Uber, Zoom Video Communications, and Altia Systems collaborated to enable more than 850 Zoom rooms across the organization for intelligent, realtime communications utilizing Altia Systems’ PanaCast 2, the world’s first 180 degree Panoramic-4K plug-and-play camera system. The camera systems are being used to connect more than 18,000 Uber employees in hundreds of offices across the world.
Altia Systems worked closely with Ravi Sharma, the head of collaboration and AV services at Uber, and Uber’s technical team to deploy innovative equipment and software as a part of Uber’s AV 2.0 initiative. AV 2.0 is focused on improving quality across all audio and video components, boosting productivity through seamless collaboration and streamlining remote support while remaining simple and cost-effective.
“When people walk into a conference room, they don’t want to struggle with the technology – they want it to just work,” said Ravi. “PanaCast provides that while significantly enhancing employee productivity by streamlining collaboration with its intelligent features. You have five chairs per huddle room. If two are not in the camera’s field of view, those two chairs are not usable and you’ve lost those seats at the table – literally.”
PanaCast’s 180 degree field of view allows Uber’s teams to utilize 100 percent of any conference or huddle room, leaving no space wasted or team members out of sight. Uber is also utilizing PanaCast’s Intelligent Vision products, such as Intelligent Zoom and PanaCast Vivid, to help enhance participants’ experience with autonomous intelligent technology. This eliminates the need for manual remote control adjustments that typical pan-tilt-zoom cameras require.
“Zoom and Altia Systems have collaborated to integrate PanaCast controls into the Zoom Room control panel via an open API. This capability was first deployed by Uber to simplify and enhance participants’ experience, and is now available widely,” said Oded Gal, head of product management at Zoom.
“Uber’s rapid growth required an innovative IT solution to manage large-scale global deployments,” said Altia Systems VP for software engineering, Naveed Alam. “We worked with Uber’s AV and IT teams to deliver an enterprise grade zero touch support and manageability solution.”
