Lightware links LinkedIn’s APAC branches
Lightware links LinkedIn’s APAC branches
Lightware’s Taurus UCX switchers are providing BYOD connectivity for Microsoft Teams Rooms experiences across LinkedIn’s APAC meeting rooms.
Delivered by PTS Consulting Singapore, alongside local systems integrators, the goal was to ensure that LinkedIn employees across all nine APAC cities could walk into rooms in Bangalore, Beijing, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo and find the same familiar Microsoft Teams Rooms experience, supported by BYOD functionality.
Serving as AV consultant and technology project manager for the unified communications (UC) upgrade, PTS Consulting Singapore’s role covered end-to-end consultancy and project governance from site audits and stakeholder requirements to AV design, procurement support, implementation oversight, commissioning review and final handover.
The company was tasked with upgrading approximately 300 meeting rooms within a tight nine-month deadline, with Rico Sim, general manager of PTS Consulting Singapore, citing the key challenges as scale, speed and regional variation. “Each market had different infrastructure conditions, regulatory requirements, local working practices, integrator capabilities and supply-chain constraints,” said Sim. “Product model variations and differing lead times also added complexity, so it was essential to maintain a familiar room experience while adapting to local requirements.”
He added that, in a rollout of this scale, a reliable switching platform was essential to reduce variation across rooms and simplify deployment and support. “Lightware Taurus UCX switchers were deployed across meeting rooms to support laptop connection, source switching and BYOD presentation paths,” he explaind. “The technology helps bridge the user input layer with the Microsoft Teams Rooms ecosystem and in-room AV devices.”
To balance the need for consistency with local conditions, rooms were classified into standard and specialty types, creating a predictable user experience while still allowing each location to account for room size, infrastructure readiness and functional requirements.
In the standard rooms, a UCX-2x1-HC40 Universal Switcher sits beneath the meeting table as the user-facing connection point. Each unit provides HDMI 2.0 and USB-C connectivity, supported by CAB-USBC-T200C USB-C cables, enabling users to connect their own device.
The Lenovo ThinkSmart Core and IP Controller kit forms the main control layer for the native Microsoft Teams Rooms experience, while the UCX handles local switching and device integration. It connects user laptops with the wider room ecosystem.
“The UCX’s HDMI and USB-C connectivity proved especially valuable, reducing user ambiguity across each room,” noted Sim “By providing a repeatable switching and connectivity approach, employees could expect a familiar connection method and meeting room workflow regardless of location."
According to the team, while each office required adaptation to local site conditions, the underlying room architecture remained consistent by typology, which helped to ensure that the UCX could be installed and configured in a predictable way.
“From a usability perspective, the upgrade from varied legacy configurations to a more standardised Microsoft Teams Rooms environment reduced the need for users to relearn different room setups when working across different locations,” Sim added. “This was intended to give staff a smoother meeting experience, allowing them to concentrate on collaboration rather than the technology in the room.”
In addition, this uniformity enables regional IT and support teams to diagnose issues more easily, manage rooms more efficiently and maintain operational reliability across multiple locations.
