Microsoft appoints Faritec as RoundTable reseller

JSE-listed IT solutions and services company Faritec has bolstered its Microsoft offering and Gold Partner status by becoming a Microsoft RoundTable reseller. An empowered organisation with an AA rating from Empowerdex, Faritec manages well over R300 million in Microsoft software licensing agreements with many of South Africa's leading corporations, parastatals and government departments.

Dave McMurdo, Business Unit Manager of Faritec's Microsoft Division, says: “We have identified an escalating demand for a conferencing device, which is affordable, practical and easy to use. Online meetings are the way of the future, and are set to dramatically impact corporate travel, delivering unprecedented cost savings and enhancing productivity.”

Microsoft RoundTable is an innovative new conferencing and collaboration device with a 360-degree camera. When combined with Office Communications Server 2007 or the Office Live Meeting 2007 service, RoundTable delivers an immersive conferencing experience.

“RoundTable promises to reduce travel spend by facilitating boardroom-type meetings with multiple participants on the Office Communications Server platform. Two RoundTables can be bought for the price of one business-class air ticket, digitally linking and facilitating communications between two meeting rooms full of people,” McMurdo points out.

With RoundTable, a panoramic video camera provides a 360-degree view of everyone in the conference room, active speaker detection tracks the flow of conversation in the room and automatically focuses on the current speaker, and audio technology filters out background noise to better capture conversations. In addition, users can record entire meetings, including the panoramic view, active speaker view and shared slides, enabling meetings to be transformed into corporate assets that can be shared and played back at any time.

“This solution enables colleagues, customers and partners in different locations to interact as if they were in the same room, making meetings more collaborative and engaging,” McMurdo says. “The remote attendees can use a RoundTable device or a standard Web cam to include their image in the meeting. If not, they can dial in from any phone and their voice will be added to the session.”

Furthermore, RoundTable has an intuitive design and is a plug-and-play USB device, so it can be deployed and used with little or no training. To host a meeting using RoundTable, users just need to plug the device into a PC with network access to Office Communications Server 2007 or the Office Live Meeting 2007 service. Remote participants don't need any additional equipment, just their PCs with network access, to see the RoundTable panoramic view with active speaker detection on the remote end.

RoundTable also has telephone network connectivity and can be used as an ordinary conference room speakerphone.

As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Faritec holds seven of the key Microsoft Competencies: Licensing Solutions; Unified Communications; Data Management Solutions; Advanced Infrastructure; Network Infrastructure; Security Solutions; and Information Worker. The company will use this expertise as well as its countrywide footprint to add value to Microsoft's Unified Communication and RoundTable installations. It is also offering a 10% discount on RoundTable orders until the end of February 2009.

RoundTable, Live Meeting 2007, Office Communicator 2007, Office Communications Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 are components of Microsoft's unified communications solution, which enables collaboration across e-mail, instant messaging, voice and video with enterprise-grade security and reliability.