The new head offices of EXARRO in Centurion are a powerhouse display of integrated AV technologies.
We caught up with Frog AV and Mindstec to learn more about this turnkey solution, which has delivered a world-class AV backbone to the offices of the major mining company.
According to Chris Smith – Principal Architect at EXARRO – “We were looking for a cost-effective integrated solution with ease of use, which could be easily integrated into the Microsoft Office Suite. Previously we had normal, projector-type of boardrooms, and we decided that we want to move away from them due to their quality and the cost of operation. We also specified that connectivity to the equipment in the boardroom must be seamless and wireless, and must enable any type of computer to connect to the equipment.”
“The brief covered an enormous scope. We have a long-standing relationship with EXARRO, and I therefore had a very clear idea of what their vision was for the project – which included a solid installation at their head office in Pretoria that would allow for wireless, online collaboration and video conferencing, which would then be deployed at all of the company’s mines in Mpumalanga and Limpopo on the same network. EXARRO where looking for standardised solution that would operate seamlessly to connect all of its sites.”
Adre’ Pansegrouw’s perspective, the managing director of Frog AV
“They wanted something clean – all of their services run on the cloud now, and they did away with most of their physical servers. There is no cabling whatsoever; they wanted to connect wirelessly. They wanted a fresh look, and the ability for end-users to walk into a meeting room and make a Skype call without carrying a laptop. All the rooms are fully automated, so when you walk into the room everything switches on automatically and you are greeted with the interactive landing page of the wireless connection – either on the video wall or a screen in front of you at the table, depending on the size and configuration of the room.”
Adre’ Pansegrouw’s perspective, the managing director of Frog AV
Adre’ explains that the Frog AV team was systematic in its approach. “In tackling the EXARRO project, we designed three different ‘recipes’ for the differently-sized venues. The EXARRO team then decided how many of each rooms they wanted, and we simply replicated the three different configurations over the five floors of office space, ultimately including the implementation of 83 boardrooms. The benefit to a phased implementation such as at EXARRO is that we had the opportunity to design, implement and troubleshoot the installation at head office first. Thanks to the lessons that we learned deploying the head office installation, we are more equipped to extend the system to all of the company’s satellite offices.”
Featuring two first-in-country installations – in the form of the Crestron Flex control solution and the T1V Suite of collaboration technologies – Smith is highly satisfied with the operability of the solution. “We got it right the first time, and the use of the equipment is very user-friendly, working the same throughout all the boardrooms. This will be the technology, from an AV perspective, that we will roll out to all out BUs, and it will be the standard solution that we will deploy in the future for all our boardrooms.”
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