Mig Cardamone, Sales Director, Country Manager, Sennheiser Middle East, discusses their unified communications portfolio, meeting room trends and GITEX perspective in this exclusive interview.
Q1. Can you tell our readers what new products and solutions you are demonstrating and launching here this week at GITEX Global?
At GITEX we are showcasing our Unified Communications portfolio of products for better collaboration and learning.
During the show, our customers will get the chance to experience first-hand our audibly superior solutions in a meeting room set-up that features solutions from our TeamConnect Family and SpeechLine Digital Wireless portfolio.
With our TeamConnect family, we provide solutions for meeting rooms and hybrid learning classrooms of any size, and provide options that are plug & play as well as those that offer more advanced configurations.
Whilst our TeamConnect Ceiling 2 microphone (TCC2) remains an industry standard ceiling microphone and is scalable for large rooms of 80m2 and above, our recently launched TeamConnect Ceiling Medium (TCCM) offers the same feature-packed technology of its bigger brother but for medium size rooms of 40m2.
Both of our ceiling microphones have our patented automatic, dynamic beamforming microphone arrays that allows customers to utilise their meeting rooms and classrooms in exactly the way they want and with best-in-class intelligibility. Both TCC2 and TCCM are available now.
And for the first time in the Middle East, we are showcasing our latest addition to the family, and our very first video-enabled solution, the TeamConnect Bars. With options for small (TeamConnect Bar S) or mid-sized (TeamConnect Bar M) meeting and collaboration spaces, they are scalable, all-in-one conferencing devices, designed to meet modern meeting demands with built-in camera, microphones and speakers. The TeamConnect Bars will be available in the first half of 2024.
All our solutions easily integrate with your favourite meeting platform as well as being Microsoft Teams Certified and Compatible with Zoom.
Of course, we are also well-known for our wireless microphones, and at GITEX we are highlighting two ranges: SpeechLine Digital Wireless and Evolution Wireless Digital (EW-DX).
As the name suggest, our SpeechLine Digital Wireless microphones are dedicated for speech and lecture. They are IT-optimised and designed for university and corporate use, meeting the demands of IT managers by being easily monitored and controlled using our control and monitoring software, Sennheiser Control Cockpit.
With EW-DX, we add a layer of versatility and flexibility for more varied applications whilst maintaining the intuitive, easy to integrate and simple to use ethos that we build into of all our solutions. This is backed up by a modern app-based digital workflow, which is further supported by more sophisticated monitoring and control software for professional applications.
In another first for our Middle East customers, we are showing the new EW-DX EM4 Dante, a Dante-enabled 4-channel 1U receiver that completes our EW-DX range and will be available in the first half of 2024.
Finally, we also have on active display MobileConnect, a smartphone-based solution that distributes audio over existing WiFi networks that is innovative, scalable, and seamlessly connects you to your audience, who can listen, respond and interact effortlessly and in real time.
Q2. From your company’s perspective, what are the key technologies and trends that you’re seeing that will drive your innovation and product roadmap for the next 12 months?
In the meeting room and lecture environments, the trend is for platform certified solutions that are versatile but simple to use, something that Sennheiser delivers upon with all our solutions.
We are committed to an open ecosystem and brand-agnostic approach that allows integrators and customers to choose a solution that best suits their needs. We have an alliance partner philosophy that means we work with complimentary manufacturers to ensure that our systems are fully compatible, are optimised for ease of installation, and user-friendly.
We also see the ongoing trend of hardware being supported and enhanced by software which is why we offer IT-optimised solutions and our free of charge software, Sennheiser Control Cockpit, that provides an easy handling control and monitoring solution for all of our network-enables systems, which includes everything we are displaying at GITEX.
Q3. How important is an event like GITEX Global for your company – and how much value does it drive for your organisation?
GITEX really has become a hugely important technology show, with global relevance, which from our point of view brings in the right profile of visitors from all over the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia and the Near East. To have that on our doorstep in Dubai, where our MEA operation is based, is extremely beneficial to us as an organisation, allowing us to connect with end-users, channel partners and consultants over 5 packed days.
We can present our latest business to business solutions to exactly the right type of customers, meeting existing partners and connecting with potential new clients in an environment that is focused on bringing business partners together and showing the best that our industry has to offer. It has rightly become a fixture on the calendar with global appeal and we’ll continue to support the event and our Middle East industry partners in the years to come.
