Conferencing Devices

New to Lync Server 2010 are conferencing devices. Well, that’s not entirely true... Microsoft released the Roundtable device with five cameras for a conference room. It didn’t sell well and was licensed to Polycom as the CX5000. It was expensive and simply too much and too complicated for most scenarios. It also required connecting to a PC.

The new Polycom CX3000 conference phone is a true conference room solution. It offers a 3.5-inch QVGA screen with all the Lync integration functions users expect. Most importantly, it’s a standalone device. It just needs power (AC or PoE) and an Ethernet cable—no PC required! It also allows for Outlook contacts search and one-click-to-join Lync conference calls.