I’ve spent nights and weekends thinking – and even dreaming – about the day our company would move into our new corporate headquarters this summer. It was a big deal. We were making decisions for the next two generations of workers.
As a leader of the project, I dedicated much of my time to designing a space around our company’s workflow to increase efficiency. But I also got to explore and invest in some new technology. Here are five cool and productive pieces of technology we included in our new building and I expect to be standard in businesses in the near future:
1. 60-inch Sharp Televisions
High quality, technology-friendly televisions have become affordable, and are taking the place of projectors and screens in business meeting spaces. We installed a series of these televisions in our conference rooms as well as the executive offices we designed to transform into additional meeting rooms. These televisions are video capable and can be easily connected to our laptops. They can act as a dual screen to talk through handouts or presentations during face-to-face meetings or be used to conduct a video conference call.
2. Interactive Digital Signage
Interactive digital signage is quickly replacing the digital whiteboard by providing even more functionality without the projector. The interactive digital signage looks like a big screen television, but it does so much more. Users can open, edit and print documents from the touch screen monitor or even move parts of a diagram to communicate a process or idea. We installed one interactive device in the client tour area of the new building. Now, we can take visitors through our corporate PowerPoint presentation, view standout employees who recently won Marco CARE Awards and showcase products and services we provide. The interactive digital signage allows organizations to communicate key content and meet a growing desire to engage viewers.
3. Cisco USC Blade Servers
When I talk about these, I definitely sound like a techie and get some blank stares so I won’t bore you with the details. They may not look as cool as a digital interactive signage or four-panel TV display. But the speed and reliability they provide are what makes employees – and customers – happy. These high density servers deliver the high performance a data center demands without taking up much space. They take server virtualization to a new level. At Marco, we were able to consolidate our entire production data center from more than 30 physical servers to 3 blades running in an N+1 configuration. The N+1 configuration provides resiliency in the unlikely event of a component failure. Each blade currently has only 45 percent of its capacity utilized and the chassis they operate in is at 50 percent in space utilization, which allows for future growth. The entire solution takes about 20 inches of space in a data rack.
4. Four-Panel Television in Lobby
Nothing makes a statement like four 60-inch television monitors that span a wall. It delivers a real “wow” effect for visitors when they walk in the front door. As a technology company, that’s intentional. The video wall allows us to showcase our technology capabilities by playing one video across all four displays or up to four separate videos on each of the monitors. Many people already have asked if they could borrow the front lobby for football season.
5. Command Center
This NASA-inspired room in our new building includes what may look like a typical cubicle office arrangement from below. But suspended overhead is a series of television monitors displaying real-time statistics. What happens in this room really matters to our company and our customers. At a glance, our call center employees, for an example, can view the exact location and status of our technicians to effectively and easily dispatch them to a customer site. They also can see if we are hitting key targets for key performance indicators like the percentage of calls that receive a “live answer.”
Knowing what technology to invest is not easy. Organizations can spend a lot of money and not really gain anything. New technology needs to either increase performance or reduce costs, or both to make it worthwhile. The cool factor only should go so far.
