Microsoft took to their Devices blog today to make a number of announcements about their Surface devices, including some news about the large format Surface Hub. With production ramping up and now able to meet demand, the company used the blog post to announce that they have launched the Surface Hub Try-And-Buy program.
The Surface Hub Try and Buy program will enable a select set of Microsoft resellers to provide customers Hubs for 30 days before the committing to purchasing a large set of devices. Microsoft has data to prove that the program will be successful, and highlights that it will be launching the program in the US, in European Surface Hub markets this winter, with Asia Pacific getting it at a later date.
Surface Hub has also gained some momentum with sales up 20% with a payback period of nine months. According to a February 2016 Forrester study, the ROI (return on investment) of integrating a Surface Hub into an organization was 138%. The measured total meeting time saved per meeting in the study was also estimated to be at 15 – 23 minutes thanks to the Surface Hub. Additionally, Microsoft also emphasizes in their post that in these nine months, the company has added long asked for features to the Surface Hub such as inking support in Office, simultaneous Pen and Touch, and more.
- Inking support across Word, Excel and PowerPoint. People are loving using Pen on Surface Hub, now we let them do it in the most used Office apps!
- Support for simultaneous Pen and Touch. People, especially people that have used Surfaces, expect these things to work together. They do now!
- Save & recall Whiteboards directly through OneDrive. If we do important work together, let’s make sure we can save it and share it!
- Support for 3rd-party peripherals like BiAmp TesireForte CI, Jabra 810, Logitech Group, Logitech PTZ Pro and Polycom CX5100. We have amazing cameras and audio equipment people want to use in their conference rooms and exec offices. We now have more they can use!
- Preloading PowerBI, OneDrive, and Photos apps. Every Surface Hub user should be able to analyze data better, get to their files, and go through the teams’ images.
With 2017 fast approaching, it will be interesting to see Microsoft ride the momentum of Surface Hub and Surface line-up popularity. As always, please do let us know what you think of this latest set of Surface news by dropping us a comment below!
