If you’ve been unable to hop on the Cisco Spark Board train, don’t fret – Cisco has you covered.
Cisco Systems, Inc. announced this week two new options to achieve that Cisco Spark meeting room experience with the Cisco Spark Room Kit Series. This will give customers the ability to change any standard HD screen into a collaboration device similar to what you would see on the Spark Board announced earlier this year minus the interactive whiteboard.
The Spark Room Kit Series features two products: the Cisco Spark Room Kit and the Room Kit Plus. The basic Room Kit is designed for small and medium meeting rooms of up to seven people. The Room Kit Plus is then designed for medium and large meeting rooms of up to 14 people.
The Room Kits, which may remind you of supped up webcams, are integrated and managed in the cloud, allowing for a set up in minutes according to Cisco. They also connect natively with Spark, as well as on-premises solutions.
Both versions of the Room Kit come equipped with a camera, speakers, and microphones built in, while the Room Kit Plus also has a separate quad camera bar that has four additional cameras.
Here is the full list of features:
- 5K Ultra HD camera delivers capabilities including automatic framing and speaker tracking
- Dual screens, dual content sources, wireless sharing, and 4K content for presentations
- Cisco Spark enabled to count and track the number of people in the conference room during and between calls
- Built for both Cisco Spark and on-premises deployments
The Cisco Spark Room Kit will be available in the U.S. this month (and Canada shortly after) for $3,990 USD. The Room Kit Plus will be available in May for $7,990 USD. Both have a $99 USD per month subscription attached. Additionally, a companion mode that that combines the Cisco Spark Board and Spark Room Kit will be released later this year.
What makes the pricing interesting, is that the Spark Room Kit isn’t much cheaper than the Spark Board, which is priced at $4,990 USD for the 55 inch version. While the basic Spark Room Kit is designed for rooms that would potentially be too small for a Spark Board, the Room Kit Plus may be negated by the cheaper Spark Board option.
Additionally, Cisco announced updates to the Cisco Spark meeting allowing anyone on any device to access Spark meeting spaces at anytime. This has also been extended to Cisco Spark Hybrid Media Services, allowing customers to try out meetings without investing in new infrastructure, endpoints, and conferencing solutions.