Earlier this year Google announced a slew of messaging and meeting products, one of which was Hangouts Meet, a service geared towards the enterprise. It touted several features that made managing day-to-day meetings and scheduling thereof a breeze, including the ability to join a meeting through the Calendar app on your smartphone device or browser. Today, the company announced a specialized hardware kit that will tie into the aforementioned service, and turn any meeting room into a smart hub.
The Hangouts Meet hardware kit not only includes the usual suspects, those being a 4K 120-degree field-of-view camera, and microphones that can be daisy-chained - up to five - via a single cable to improve audio quality, but also an ASUS Chromebox. This will allow for several other smart features to function such as Google Drive integration. On top of this, Google included a touch controller, where an individual can be tagged, or invited, and enables the ability to record the meeting and share it with those who couldn"t make it in time.
The hardware will run on Chrome OS, which will enable IT departments to manage the devices so they adhere to security policies that might be in place. Chrome OS is an operating system alternative to Microsoft"s Windows, that is built on the secure Chrome browser-platform from Google.
G Suite Enterprise customers will unlock additional feature sets, including the ability to remotely host up to 50 people in the said meeting, and allows individuals to proactively "dial-in" from anywhere in the world. Some of these features will, however, roll out gradually to users across the world.
The hardware kit will become available in several markets worldwide starting today and will cost $1999.