Cisco takes on Microsoft's Surface Hub with its new Spark Board

Cisco today introduced a new product to take on Microsoft’s Surface Hub and Google’s Jamboard. The company today unveiled its new Spark Board, which offers the similar set of features as Microsoft’s own Surface Hub.

The Cisco Spark Board comes with a 4K UHD display in two different sizes: a 55-inch and a 70-inch variant. The display supports multi-touch, which is going to be immensely for collaboration during meetings. Similar to the Surface Hub, the Spark Board comes with a digital whiteboard features — which, as the name suggests, will allow users to draw and sketch on the big 55-inch or 70-inch display of the Spark Board. Using Cisco’s Spark app, users can also work on the whiteboard right from their mobile device which is also very neat.

The Cisco Spark Board also includes the basic features such as video conferencing similar to Microsoft’s Surface Hub which uses Skype to enable video conferencing on the device. Cisco, on the other hand, integrates its Spark service right into the Spark Board to enable HD voice and video calls on the Spark Board.

Cisco will start selling the Spark Board later this month at $4,990 for the 55-inch variant, and the larger 70-inch variant will cost $9,990 — but that will only be available later this year. It is important to note that customers would have to pay $199 per month as a subscription for the “software and service” on the Spark Board.