of writing with the stylus, quality and feel of the plastic hub, skype integration, pulling off white board sessions to email, etc.

Yeah, sorry I didn't mean you oversell anything either. The article and thread mood made me feel this way. I understand the value of an out of the box solution versus a fragile, plug and maybe play in a workplace market. I was just trying to assess the situation.

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#82

Post by agumonkey »

phaed wrote: post #77
agumonkey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did watch 2 videos of ~10min. It didn't seem as amazing as I imagined. Most of the features are remote + ink then mail. Nothing that revolutionary. Maybe I missed other demos (I can't find a video on MS website, I used youtube, various sources) I think my comment was too easy to interpret as lazy sarcasm, I'm just trying to get a picture of what was the setup before.

Before there was nothing this integrated, you really see the power towards the end of the video there. Where you see people being dialed in to help tackle whatever was on the screen there. Imagine three teams in different locations all collaborating around the same set of drafts, stake holders being called in from all over the place for their input. It creates a real-time flow of information that was just not possibl…

Do you have a direct url to the video, I dug a few webpage deep but found nothing except html galleries.

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#83

Post by protomyth »

xemoka wrote: post #49
protomyth wrote: post #45

Considering how many "smart boards" our little community college buys, if it works at all well, I can see how it would be a big seller in the category.

Uhg, those "smart boards" are terrible. I'm trying to get ours to give up and just buy TVs and projectors. It's amazing what a company can achieve by focusing on education and claiming to be tailor-fit.

The software is terrible, but the ability to draw on the board keeps us from having just a TV / projector. We put up with it because of the added capability.

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#84

Post by iheartmemcache »

tim333 wrote: post #56
mxuribe wrote: post #14

It doesn't surprise me that Microsoft is in this space, and that they're doing well. But who would have thought this was a billion dollar business? I figured that the conference room's tech begins to rapidly depreciate almost immediately after installation; but maybe this is something different.

Playing accountant here you might depreciate the thing over 4 years so $2000 cost per year. Against that the occupants of the conference room are likely costing > $1m a year in wage costs so you don't need a huge boost in productivity to make it worth it.

To put it in perspective, a single Cisco Telepresence device (you typically will need at least two) runs ~30k list (you'll be paying, eh, maybe ~70% depending on your relationship with your distributor). A whole 3200 system will run around ~300k (again, list). A device @ 10k is absolute peanuts. Take eight engineers, a few managers and a C-level and put them into a conference room with your organization's Boulder, CO branch's counterparts and 90 minutes of their time in salary is going to run about the same.

Microsoft is playing at the integration game. The Surface Hub is a knock-out, they gave it a decent whirl at the Surface Pro 4 (honestly, it's the best far note-taking device on the market IMO simply because the PixelSense display[1] is so stylus friendly - writing on it is nearly like writing on paper), and their very very crummy phone apparently is going to run native Win10 binaries on the new 4-core ARMs so they can leverage all those previous apps and throw them into the ecosystem.

[1]http://www.anandtech.com/show/9767/microsoft-surface-book-20...

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#85

Post by IanCal »

tim333 wrote: post #56
mxuribe wrote: post #14

It doesn't surprise me that Microsoft is in this space, and that they're doing well. But who would have thought this was a billion dollar business? I figured that the conference room's tech begins to rapidly depreciate almost immediately after installation; but maybe this is something different.

Playing accountant here you might depreciate the thing over 4 years so $2000 cost per year. Against that the occupants of the conference room are likely costing > $1m a year in wage costs so you don't need a huge boost in productivity to make it worth it.

Breaking the number down a bit more, that's If you have four people per meeting being paid minimum wage in the UK (~$10), you only need to save about 15 minutes a day for a basic hourly cost to even out.

I'm pretty sure I lose a few minutes a day waiting for a single meeting room to be setup properly, as the speaker has been taken one day, it's logged out, someone forgets a cable, etc. And I'm just one meeting in those rooms.

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#86

Post by tombrossman »

sjclemmy wrote: post #70
sithadmin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the crappy mobile app, Skype for Business (formerly Lync - has nothing to do with the consumer version of Skype) is pretty excellent when it's deployed correctly.

I totally agree. I got forwarded a skype for business invite this morning for a meeting with Microsoft and I haven't used it before. I clicked on the link followed the instructions, which meant installing a pkg on my mac. The thing that struck me was that after installing the pkg I got taken straight to the conference - I didn't have to go back to the link, put any ID / PIN or anything. It was seamless.

The seamless redirect after install is a nice touch. However the "receive link in email for software/plugin download to install so you can do this important thing" harkens back to earlier times and is the classic malware infection scenario. I guess it still works because enough people still do it.

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#87

Post by keithpeter »

heywire wrote: post #78
doikor wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why corporations have the ability to defer updates if they want to. Personally I've found that shutting your PC at the end of the workday means the updates will always get installed then and not during the day.

Good point. I wish the large corporation I work for would do this.

In the fairly small organisation (1000+ screens in two sites) I work in the PCs switch themselves on overnight and do the updates then. I gather the updates are pushed from a server after being tested by the IT support chaps.

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#89

Post by youdontknowtho »

If it solves the problem with every meeting where the first ten minutes are spent trying to get the screen setup and the conference line open...it should make a gazillion dollars. Every meeting, every time...How does this work? Which remote? Is the projector even on? Can you see my screen? Which connector do I use?

It's painful.

Re: Microsoft’s Surface Hub is now apparently a billion-dollar business

#90

Post by youdontknowtho »

DavidWanjiru wrote: post #88

Does anyone have a link to the promo video of the original Surface, the table in a restaurant version? It's soundtrack had a song I loved, can't remember the artist, and the version was different from the studio version.

The "big ass table". I love that thing.
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