Managed.IT - issue 53

When Jaguar Land Rover announced plans to open a software, IT and engineering centre in The Neo Building in Manchester, it realised that the key to the project’s success lay in attracting the right people and creating an environment that made them feel an integral part of a business spread across the globe. With competition for talent in the city so high, it was essential that any facility was not only attractive to Generation Y tech natives but would also enable them to work in an intuitive way, collaborating both internally and externally. Mark Brogden, Director of Enterprise Architecture and Innovation at Jaguar Land Rover, said: “The attraction and retention of staff, certainly in a software development space, is key. We wanted to attract the right talent to drive our software development initiative, and a key part of that involves creating an innovative working environment. One benefit of Manchester is that, as a digital hub, those skills exist, but so too do competitors. So we needed to create a better way of working and a better working environment in order to attract people with the skills we needed.” Over a period of just six weeks, integrator Visavvi installed a variety of technologies to support this vision, including professional displays, control systems, unified communications technology and audio equipment, all of which it brought together to create a truly intuitive workplace. For Rob Hill, the Jaguar Land Rover Account Manager at Visavvi, Panasonic was the obvious choice for the centre’s displays. “Jaguar Land Rover had an existing relationship with Panasonic from the automotive world and, from a Visavvi perspective, we’ve been working with Panasonic technology for 20 years and work really closely with them. This is a flagship building for Jaguar Land Rover and Panasonic is a flagship brand from an audio- visual perspective,” he said. The displays are used throughout the centre for a variety of purposes, from dashboard screens for monitoring software in development to presentations, and from internal meetings to interactive collaboration with colleagues and associates in the UK and overseas. “A key element, especially with the type of software development work we do, is to make the guys here feel part of the wider Jaguar Land Rover group,” explained Brogden. “Manchester is slightly remote from our other sites in Gaydon and Whitley in the West Midlands, and very remote from Shannon in Ireland, Shanghai in China and Portland in the United States. Video conferencing, the informal screens and the meeting room spaces we’ve created bridge that gap, so it was absolutely key that we got that right.” http://business.panasonic.co.uk Around the world in 80 inches We wanted to attract the right talent to drive our software development initiative, and a key part of that involves creating an innovative working environment Jaguar Land Rover is deploying 19 Panasonic large format displays for a variety of applications in its new Central Manchester software hub. Display trends The global value of interactive display sales grew by 39% in 2018, according to the latest research from Futuresource Consulting. Interactive Flat Panel Displays (IFPDs) continued to take more share from traditional Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs). By Q4 2018, IFPDs accounted for 83% of all interactive display sales in the education and corporate markets, up from 73% in 2017. IFPD sales grew in 55 of the 67 countries in which Futuresource Consulting tracks sales, increasing by as much as 100% in many of them. Futuresource Consulting points out that while IFPD penetration is high in the education market – over three quarters of US classrooms now have an interactive display – the corporate market is still largely untapped, with 32 million corporate meeting rooms globally and well under one million displays installed to date. Key trends in IFPDs include: n a transition to larger sizes – half of sales in the US are now over 70in; n migration of large screen sizes (60in plus) to 4K, from 1080p; n a proliferation of ‘all-in-one’ meeting room displays promoting collaboration via interactivity; n increased functionality as standard, including 4K and multi touch (10 to 20 points) and (often) screen-sharing capabilities; and n more ‘flip chart’ format displays, following the popularity of the Samsung Flip. Colin Messenger, Senior Market Analyst at Futuresource Consulting, added: “The trend towards more display personalisation continues. It’s very useful for a teacher or corporate user moving between classroom/meeting room to be able to set up the display to a pre-set height, content and configuration via biometric fingerprint reader or NFC card control.” www.futuresource-consulting.com 22 MANAGED.IT 01732 759725 DISPLAYS